It’s cool how copyright makes money for valuable Intellectual Property. And you can’t get a bigger and more valuable IP than “The Beatles”.
The thing is, not one of the members from The Beatles held or even hold their rights. At one stage, Michael Jackson was the sole holder of the rights.
And with all the transfers and sell offs, The Beatles catalog settled at Round Hill Music Royalty Fund. But like all companies on the stock exchange, the share price just didn’t reflect the true value of the Company.
In this case, shares in the company were trading around $0.70. And share prices this low don’t make share holders and board members happy.
So in comes Alchemy Copyrights with a $496 million buyout offer which means shareholders in Round Hill Music will get $1.15 in cash per share. Suddenly, you have happy shareholders and board members, who get a nice payday for holding shares in culture.
They created nothing culturally and yet still benefit. But I keep hearing how stronger copyright is needed to protect the creators.
Mmmm.
SHARE PRICE 2
Hipgnosis Songs Fund is also selling some of its catalogues for $465 million. This is to pay down debt and increase its share price
And as expected, the share price increased,
Again, you have an organization that created nothing culturally and yet it still benefits. And I keep hearing how stronger copyright is needed to protect the creators.
COPYRIGHT FAMILY DISPUTE
Motown songwriter and producer Ron Miller died in 2007. If Copyright expired on the death of the creator like it once did, then this would be a non issue.
But, Copyright doesn’t expire at this point. It’s still valid for another 70 to 90 years, depending on the country.
Fast forward to 2022, Sony Music Publishing signs a deal with Lisa Miller, for rights to 130 of her fathers songs.
But Ron’s other children Julie Moss and Mark Miller from Ron’s first wife didn’t like this and are now going to court.
They allege that Lisa Miller tricked her mother, Aurora Miller (Ron’s second wife) to sign away her claim to the songs.
The claim further states;
“As Aurora’s health continued to decline, Lisa began forging Aurora’s signature on notices of copyright termination.”
And I keep hearing how stronger copyright is needed to protect the creators. In this case a dead creator.
SHOWCASE
Spotify’s new marketing tool.
Artists can buy dedicated space on listeners home pages to promote new releases, deep cuts, etc.
Each click from a fan on the showcase button will cost the artist 40 cents per click until their campaign budget is maxed.
Spotify believes that people who see these ads are six times more likely to stream the release.
It shits me how artists always have to cough up cash.
Back in the label days, if the label marketed you, they billed you to recoup their costs.
If an independent act marketed themselves, they paid for a marketing campaign themselves.
Censorship, false strikes and political correctness makes up the post today.
FAT BOTTOMED GIRLS
The lyrics “fat bottomed” and “big fat fatty” and “Oh, won’t you take me home tonight” are deemed to be inappropriate for a Queen’s Greatest Hits package and songbook aimed at children.
What’s next.
A Motley Crue or AC/DC Children’s song book.
If people want to dumb down lyrics and make them politically correct they should let shows like “The Voice” do it.
DRAGONFORCE
It’s the Wild West when it comes to Content ID on YouTube. An unknown internet user claimed the song “Valley Of The Damned” from Dragonforce as their own and YouTube allowed em.
Because there are no human checks.
Since Dragonforce disagreed with the decision by Content ID, they filled in a form disputing the decision.
But this is where it gets stupid.
You would think that the dispute would go to someone (preferably a human) at YouTube.
However, the counter claim from Dragonforce is sent directly to the person who sent the false strike and who YouTube now believes owns the supposed copyright.
And it’s this person who has the final decision in the matter unless legal action is pursued.
If the person who sent the false strike denies Dragonforce’s claim, the Dragonforce channel receives a strike. If the channel receives three strikes, it is removed from the platform.
So Dragonforce went back and forth for a week over the false strike and finally some common sense prevailed.
CONTENT ID
Content ID was created by Google to appease the labels and various movie studios to take videos offline. It was then enhanced to give the labels and movie studios an option to monetize the uploads from other users.
The labels and studios keep complaining about Content ID but have done nothing to innovate an alternative.
Google now posts a transparency report on the Content ID system.
Rightsholders claimed more than 826 million videos on YouTube from July to December 2022. This is the highest figure since YouTube started reporting these figures and it led to $1.5B in revenue paid to the rights-holders.
All up, $9 billion in ‘claimed’ revenue was paid out to copyright holders since Content ID launched.
