Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: Friday Music: Reinventing Beatles, in reply to Samuel Scott,
They may have been given some cloudy info by Sony.
That's my guess. Listening to that great TNK cover as above, there was no requirement to go to Sony to do a deal. He simply had to record it and sell it legitimately, ensuring mechanicals are paid, and there is nothing Sony can do. You don't need to talk to them.
However, if you do go to them, you are able to negotiate a deal that overrides the automatic license and changes the terms. From the slender information here it seems that *may* have been the case and Matthew has ended with more restrictive rights than if he'd not bothered. There are hundreds of thousands of Beatles covers available digitally and legally. I doubt most of them have interacted with ATV/Sony in any way.
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Just clicked again, that TNK (as Eno and Manzanera called it) cover is just great.
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Unfortunately, that’s almost all you’re going to get online with this record. The licence Matthew negotiated with the publishers, Sony/ATV Music Australia, is not unreasonable in terms of royalties – about a dollar per CD – but it does not allow digital downloads.
This seems odd. Once a song is published by the original composer there is no restriction on somebody else covering it as long as mechanical royalties are paid, and that is a fee regulated by statute. It’s called a compulsory mechanical license and is granted automatically.
So he should be able to sell it online as long as he pays, just not allow free downloads.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Outwards and Upwards, in reply to "chris",
it as much as Ella repeatedly pleading poverty in interviews and the periphery to that.
If she is struggling, I suspect that's about to end shortly. I'd be very surprised if Ella wasn't the recipient of a hefty publishing advance in the near future (several zeros). Plus, she's likely on per diems and a weekly sub from Universal at the moment.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Outwards and Upwards, in reply to "chris",
It’s a reciprocal business relationship. but that’s where the chicken is being sold and also the music hopefully, the exploitation is simply that she’s still not getting paid.
Really not sure how you can say that without access to the details of her contracts, Universal's business relationships and the various deals she's no doubt party to now.
Income from anything like this takes up to two years to flow through, sometimes longer. There's also hefty investment from all sorts of third parties to get anyone to this point. The idea that video play should equal a dollop of cash in her bank account in short order is just not real world.
That UMG have a Youku channel almost certainly means that they have access to a portion of that advertising income from that video upload. That will then be split with her once costs are covered, and within the normal accounting cycles.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Outwards and Upwards, in reply to "chris",
Sounds like a bit of an if there Chris, Post number 1 New Zealand record and yet, from the Huffington Post interview published just a couple of days back:
Not sure anything of any substance would’ve flowed through from that NZ hit. Firstly you make bugger all from a hit single in NZ. We simply don’t have the market volumes to make someone happy just from that. It probably cost way more to make than it would generate.
Which takes us to the next part of the equation – how much has been spent getting her to this place? Recordings, video, grooming and a thousand other things all cost lots of money, and it all comes out before she sees cash from her performance. That cost is probably growing daily at the moment as she tries to break the US, and the volumes of sales in the US market are back in freefall again so….
Where she will get money is a publishing deal (the songwriting) but she has a smart manager so I’m betting that’s on the auction block right now and bids are coming in.
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Whoops Russell. Snap.
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There's a very strong chance Youku are paying. The big record companies have been monetizing all the video channels in recent times. No matter who uploads it the bot picks it up and delivers a portion of the advertising to the owner.
There was a reason Universal were happy to dump the European EMI labels to allow them to hang on to the Asian bits.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Summer Time, in reply to Sacha,
Is that common? Guess I’d always assumed they were long-term contracts.
It depends on the deal but a thing like this is usually 2 or 3 years. Either way, it would have most likely expired before CDs arrived.
I've always tried to clear stuff for the duration of the release so it's open ended but majors usually won't even consider it.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Summer Time, in reply to Russell Brown,
And, of course, it was never released as a CD.
I guess the licenses just ran out.
It arrived at a perfect time in NZ. EMI (who distributed Arista then) were taken by surprise and it used to go in and out of stock all the time as I (vaguely) recall.