Only if you have a good contract. It's pretty common for an artist to sign an overly restrictive contract early in their career which lasts for a certain number

Only if you have a good contract. It's pretty common for an artist to sign an overly restrictive contract early in their career which lasts for a certain number of releases, and they're stuck with it for a long, long time. An example would be the band Streetlight Manifesto, who have had a lengthy and rough relationship with their label, Victory Records. For years they've told fans to not pay for their music because of fights with their label, and instead buy merchandise from the band and pirate the music. Despite this, they've still been chained to Victory (and still are, I believe) and have to release music entirely through them. Most recently, with their newest album[0], Victory refused to send physical copies of the album to fans who pre-ordered through the band's website, leaving the band to deal with refunding their fans. And when the singer tried to independently release a solo album of acoustic covers of that same album (which he has successfully done in the past), Victory had it removed from Youtube, Amazon, etc. There's a reason many independent artists seems so scared of labels. While YouTube is definitely taking things too far, it doesn't compare to what some labels have been doing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hands_That_Thieve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hands_That_Thieve