SCAMMERS
The downside is scammers. As this article from Torrentfreak states;
Two men set up a company to find and claim unmonetized music. Through a third-party partner with access to the Content ID system, the pair generated over $24 million in revenue from YouTube by falsely claiming ownership.
The abuse didn’t go unnoticed and the repercussions were severe.
In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted the duo and last week the first defendant was sentenced to more than five years in prison.
It’s unregulated and there will always be criminals. It’s a perfect match.
It’s all about the money in music and the lawsuits which come about because of it.
THE GREAT 78 PROJECT
The “Great 78 Project” from the Internet Archive is digitizing 78-rpm records from the early 1900s until the 1950s.
78rpm records are some of the earliest musical recordings, and were produced from 1898 through the 1950s when they were replaced by 33 1/3rpm and 45rpm vinyl records.
The Archives asked people to donate their albums so that the cultural past survives for future generations to study and enjoy.
At the moment the collection is at 400,000 plus recordings. The majority of these 78s are forgotten and the 78rpm versions are not on streaming services.
Sounds great right. Preserve some cultural history from donated records and provide access to people to enjoy.
But the labels don’t get paid when this happens and suddenly don’t like it.
The labels’ have used colorful phrases to describe the “78 Project”, as an “illegal record store”.
From the 400K plus songs, the labels named close to 3K sound-recording copyrights that the Archive allegedly infringed.
And they want $412 million for it because as far as the labels are concerned the music is available on streaming services.
The Great78 project, is not a substitute for music streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music.
When you listen to it, you hear that the music was digitized from the 78rpm record.
You get the crackle and the hiss of the record. It is a totally different version from the clean remastered versions you hear on music streaming services.
It’s ridiculous that it’s even an issue.
SIRIUS XM
SoundExchange, is responsible for collecting and distributing digital music royalties.
Sirius XM is responsible for playing music and paying digital royalties.
SoundExchange claims that Sirius XM is performing some creative accounting by inflating the revenue from its webcasts so it pays less in music royalties to the tune of $150 million.
Isn’t it funny how the labels and publishers go straight to litigation when someone else like Sirius XM does the exact same thing that they did to artists for 80 plus years.
Twitter/X
Twitter/X users put up snippets of live concerts, music videos, interviews and basically themselves jamming to their favorite music or playing the vinyl or CD of their favorite music.
Posts like these.
Two minute snippets of live performances that someone recorded which isn’t the user.
Or something like this.
Footage from a concert that the user attended and shared on the platform.
The users on other social media sites do the same thing.
But the RIAA, the labels lobbyist and litigation arm don’t like it.
They have accused X Corp of breeding mass copyright infringement because the company fails to respond to takedown notices and lacks a proper termination policy.
For this crime, the labels want $250 million from X Corp.
Elon Musk wants the case dismissed and his legal team have asked the courts to consider it as the labels have no hard proof of any wrong doing.
$3 MILLION PER HOUR
It’s the combined amount of how much the labels made in the first six months of 2023.
And they made that money because they have schemed, paid or legislated their way into owning the rights of a lot of music.
The music created by artists in bedrooms, parents basements, hotels, tour buses and at soundchecks, the labels now own.
And they will own these rights for the life of the artist plus 70 years after their death. In some jurisdictions, it’s 90 years after their death.
Final Note
The artists who create culture and value are never in the conversation. Even if the labels (and the RIAA) get all the monies paid to them, they will not share any of it with the artists.
And it is the artists who gave them this power to litigate, by signing away their rights in shitty contracts so they could have a recording career. And maybe a chance to make it big.
Two years ago, the RIAA won a piracy lawsuit against two sites that offered YouTube-rippers. For those that don’t know, these sites allow the user to turn a YouTube video into an mp3.
After the verdict, the RIAA demanded $83 million in damages from the site owners.
“If the record companies can really get multi-million dollar judgments without having to prove a single instance of infringement within the United States, then no one who operates a website is safe,” Gurvits (Defense Lawyer) said at the time.
There has to be some onus on the RIAA to prove infringement.
And they can’t because they don’t know who infringed.
It’s easy to get a techie to run a report and say that the YouTube ripping sites were accessed by U.S IP addresses. But. It’s not easy to prove who is responsible when their evidence is made up of IP addresses.
But accessing the sites doesn’t constitute Copyright infringement. And the RIAA cannot prove what infringement took place or what videos from YouTube were turned into mp3s.
So why is the law allowing them to bring cases to trial without this proof.
JASON ALDEAN
The song “Try That In A Small Town” came out in May 2023 and it was out of the public conversation. It was a dud and no one cared enough to listen to it. His true fans did but no one else.
