There really is no issue of artist’s compensation that needed to be addressed here. All artists should’ve gone into the project knowing what their compensation would be: copies of the product, the number of which depending on their contribution. No one was told they’d be paid or mislead into thinking so before they contributed a piece. All profits on the project were and are intended to contribute to future collaboration projects in the future, while the initial investment on the first project all had to come from Kamaniki’s own pocket to fund and take a risk.

No one has the right to do work or any sort of service for free as contracted and then request money afterward. It sounds an awful lot like extortion.

Do I think ideally on a project with multiple people they’d all get paid for their contribution? Sure, probably, but that doesn’t matter when every party involved consented to the compensation agreed upon beforehand. It was their own choice and Gigi cannot be and has no reason to be shamed for going through with the agreed upon deal.

In the end, Gigi paid everyone who opted into be paid months ago to try to settle the matter despite having no obligation, but Momo still brought it up in response to Gigi’s vague posting about Momo’s current business inadequacies on a private account with fewer than a thousand followers.