British soul star Laura Mvula has revealed that she only found out she was being dropped by her record label Sony in a brief, “cold and cruel” e-mail message.

Mvula claimed that, while her former manager was told the news in a face-to-face meeting with representatives from RCA Victor, a subsidiary of Sony, she was only informed of what was happening in a seven-line e-mail that was forwarded to her.

“I didn't see anyone, I didn't hear anybody's voice. I just read words. It felt so cold and cruel,” the 30 year old singer told the BBC on Tuesday (March 21st). “Not even the fact that I was dropped, the way that the whole thing happened. To be treated like that doesn't feel quite just.”

Laura MvulaLaura Mvula claims Sony dropped her via e-mail

The star released her second album, The Dreaming Room, in June last year, which was a follow-up to her gold-selling 2013 debut Sing To the Moon. Both albums were critically acclaimed and nominated for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize in the respective years they were released, but sales of the second were deemed not strong enough to merit the continuation of the deal.

“I guess in my head I always thought there would be a conversation, a renegotiation, but never a kinda, 'it's over',” she reflected.

In the interview, Birmingham-born Mvula went on to explain that she had been “naïve” when she signed her record contract back in early 2012, expecting that the deal meant support for her records would be unconditional.

“I was definitely naive in the beginning,” she said. “When I was signed, I thought when someone says, we love you and we're with you until the end, that's what they mean.”

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