Then someone (Critic Zero) started the backlash against the song in the middle of July, 2023 and by doing so, they amplified the song by providing much needed free marketing.
The criticism then spread to other blogs and news outlets faster than Covid and as a by product the streams and downloads of the song kept going up. In the space of two weeks the songs Spotify numbers went from 1.5 million to 12.3 million.
To top off the controversy, Aldean and his team had to edit the music video because it contained footage which was copyrighted.
SPOTIFY INCREASE
The price of Premium Family is changing from A$18.99/month to A$20.99/month.
My favorite part is the reason Spotify gives for the increase, which is word for word to what Netflix gave a year ago;
We’re increasing the price of Premium Family so that we can continue to invest in and innovate on our product offerings and features, and bring you the best experience.
Really.
It’s nice to know that Spotify is using subscription money to pay people for podcasts that a lot of their customers don’t like.
BAND I’M SEEING
I’ve got tickets to watch “The Night Flight Orchestra” in Sydney next Friday. Readers of the blog will know that I am a fan. Each album has been reviewed glowingly.
In case you are interested.
You can read the debut album “Internal Affairs” (2012) review here.
The term was never mentioned when it came to signing an artist to create content. It became a thing, when the corporations had to find a legal loophole to use against the creators trying to get their rights back, even though Copyright law states they can get their rights back after a certain period.
A work made for hire, is a piece of copyrightable work created by employees as part of their job or as part of a limited type of commissioned work for a flat fee. In the United States and certain other copyright jurisdictions, if a work is “made for hire,” the employer, not the employee, is considered the legal author. In other words, the creator of the work gives up all ownership and administration rights for a flat fee.
The earliest use of “Work For Hire” was in the arts industry like comic books and artists who designed album covers. Marvel is no stranger to these kind of cases. Stan Lee (creator of most things Marvel), Gary Friedrich (creator of Ghost Rider), Joe Simon (Captain America creator) and Jack Kirby (illustrator/artist on the Stan Lee projects) are a few names that had litigation cases brought against Marvel.
The Superman creators wrote an article hoping that the original Christopher Reeve movies bomb at the box office because they weren’t fairly compensated. The movies did the exact opposite.
Read this Billboard interview with Don Henley, who is very interested in artists rights. While I agree and also disagree with Henley’s views on a wide range of topics, one thing is certain; Henley cares. As a member of The Eagles, and after being a Copyright rookie, he schooled himself on what his entitlements are as a creator. Don Henley owns his post 1978 work as a member of The Eagles and as a solo artist. He knows that his pre-1978 works can be reclaimed from 2028 due to another sneaky Copyright addition for pre-78 works.
If you don’t want to click on the Billboard link, here is the question from Billboard and Henley’s answer.
QUESTION:
The first issue you were known for being active on was the effort by the labels to have recordings considered “works for hire” — which I think was the origin of the Recording Artists Coalition. How important was the coalition in stopping that? And you learn anything from it?
In 1999, the lobbying group for the major labels, the RIAA, buried a fundamental change to the Copyright Act in a completely unrelated bill, the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999.
Without input from the artists, they amended the definition of ‘work for hire’ in the Copyright Act to include ‘sound recordings.’
The consequence of this amendment would have been devastating for recording artists. It would have effectively eliminated artists’ ability to regain ownership of their sound recordings in the United States.
The ability of the RIAA to pass a bill which amended the Copyright Act without opposition from the creative community was a direct result of the labels being organized and the artists not having a coalition to represent their voices.
So, a group of artists and artist representatives mobilized and formed the Recording Artists Coalition (RAC). Thanks to the many artists who spoke up, and the support of Congressman Howard Berman, sound recordings were stricken from the definition of ‘work for hire’ in the Work Made for Hire and Copyright Corrections Act of 2000. The only reason that recording artists can now regain control of their copyrights from the labels in the U.S. as Congress intended is because the RAC organized and artists spoke up.
I am all for the creators getting proper compensation for their works. There is no way that a corporation told a creator what to create.
Can you imagine the absurdity of it all?
A Publishing House is going to tell Steven King or George Martin or Paulo Coelho what to write. Yeah, right.
Or a Music company is going to tell an artists what kind of song to create.
Those same music companies including Capital Records, Warner Bros. and Sony Music have been falsely registering songs as “made for hire” in order to send takedown notices to the various ISP’s and YouTube.
