Great Music -- Unavailable... Forever? (1 Viewer)

[MichaelBA]

A devastatingly depressing NPR report.

Modern marketable crap trumps America's great musical heritage.

 

[andrew markworthy]

I have no problem with an artist protecting their output and ensuring that their legatees continue to enjoy royalties for a reasonable time after their death. But I do take issue with a record company hoarding music where they long since recouped a profit. Imagine if a publisher refused to release the works of Dickens, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Homer, etc, because they were old stuff and they wanted us only to read the latest airport paperback dross. There would be an uproar, and rightly so. So why should record companies be protected by the law to hoard great works of musical art?

History shows us that when a law becomes both stupid and protects the rich, it will be flouted.

 

[ElevSkyMovie]

It's about money. If you can convince a company that re-releasing old material will turn a profit, they'll listen. They won't make a bunch of product and have it sit on shelves for months, only to be returned.

This is were the smaller companies can come in and license works and re-release them. They can cater to small, niche markets.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

The only problem with this is that the licensing costs, even if they are modest, can mean the release is no longer viable, especially since the recordings will be freely available online within days of release. Even for hard core fans who would actually buy the product, without an extensive (and expensive) marketing campaign, much of the potential market won't know about the release for months or years.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

The other problem with that is that the big companies won't be bothered to deal with licensing material they don't care about. There isn't enough money in it.

(This has been an issue with Hasbro, who have acquired some small game publishers and refuse to discuss licensing their out-of-print games to niche companies to republish.)

 

[Rachael B]

The Mu-sick Kompanies have outlived their usefulness. Now, they're nothing more than culture dstroyers. Copyright needs major modifications. Their "black hole" vault needs to be taken away.

The copright law is now having the opposite effect of what it was intended to do. Look at how much of the big 4's output of "new" releases are just old recordings, the ones they haven't yet thrown into the hole. They are not putting much effort into finding or supplying new music anymore...

I think that the labels need to lose their exclusive rights to music after they cease issuing them, say, maybe, after 10 years. Copyright law needs to change....

 

[GlennH]

I like this. In order to retain the copyright and ability to make any money from a work the company must make it available to the public. Short periods of unavailability could be allowed for restoration, remastering, what have you, but no more "in the vault" for extended periods -- if you don't publish it others can acquire the rights or it goes to public domain.

 

[Will_B]

I believe it was on the ICE boards that I read that when labels remaster artists' recordings, they sometimes charge the artist for the remastering work.

For one seventies band, having their catalogue remastered meant they had to forgoe all their royalties for about a year and a half, until they'd paid off the studio's work.

Meanwhile the studio had already earned enough on the remasters to pay for the remastering and to turn a healthy profit (if they were to choose to pay for it themselves, which they did not), since they got the lions share of the sales.

(I'm searching for the reference now. Until then this has to be apocryphal)

 

[LanceJ]

Sorry, for this to happen you'll have to sell all your internal organs and then send the check to Abramoff's replacement.

 

[Rachael B]

Lance, in the I.P.F. (International Pacman Federation), I'm know as Dot Mongur...so, you never know.

 

[Greg.G]

I would think that cost could be reduced for rereleasing older material by just making it available for download with some sort of copying limitation encoded. I've seen and out of print Feelies albums available for download this way from the copyright holder's site. Otherwise I have no problem with "illegal" downloading - they hoard they lose.

This kind of thing happens elsewhere in our economy. I've seen good plots of land in my city go undeveloped for 10+ years for the reason(I would guess) that the longer the owner sits on it the more it is worth. Other times it can be due to unpaid back taxes that until paid prohibit the sell of the property.