Songwriters And Streaming Services Battle Over Decades-Old Decree

[bing101]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2015/05/07/404700847/songwriters-and-streaming-services-battle-over-decades-old-decree

If you are wondering why Youtube has blocked your roadgeek video this one of the reasons here. Google, Pandora, spotify and others must deal with copyright contracts between Songwriters and the Record Labels.
Some of this has been in Civil lawsuits for some time.

[bugo]

When (if) my first album is finished, I'm going to upload it to Youtube and license it to be used in videos. Personally, I would be stoked if somebody dug my music enough to want to use it in a video.

[GCrites]

I remember seeing videos with popular music posted to MTR. One was driving through Appalachia with Black Sabbath playing and another was in Missouri with the Cover Girls' "Show Me" playing (see the irony there?). Were they affected?

[KEVIN_224]

Clever connection with the Cover Girls and Missouri!

It reminds me how Vince McMahon and the then-WWF used to use popular music of the day as music beds either going to commercial or while showing replays of a move or two from a match just aired. I figured it had to be a rights issue, since on occasion, the intro music for a wrestler or a video from the 80s suddenly has completely unrelated music playing. The best example was Hulk Hogan suddenly coming out to "Real American" from WrestleMania in 1985 on the DVD copy I own. It's a fact that his ring music at that point was "Eye Of The Tiger" from Survivor. Just watch the timing of the crowd's initial "pop" to when the music starts on the DVD. It's not even close to matching up.

[Big John]

Or with WKRP in Cincinnati, which had limited music rights which has since expired, so that what music is now played in syndication/DVDs is different that when the shows first aired.

[bugo]

Or with WKRP in Cincinnati, which had limited music rights which has since expired, so that what music is now played in syndication/DVDs is different that when the shows first aired.

I do not understand this. If the DVDs were to be released with the original music, the producers of the TV show and the musicians/record companies would all make money. It's a win-win situation. Stubbornness and greed means they make NO money off their songs.

[The Nature Boy]

Clever connection with the Cover Girls and Missouri!

It reminds me how Vince McMahon and the then-WWF used to use popular music of the day as music beds either going to commercial or while showing replays of a move or two from a match just aired. I figured it had to be a rights issue, since on occasion, the intro music for a wrestler or a video from the 80s suddenly has completely unrelated music playing. The best example was Hulk Hogan suddenly coming out to "Real American" from WrestleMania in 1985 on the DVD copy I own. It's a fact that his ring music at that point was "Eye Of The Tiger" from Survivor. Just watch the timing of the crowd's initial "pop" to when the music starts on the DVD. It's not even close to matching up.

For some reason, the original music was in tact on the late 90s VHS WrestleMania collection. I assume though that most of the "THIS MUSIC IS MINE" chatter started in the early 2000s though.

[bugo]

Clever connection with the Cover Girls and Missouri!

It reminds me how Vince McMahon and the then-WWF used to use popular music of the day as music beds either going to commercial or while showing replays of a move or two from a match just aired. I figured it had to be a rights issue, since on occasion, the intro music for a wrestler or a video from the 80s suddenly has completely unrelated music playing. The best example was Hulk Hogan suddenly coming out to "Real American" from WrestleMania in 1985 on the DVD copy I own. It's a fact that his ring music at that point was "Eye Of The Tiger" from Survivor. Just watch the timing of the crowd's initial "pop" to when the music starts on the DVD. It's not even close to matching up.

In the mid 1980s there was a syndicated WWF program that came on Sunday night after the news that used Michael Jackson's "Thriller" as the theme song. Not being a MJ fan, I heard the song on the wrestling show before I ever heard the song in its entirety.

[Pete from Boston]

Or with WKRP in Cincinnati, which had limited music rights which has since expired, so that what music is now played in syndication/DVDs is different that when the shows first aired.

I do not understand this. If the DVDs were to be released with the original music, the producers of the TV show and the musicians/record companies would all make money. It's a win-win situation. Stubbornness and greed means they make NO money off their songs.

Pure speculation, but this may be a case of the rights holders realizing they made less than they should have, and wanting a future price to take this into account (or just preventing it from happening again).  The producers don't really stand to make more money off having the original songs, because in the remaining useful life of WKRP, neither consumers nor syndicators are going to buy it for those songs.

That said, this is another case of technology changing the historical record, something for which I have some contempt.

[vdeane]

Something similar happened with Murphy Brown.  The show didn't have a main theme, and just used a different song for every single episode.  To this day, only the first season has been released, as the music makes producing anything cost prohibitive.

[mrsman]

I guess this is tangentially related to music on driving videos, but the subject matter should probably be moved to Off-topic.

[briantroutman]

Or with WKRP in Cincinnati, which had limited music rights which has since expired, so that what music is now played in syndication/DVDs is different that when the shows first aired.

I do not understand this. If the DVDs were to be released with the original music, the producers of the TV show and the musicians/record companies would all make money. It's a win-win situation. Stubbornness and greed means they make NO money off their songs.

My understanding is that the terms of licensing changes substantially when you start talking about songs being embedded into media that can be called up by the consumer at any time, on-demand, in perpetuity. (Just ask anyone who has looked into legally licensing popular music for podcasts.) The record companies seem to think that being able to pop in a DVD of The Wonder Years and hear 30 seconds of Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help from My Friends"  over the opening credits is essentially equivalent to the consumer having a copy of the record, and they want to be compensated at rates approaching what they'd expect to make from selling a single.

So the companies that package TV series for DVD release are often caught between music rights holders, who collectively think a single season packed with their hits is worth hundreds of dollars per copy in royalties, and consumers who may lose interest if a season is priced higher than $30-40.