I’m sure that’s gonna work out well in the long run especially when the artists don’t know that the label is doing that.
Then again, it doesn’t always work out well. This is just one of many.
The cover to Aqualung from Jethro Tull was created by Burton Silverman. The artwork was commissioned and purchased by Chrysalis Records head Terry Ellis in 1971.
Silverman was paid a flat fee of $1,500 for the painting and there was no written contract.
The artist says the art was only licensed for use as an album cover, and not for merchandising; he approached the band seeking remuneration for the additional uses, such as printing it on T-shirts and coffee mugs.
I got a call from a person called William, with an offer to invest $100 dollars into this unbelievable trading platform called Trade Centre and watch it make money.
I was in a mood and I thought let’s play.
I already had crypto monies in another wallet so I moved $100 of it to their trading platform.
Red flags started to appear already when William told me, he will be making the trades for me. I asked him why is that.
He told me that he’s “super experienced” and I might make mistakes which would lose me money.
He told me I need to trust in him.
Fantastic.
Now the website I must say, was state of the art and confusing. It had real time data of all the different stock exchanges, currency movements and hundreds of other types of investments. There was charts and everything else.
Now I do trade on stocks so the exchanges are something I can follow but on this case, their exchange was something I could not follow.
So I Googled the trading platform name and there are hundreds of web pages of people’s testimony telling any reader how great the platform is and how easy it is to make money on it.
I was suspicious because the websites all have the same look and feel. At the time I was still putting together my case to assess of it is a scam, which shows how sophisticated it all is.
William called me the next day and told me the good news that the $100 investment made $20. Mmm, a 20% increase for a 24 hour period was and is too good to be true.
I asked William, “how is that possible, as I watched the trades all day and it was at $100, then after he calls me it went up to $120.”
I then asked for a withdrawal of the money and I was met with another offer from William to invest $1000 dollars and to make some serious money. He kept telling me how I need to trust him and he will make me a lot of money. Red Flags.
But, I was still in a playful mood, so I kept asking him questions like where is he from, is he married, does he have kids, etc. He was hesitant and deflective and I said to him, hey, if you want me to trust you, I need to know you.
He told me, he is from London. No wife and no kids because he is too busy making millions for himself and people. It was all crap to me.
“Where is the office in London and on what street?”, I asked him. He never gave me an answer on that one, and he asked me a question on what I do. I reverted back to my question and re-iterated to him if you want me to trust you, then you need to tell me some information. He never did on this. I had Google Street View ready to check the address but I never got one.
“What did you do on the weekend?”, I kept on probing. He told me he jumped on his private jet and caught up with a mate who also has a private jet. An image of the DiCaprio movie “The Wolf Of Wall Street” came to mind, when they were doing that penny stock cold calling scam.
I could go on with all the crap conversation that happened, but in the end, William and his crew are investment scammers in the Crypto World and I can see how these kind of investment scammers capture people.
If you don’t know much about investments and trades then it’s easy to be sucked in by them, because you are always making money on their trades. But when I look at my normal trades and the markets in general, how can they pay 20% when the market is in the red for both shares and crypto.
And man, those websites and that trading platform are very sophisticated. William and his syndicate of scammers manipulate the data. A person looking at the trading platforms believes it is legit. But what’s really happening is that they are stealing people’s money.
And like Ponzi Scheme’s they do pay people money so they can get those people to trust them and invest a bit more. So I did get back my $100 money, with William saying, as a sign of trust for me to invest even more with him, like $10,000.
I’m not sure if any of the stories of Australian companies getting hacked have made it to the U.S.
Optus is the second largest telco in Australia. I have my mobile plans and internet plans with them. They got hacked about six weeks ago and I’ve been told my details got swiped.
Then I was told the information that got swiped is not enough for any person to steal my identity so I don’t need to do anything.
Then VINOMOFO got hacked, an online site i buy wine from. It was a test database that had all the information of their customers. And I’ve heard nothing from them since.
Then the big one.
Medibank.
Yep, the private medical insurer got hacked and all of their customer data, past and present members was taken along with medical histories. At the moment I’m a current member.
I would like to say “sucked in” to Medibank. About six weeks before the hack they wouldn’t allow me to get a report on how much dollars my 17 year old son had left on his physiotherapy.
Their response was “due to privacy and because he is over the age of 16, he needs to access this information himself”. And they kept re-iterating that they take “privacy seriously”.
But, I’m the one paying the insurance premiums, plus the gap payments and he’s under my policy but they told me I have no rights to ask questions about him.
