Blur vs Food Records / EMI

Blur are often assumed to have fought their record label in court, as George Michael and Prince did. There is no public record that they did.

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The legal case that carries their name was brought in 2001 by David and Helen Balfe, the founders of Blur’s first label, Food Records, against EMI. It turned on a single question that proved to be worth £250,000: which record counted as the second Blur album?

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The Background: Signing with Food Records

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Food Records was set up in 1984 by David Balfe, later joined by Andy Ross. Ross saw a Colchester band called Seymour in November 1989. Food liked the band but not the name, the band chose Blur from a list of alternatives, and Food signed them in March 1990.

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After their debut album Leisure in 1991, Blur discovered they were around £60,000 in debt, and in 1992 they toured the United States for two months to start paying it back. It is a reminder that advances and recording costs are money spent before it is earned.

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Food was closely tied to EMI, which first invested in the label. In April 1994 the Balfes, who owned 75 per cent of the shares, sold Food to EMI outright, and Blur became an EMI act. Parklife, The Great Escape and Blur followed.

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The Sale Agreement

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When EMI bought Food, it agreed to pay the Balfes £475,000 plus royalties on sales of up to two more albums from each act on the Food roster, including Blur and Shampoo. After those two albums, the royalties would stop.

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Both sides agreed that Blur’s first qualifying album was The Great Escape, released in 1995, which had sold 2.14 million copies in 57 countries according to figures reported at the time. The dispute was over the second.

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The Dispute

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The Balfes said the second album was Blur, released in 1997, which had a full worldwide release and sold 2.4 million copies in 50 countries. EMI said it was Blur Live At Budokan, released only in Japan and 13 other countries, never released in the UK or the United States, with sales of around 80,000.

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The same argument ran for Shampoo. EMI pointed to Delicious, a Japan only release of new recordings of songs from the duo’s debut. The Balfes pointed to Shampoo Or Nothing, released in the UK and worldwide. The Balfes’ barrister argued that no ordinary record buyer in Britain would describe the Budokan album as the second Blur album, because it could never have been bought in a British shop.

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The Outcome

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In March 2001 the High Court largely found for the Balfes. Judge Boggis rejected EMI’s reading of the agreement as lacking commercial reality. EMI was ordered to pay £250,000 in royalties and £50,000 in costs. In the countries where the Budokan and Delicious albums had actually been released, the Balfes would take their royalties from those records instead.

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Food Records had already been folded into Parlophone in 2000. Blur stayed with EMI and released 13 in 1999 and Think Tank in 2003.

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The Impact on the Industry

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The case is a clear example of courts reading a contract by its commercial purpose rather than by the most convenient technical meaning of its words. Nobody negotiating a royalty on the next two albums from one of Britain’s biggest bands could sensibly have meant a live record released in a handful of territories.

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It also shows how an artist’s contract travels when a label changes hands, and how a seller can keep a share of the income from releases they helped to build.

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Lessons for Musicians Today

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The Food Records case offers several lessons for artists at all levels:

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• Define the words that carry the money. Album, release, territory and net receipts should all be defined if a payment depends on them.

• Contracts travel with the business. If a label, agency or management company is sold, your agreement usually goes with it. Check what happens if the business changes hands.

• Recoupment delays income. Advances and recording costs usually come out of your share first. Ask what is being recouped and when it stops.

• Agree what you take when you leave. If you leave a band or business you helped build, your agreement should say what you are entitled to and for how long.