Four Tet, also known as Kieran Hebden, has announced that it has resolved its dispute with Domino Records over gift rates.
In August 2021, Hebden sought compensation from the British independent record label for applying a historic copyright fee to the transmission and download revenue of four studio albums he released with the label between 2001 and 2010.
When Hebden signed with Domino in 2001, streaming services did not yet exist and his contract stipulated an 18% gift rate for physical sales. With the arrival of streams and downloads, Domino continued to apply the 18% rate.
But Hebden and his lawyers argued that he was entitled to a “reasonable” 50% royalty on reproductions and downloads, and claimed damages of up to £ 70,000 plus costs in a case that was to go to business courts and owned by the Alt Cort.
In November 2021, Domino withdrew Hebden’s first three albums for the label – Pause (2001), Rounds (2003) and Everything Ecstatic (2005) – from digital stores and streaming services. At the time, Hebden said he had not accepted this and said he was “really shocked”.
Today, it announced that Domino had acknowledged its original claim and agreed to pay a 50% copyright fee on streaming and downloads, and that such transactions should be treated as a license agreement rather than equivalent. to a CD or vinyl sale.
I have a good update on my case with @Dominorecordco. They have acknowledged my original statement, that I should be paid 50% for streaming and download copyright, and that it should be treated as a license and not as a CD or vinyl sale. (1/8 )
– Four Tet (@FourTet) June 20, 2022
Hebden shared pictures of the deal, which showed that he would receive £ 56,921.08 in respect of all historical transmission and download revenue for the accounting period beginning on 1 July 2017, ie the difference between the gift rates of 18% and 50%, in addition to simple interest calculated at a rate of 5% per annum.
“It has been a difficult and stressful experience to move forward in this court case and I am very happy to have gotten this positive result, but I am very relieved that the process is over,” Hebden wrote in a series of tweets.
He said he hoped his situation would open a “constructive” dialogue and encourage other artists to seek “a fairer deal” on historic contracts.
However, he said that Domino still owned these parts of his later catalog for life and that he was not given the option to regain ownership of his work. “I hope this type of copyright agreement expires,” he wrote. “The music industry is not definitive and given its evolutionary nature it seems crazy to me to try to institutionalize music in this way.”
Hebden’s lawyer, Aneesh Patel, told Resident Advisor: “The case came at an important time when there was a government investigation into the economics of real-time broadcasting and the Broken Record campaign has been gaining momentum. “.
Pause, Rounds, and Everything Ecstatic have also been restored to streaming services and digital platforms. The Guardian has contacted Domino to comment.
Hebden has been releasing music since 1997 under a variety of names, including Four Tet, Percussion, 00110100 01010100 and id ꉺ ლ ༽ இ̛ ྀ ◞ ༎ ຶ ༽ ຶ ༽ ৣৢ ლ ༽ Re and Adem Ilhan and Sam Jeffers (as Fridge).
He has continued to make albums under the name Four Tet since he left Domino. His latest, Parallel, was released on his own independent label Text Records in December 2020. That month, Hebden also released the album 871 with his alias 00110100 01010100, also on Text.