Where is the privacy now?
The privacy they take so seriously.
The hackers then asked Medibank to pay $1USD for each member record which totaled about $9.2 million.
Medibank refused.
The data started to get released.
Then the text messages started.
Hi Dad, I lost my phone and I’m using this phone. Call me on this number?
And then the phone calls started from mobile numbers which are not masked so when I answered them I was greeted by silence and then they would hang up.
I’m pretty sure the text messages and phone calls are from previous hacks as the Medibank hack is too recent.
Police enforcement doesn’t care because the hackers are not in Australia and while the politicians say they are doing something about it, they actually do nothing except talk about it and try to get voting points.
Once upon a time I felt like hackers kept governments, companies and politicians honest, by leaking information which showed these institutions abusing their power. But leaking information from innocent citizens for profit is not cool.
If the style of the artwork looks familiar, it should. Its Ken Kelly doing the cover. If you have “Destroyer” and “Love Gun” from Kiss, “Rising” by Rainbow, “Space Invader” by Ace and other albums by Manowar like “Fighting The World” and “The Triumph Of Steel”, then you would have been exposed to Ken Kelly.
Should be called “Duller Than Hell” and Motley Crue also want their title back. Or they should have used their war cry “Death To False Metal” as the album title as the songs themselves are too derivative of earlier Manowar and could be classed as false.
It’s their eighth album, released on October 1, 1996. After the expiration of their contract with Atlantic, the band did a big money move to Geffen Records and this is their first offering. For an album on Geffen Records, the production is lifeless. Stale. Which is strange as the album was anticipated. And it was a running joke, if the album would ever get released as they approached four years from the previous studio album. Back then four years was a long time. These days bands go decades without releasing anything new.
Formed in 1980, Joey DeMaio on bass, keyboards is still the head honcho and main songwriter. Eric Adams is still the vocalist. It is the first album to feature guitarist Karl Logan, as well as the return of drummer Scott Columbus.
Dee Snider once posted on Twitter, if people should listen to an artist if they did a crime that doesn’t sit well with you.
Guitarist Karl Logan was arrested in 2019 for child pornography offenses. I questioned myself if I should review this album or not review it. I decided to review it, since all the songs are written by kingpin DeMaio.
My opinion of the album still hasn’t changed.
It’s a parody of their former albums, like “Fighting The World”. The guitar playing is boring.
While former guitarist Ross The Boss played riffs, the new guy plays chords. They might as well have gotten Richie Sambora to play chords. He would have done a more livelier job. And maybe introduced a talk box into their sound.
I was always a Ross The Boss fan anyway and was pretty bummed when he was asked to leave the band he formed with Joey DeMaio by DeMaio himself circa 1988. At first, Ross the Boss was replaced by David Shankle, who left in ’94 after playing on “The Triumph of Steel”. I didn’t want to even listen to the album, but my cousin is a massive fan and he kept playing their new albums for me to check out.
Return of the Warlord
It’s very Judas Priest like. Think “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming” and “Heading Out The Highway”. Each song has a dedication in the CD liner notes, and this one is dedicated to Mary Hooton for all the years and all the tears.
Lyrically, its dumb and simple. While the musical climate in the 90’s started to get more introspective and introverted, Manowar was the opposite. They stayed big, bombast, epic and aloof.
Check-out lines like, “I got no money or big house just got life, I don’t like to save it’s more fun to spend, If you like metal you’re my friend, And that bike out in the yard well that’s my wife”.
Yep, I know the 90’s were hard on 80’s metal, yet Manowar survived writing stuff like this.
Brothers of Metal Pt. 1
It’s from 1986, so they must have had writers block. The lyrical themes of “Fighting for metal, that is real, brothers of metal standing together with hands in the air” was a running joke in 1996. The song is dedicated to Jeff Bova.
More lyrical Shakespeare with “Our hearts are filled with metal and masters we have none, and we will die for metal, metal heals, my son
The Gods Made Heavy Metal
Judas Priest again comes to mind, circa “Screaming For Vengeance” era. With lyrics that will either make you take up the fight for Heavy Metal or laugh at the parody of Heavy Metal.
We are treated to biblical lines like “the gods made heavy metal and they saw that is was good, they said to play it louder than Hell, we promised that we would”.
It’s dedicated to a person called Rainer Haensel, for always being ready for anything crazy and for never letting the band down.
