Week 1 reading: Copyright Issues 1-3
After watching these video's and thinking more about copyright, I am surprised at a couple of things. The biggest surprise to me was the fact that there were no copyright laws in place in many other countries around the world. Being a musician and a composer, I appreciate copyright and I believe in the principal of it. In the Good Copy / Bad copy video, one of the people being interviewed made a good point. He said that the artists are not making a of money off their copyrighted works, the recording engineers and people associated with the songs are not making a lot of money, the people making the money are the labels. I tend to agree with that. I know quite a number of composers and they make pennies out of every dollar that the labels sell their music for. Now, don't get me wrong, the labels need to make some profit also, but in a small sense, they are doing just like the big oil companies and making a huge profit with very little expense to their company.
As a composer, I am slightly torn on this issue. In one respect, I would be very flattered if someone took a sample from something I wrote and used it in a mix of theirs. In another respect, I would want to be contacted about it and maybe even offered some sort of monetary value for something that I wrote. I have written music that I have actually sold the rights to and I no longer can collect any royalty for, but the point there is that I had the opportunity to not sell it and take a gamble on making a royalty off of it myself, or selling it and then letting someone else worry about if it helps their product. I remember when we were in Dr. Repp's class and we were listening to Weird Al. I did a little research and found out that he actually gets permission to do a parody from the original composer/artist before he puts it on an album...and he does not pay to use it. As a matter of fact, the band members in Nirvana actually said that the considered it an honor to be parodied by Weird Al because he actually thought the song he was going to parody was worthy of it. So, my question becomes...The people that do the remixing now, why can't they contact the original artist/composers and ask for permission to do a sample of their song? Vanilla Ice learned it the hard way ("Ice, Ice Baby" had a sample of Queen's "Under Pressure"), and so did Ray Parker junior ("Ghostbusters" had a sample of Huey Lewis' "I Want a New Drug"). I put the links in, so you can decide for yourself.
As a composer, I am slightly torn on this issue. In one respect, I would be very flattered if someone took a sample from something I wrote and used it in a mix of theirs. In another respect, I would want to be contacted about it and maybe even offered some sort of monetary value for something that I wrote. I have written music that I have actually sold the rights to and I no longer can collect any royalty for, but the point there is that I had the opportunity to not sell it and take a gamble on making a royalty off of it myself, or selling it and then letting someone else worry about if it helps their product. I remember when we were in Dr. Repp's class and we were listening to Weird Al. I did a little research and found out that he actually gets permission to do a parody from the original composer/artist before he puts it on an album...and he does not pay to use it. As a matter of fact, the band members in Nirvana actually said that the considered it an honor to be parodied by Weird Al because he actually thought the song he was going to parody was worthy of it. So, my question becomes...The people that do the remixing now, why can't they contact the original artist/composers and ask for permission to do a sample of their song? Vanilla Ice learned it the hard way ("Ice, Ice Baby" had a sample of Queen's "Under Pressure"), and so did Ray Parker junior ("Ghostbusters" had a sample of Huey Lewis' "I Want a New Drug"). I put the links in, so you can decide for yourself.
Charlie,
Interesting perspective from someone in the business. I had often wondered how Weird Al was able to make his parodies. Your comments about the label benefiting most from an artist's music makes me wonder if the transition in the music industry will change that. Wouldn't it be nice if this trend would move so artists are getting the most benefit and are able to choose how their work is shared. I wonder how you felt about the suggestion of charging a yearly fee through a media provider to compensate artists for use of their work. The gentlemen who made that suggestion in Good Copy/Bad Copy seemed to feel it would be profitable enough to make up for the money now being loss due to copyright infringement. If it was an extra few dollars a month on the bill of an ISP it seems like that might be a good solution.
Interesting perspective from someone in the business. I had often wondered how Weird Al was able to make his parodies. Your comments about the label benefiting most from an artist's music makes me wonder if the transition in the music industry will change that. Wouldn't it be nice if this trend would move so artists are getting the most benefit and are able to choose how their work is shared. I wonder how you felt about the suggestion of charging a yearly fee through a media provider to compensate artists for use of their work. The gentlemen who made that suggestion in Good Copy/Bad Copy seemed to feel it would be profitable enough to make up for the money now being loss due to copyright infringement. If it was an extra few dollars a month on the bill of an ISP it seems like that might be a good solution.
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