I’m late to this but I think the claim that Zayn paid for his freedom with ownership of his art is that the other four members do own their masters. They all put up LLCs and all their albums are said to be owned by the LLCs but licensed to whatever label they were on. Harry Erskine Records, Louis 78 Productions, Liam Hampton Records, Niall Neon Haze. In fact, after Zayn’s record deal with RCA ended now his fourth album is under Drop Zed Music. Zayn signed his record deal in mid 2015 and the other boys signed the year after so I don’t think it’s an issue of the timing. But the other boys saw the 1D contract to completion and Zayn left in the middle of it, they were free agents and he wasn’t.
Again, we don't know that. It's an assumption based on incomplete information. It's one possible scenario; there are multiple other scenarios to consider.
It may have been that Zayn was obliged to sign with a Sony label and deliver an album to fulfil his contractual obligations to them. Perhaps they would have tied him up in so much red tape otherwise that it would have made recording a solo album elsewhere impossible or financially disastrous. I think that's possible, even likely.
But that doesn't automatically mean he was obliged to sign a 3 album deal and had no opportunity to negotiate his own masters. Perhaps he didn't fight for them. Perhaps it wasn't a priority for him at that point in time. Perhaps they offered him an eye-watering sum of money and full creative freedom and he went for it.
I think a lot of people forget, post-2019 Taylor, just how unusual it was for artists to own their own masters. In mid 2015, when Zayn was negotiating his deal, it was NOT the norm. It was still highly unusual and only on the cusp of change.
Zayn already had Pillowtalk in the bag in 1D. He was already recording with Malay when he signed with RCA only 4 months after leaving 1D. Zayn was clearly ready to go solo quickly. He'd just done four years in a boyband. His idea of "freedom" at the time is likely to have looked very different to what it might look like now.
It was surprising to this fandom when Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis set up their own companies and secured ownership of their masters - it was not a given. The other members of 1D had far more time than Zayn to consider these things, to seek advice, to think about what they wanted a post-1D world to look like for them. They were not in a rush and they, or most of them, had leverage.
We simply do not have the information to claim that Zayn "paid for his freedom with ownership of his art".
