March 4th 2025 marks 20 years since ProVerb released his debut album ‘The Book Of ProVerb’, a certified South African Hip-Hop classic. After all the posts you’ve been seeing celebrating the album’s anniversary since yesterday, you’d naturally want to stream the album. But sadly you can’t.
While most of Verb’s catalogue is available for streaming, ‘The Book Of ProVerb’ is still not. And it’s not like no effort was made to get the album on DSPs. Verb broke down why complications with sample clearances prevented the album from streaming in his autobiography named after the album and published in 2020.
Verb realised after buying back the masters from, presumably, Outrageous Records that he couldn’t release on DSPs.
Read an excerpt from the chapter titled ‘Keep Your Eyes Open’ here:
“In days gone by, we relied heavily on gentlemen's agreements, and when producers submitted beats to record, the deal was often concluded with a payment and a handshake. Little investigating was done on the samples used, or permissions to use certain loops, for example.
“When I submitted the music to be released on various distribution plat-forms, I got error messages and requests that I submit sample clearance documents and licence agreements. There were no licence agreements.
"When I requested them, I was reminded that in those days we overlooked a lot of those details. So, in effect I had no paperwork to prove my rights from the various producers I had worked with and no sample clearance documents to use any of the songs that had either been sampled in each track or were references to other songs.
“Unfortunately, this meant that I could not exploit the album after spending the money to buy back the master. I could probably still have released it, but only on illegal sharing sites. I could also have re-recorded the songs and removed the samples, or changed the sound and then reproduced them altogether, but I had reached a fork in the road. The quote I obtained to re-record the entire album was eerily similar to the figure for the school fees I was due to pay for the following year.
“For me, that was the deciding point. I'd spent enough time, money and effort trying to buy back the master, so when I learnt that I'd have to invest even more time, money and effort to conclude the process, I decided to cut my losses. I knew very well that if I opted to invest in the re-recording over and above what I had already spent buying back the master, I would never recoup the money. My music had never been a big seller anyway.
“So I opted for what I felt was the more responsible route: investing in my kids' education.
“Fortunately, my contract with the seller allowed me to reverse the transaction and return the master.
Sadly you can’t stream ‘The Book Of ProVerb’ the album, but you can read ‘The Book Of ProVerb’ the book here: https://www.
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