Abusive relationships

There's a telling moment in Leigh-Ann Pinnock's recent BBC documentary on race in the music industry when it suddenly seems to dawn on the Little Mix member-cum-social-campaigner the extent to which she is controlled and constrained by her record company, Sony. The programme shows Pinnock, denied professional agency despite her status as a pop superstar, discovering that making even minor changes to her own working environment is frustratingly difficult.

Some of the artists that Rhian Jones spoke to for this Guardian article know the feeling, having been ensnared in horrendous major label contracts and legal entanglements that prevented them from releasing material while still forcing them to jump through hoops. Inevitably, the experience has led to mental health and self-esteem problems, financial woes and a crushing of the creative spirit.

Britney Spears might be an extreme case, but the news stories about her underline the fact that artists are often seen as profitable pieces of meat to be owned and exploited, cash cows to be milked until there's nothing left. In a disturbing thread posted on Twitter early last month, soul singer and X Factor runner-up Rebecca Ferguson detailed a horrific list of abuses allegedly perpetrated by her record company team, which included micromanaging her diet and sleep regime, putting her on a cocktail of drugs, restricting access to her children and, most alarmingly, preventing her from having cancerous cells removed because of the length of the recovery period. All significantly more troubling than denying a musician the opportunity to put out an album, to be sure, but all part of the same spectrum.

So what's the solution? Jones ends her article by very charitably giving a trio of labels a platform to spout about artist relations departments and creative partnerships. But faith in self-regulation is, to put it politely, wildly misplaced. Major labels operate to maximise profits for shareholders, and they do so by treating young people as collateral damage. A cultural shift simply isn't in their interests.

Jones concedes that self-policing "isn't a perfect solution", but concludes optimistically that "if more [artists] can find their voices, the more likely it is that they will, finally, be heard". As with sexism and racism within the music industry and more generally, though, the onus should not be on victims of discrimination and abuse to speak out; it should be on the perpetrators (whether individuals or institutions) to change their behaviour - and on those with the power to change the culture to have the decency to do so.