What happens to an artist’s music when they change record labels?
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There is no long complicated answer here.
Everything about music depends on who owns the master recordings (and other rights like distribution).
In many cases the music stays entirely with the label because of this ownership. In other cases there are other deals.
Even a lot of money is not a guarantee an artist retains control.
Taylor Swift is a good example of this since Taylor Swift money wasn’t enough to reacquire her back catalog.
Generally nothing happens to the music. The old label usually keeps the rights to any records that they paid to produce, so they keep making money when those records sell. Sometimes a band will buy the rights to their albums from the old label (or the old label will go out of business.)
Green Day recorded their first albums on an indie label called Lookout Records, and then they signed with a major label before they released Dookie. Since Dookie blew up, lots of people bought their early albums, and that made tons of money for Lookout – but Lookout eventually went out of business and Green Day got the rights to their albums back
apparently a bunch of other people get involved and due to the rising cost of inflation its never credited properly to the store.
Just to add on, a lot of times labels will own the rights to the master and not the mix(it’s weird), so some artists, usually those who aren’t as big and known, will just rerecord the song and redo the instrumental and remaster it themselves.
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