Wendy DayCEO/Coach, PowerPlays Coaching, LLC · Helping rappers make money with their music. Building millionaires in the urban music industry since 1992.

💸 Stolen songs, big checks! 🎶 A half-mil advance for what wasn't even his! Crazy Biz! 🤯

7 Jan 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief excerpt, Speaker A recounts a music‑industry fraud where an individual secured a $500,000 advance from a record or publishing company by presenting a catalog of songs that he did not own. The company, unaware of the theft, signed an administration deal and paid the large advance for material that was not the perpetrator’s. Speaker B confirms that the catalog was not his, underscoring the deception.

I think his first check was like a half million dollars. He actually took the stolen catalog. He actually took the stolen catalog that he took, and he was actually— he was able to do an administration deal with a company that didn't know no better. They gave him a half million dollar advance on a stolen catalog.
On something that wasn't his.
Not his at all. Yep.
I had an artist come visit me in the '90s and ask me to shop him a publishing deal. And it's not something I do, so I passed on it. But I found out like a year and a half later that he had gathered up songs from all of the producers in the city that he was from and came and got himself his own publishing deal at, at Universal.