Video game music label Materia Collective has repeatedly come under fire throughout 2021 after multiple artists and employees detailed mismanagement and not receiving payment for their work over an extended period.
Composer, producer, and former community manager Laura Platt recently detailed her negative experience with the label via Twitter on October 26th, explaining,
“Materia had withheld just over $1k from me personally, for example, and for others that number was much, much higher. I can’t quite explain how humiliating it was to hear how little [owner Sebastian Wolff] thought our compensation mattered to him, especially a year deep into a global pandemic where opportunities for financial compensation for music had been decimated.”
She also repeatedly emphasized her issue with the company’s owner Wolff in particular:
“[He] is still running things over there, despite what he might want you to think. My brief time working there was the worst period of my life, and I still haven’t recovered.”
Materia responded with a statement via Twitter in which they stated the accusations were “not only sobering but challenging to read” before claiming:
“In recent months we have taken significant steps to place staff wellbeing at the forefront of our company, while seeking deeper organisational changes to not only restructure, but to build a new framework of how we care for our team members and artists.”
In the wake of the accusations, multiple artists requested to have their contributions to the Materia Community catalogue taken down. Because of the legal requests, Materia Community confirmed via Twitter that the collaborative albums will be removed in their entirety from music platforms after November 30th, 2021. Materia Community albums include the likes of EPOCH: A Tribute to Chrono Trigger (read our review), FLAMESGRACE: A Tribute to Octopath Traveler, FALLEN: An Undertale Tribute, several Final Fantasy tribute albums, and many more.
One of the first question some fans have had is where the money will go if these albums are purchased between now and the cutoff. The second question is where and how these albums will be available after that date. At the moment, we don’t have clear answers to either, but hopefully the second question will have an answer after November 30th.
Materia Community also clarified that that the forthcoming VESSEL: A Tribute To Hollow Knight project will no longer be distributed via the label.
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