Charli says unfollowing Rina "was over a personal disagreement between friends" and that "it wasn't even a falling out, we're good". She's quick to say Rina never asked her to take sides. But she acknowledges "the masters conversation annoyed me and I told [Rina]".
It's common for record labels to own artists' masters, which hold the copyright to original recordings of their music. But the subject has become the source of emotionally charged discussion among fanbases, perhaps because of Taylor Swift's highly publicised dispute over the ownership of her first six albums.
When Charli signed a five-album deal with Atlantic aged 16, she owned about 15 per cent of her masters and the label owned the rest. "I've been in a position for a long period where I didn't own a lot of the music that I made, so it's hard for me to see that word [masters] being weaponised when it's not the case," she says of an ownership setup that is, by and large, standard industry practice.
With Crash she fulfilled her Atlantic deal after nearly 15 years and re-signed with the label. She talked to Interscope but realised more of her masters would be kept if she stayed with Atlantic. She's emphatic that the decision to stay was "not in any way because I was backed into a corner to do so, or because I'm a victim. That [narrative] really bothers me." The Swift debacle is "really unfair" but not representative of the situation faced by most artists, not least herself. "I don't want people to be like 'Oh my God, they trapped her because they own her masters.' Like, yeah, they own my masters – that's a fucking record deal. That's what they're paying for."
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