Courage
Another song that was demoed in 1986, it’s a piano ballad in a major key. Very Queen like and on this album it is in memory of Anthony John Columbus III.
But it’s a skip for me.
Number 1
One more song that was demoed in 1986 which is dedicated to Tom Miller for believing in the band no matter how crazy it seemed.
And Sylvester Stallone should of used lines like these in a “Rocky” or “Creed” movie. “Today is the day all the training through, we have come for the number one not the number two, let the contest begin play hard fight to win, immortality victory and fame”.
Outlaw
More of the same like the previous songs, the song is for the Manowar fans around the world who stand, shout, live and breathe MANOWAR METAL. I wouldn’t be surprised if “Manowar Metal” becomes a new genre in the years to come.
King
It’s another piano major key ballad for the first 90 seconds before it kicks in to more of the same. “Fighting The World” comes to mind here.
It’s dedicated to John Kalodner, their friend, brother and King. And they do him proud, with the lyrics, “Fight for the crown, fight for the ring, We’re fighting the world, we fight for the king”.
And if you grew up in the 80s you would have seen John
Today Is a Good Day to Die
A 9 minute instrumental that could belong in a Clint Eastwood Western.
They pull no punches in the CD notes when they say this song is dedicated to all the losers in the world who have tried to put Manowar and the Manowar fans down. As the Indians fought and died for their way of life, so shall Manowar. Great Spirit, they only wish to live long enough to urinate on the graves of their enemies.
The Power
Probably the best song on the album as it’s pace is frantic. And the Power is dedicated to artist Ken Kelly.
Manowar’s style is 80bpm chugging along rhythms. Most of their music is the key of Em. They celebrate heavy metal the way we knew it in the early 80’s, before it splintered into so many different categories. They make no apologies for it either. They do it their way, they have their core audience who are devoted to them and sustain them.
“Back In Black” from AC/DC is simple and it keeps you interested. “Louder Than Hell” is simple but it doesn’t keep me interested. Not like the earlier albums from Manowar.
Eric Adams on vocals is underrated and never spoken about when it comes to great vocalists. But they should talk about him a bit more. If you talk about Ronnie James Dio, Ian Gillian, Bruce Dickinson and Rob Halford, then Eric Adams should be in the same conversation. This album doesn’t do him justice, but check out the 80’s material.
Check it out if you want to hear a band carrying on the flag of 80’s Heavy Metal in the wastelands of Grunge, Alternative and Industrial.
WILL IT EVER BE FIXED TO REWARD THE CREATOR MORE THAN THE ORGANISATION?
I thought Stallone owned the “Rocky” franchises. Otherwise why would he be involved (by writing, directing and acting) in six movies and three spin offs. He did get paid to write the script but the power balance equation back in the 70’s meant Stallone had to keep his mouth shut or never work again. MGM created movies, and when they did so, it also created work for agents, lawyers and managers. No one wanted to upset anybody.
And just like that, a song from an artist is taken down on Spotify without any repercussions to the person making the false claim. And there is no counter notice. As the Torrentfreak article states; “The problem with Spotify’s system is that it’s relatively easy to flag a track and have it removed. However, there is no official option for the accused party to appeal the takedown. Instead, they have to resolve the matter with the accuser directly. If the accuser doesn’t respond, the artist is simply out of luck”.
And this puts the power back into the big labels who would find it easier to address wrongful takedowns than smaller independent artists, which creates an unfair situation.
I’m not sure if people remember Hipgnosis Songs Fund. They had a pretty big acquisition period in the first six months of 2021, which led them to acquire a lot of music catalogues. Well, by the end of March 2022, their 65000 song catalogue was worth almost $2.7bn. In one year, their revenues grew by $200m, on the back of streaming revenues.
While the artists cashed in once when they sold their rights, Hipgnosis is cashing in, over and over and over again. And since the Copyright Term in the U.S, lasts for the life of the creator plus 70 years after their death, this will be a long time return as long as the music is still listened to. And our neighbours New Zealand just extended their terms by 20 years to make it 70 years from release date otherwise their free trade agreement with the EU couldn’t happen.
One artist who still controls their copyright is Kate Bush. And if you have watched “Stranger Things”, you will know that her song “Running Up That Hill” is back in the charts and getting streamed a lot, earning her over $2.3 million in music streaming royalties alone. And that number will keep on rising.
And of course, Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” is also enjoying a nice wave of streaming revenue, courtesy of “Stranger Things”. And they also own their copyrights.
Those who own valuable copyrights will be banking.
destroyerofharmony 