Suckitudes of the Hendrix Estate (and other estates)

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So, they've apparently been refusing to renew or grant new licenses to covers of Hendrix songs to performers (which is why, for example, the Devo DVD video collection couldn't get a license to put their "R U Experienced" video on it, as one of many examples)... yet they worked with Pepsi for that "Crossroads" commercial.

I suppose the heirs are welcome to do as they please, but at this point, they're making the Allen Klein estate seem like folk heroes in comparison.

So, what of the licenses previously? Does this mean there'll be no more Hendrix medley on Soft Cell's The Art Of Falling Apart CD?

Granted, there are far more important things to bitch and/or worry about, but at this rate, i feel like developing an eternal youth elixir for current rock stars, in fear that their kin is going to inherent the rights and be absolute tyrants about their usage.. given the trends. (Remember the classical composer that got sued six figures by the John Cage estate for jokingly crediting a fraction of silence in one of his pieces to Cage?)

Decades in the future, are Francis Bean Cobain and Coco Moore going to be this Draconian about the Nirvana and Sonic Youth rights when their parents pass on the future?

Perhaps the suckitudes could be endless.

― Dom iNut (donut), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 04:55 (twenty years ago)

(Also granted, I can't imagine Francis Bean being any worse than Courtney)

― Dom iNut (donut), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 04:56 (twenty years ago)

Sync rights aren't the same as a mechanical license, of course, mainly because they're not compulsory, if I remember correctly. If it's just a regular old on an album cover, you can always get a compulsory license, although the estate might slow down the processing time a lot if they want to.

The medley is slightly different in that if you get a compulsory you have to pay full stat for every individual song in the medley as if it were its own song whereas if you negotiate directly with the licensor you can get a pro-rated medley rate. So that would be more of a monetary concern i.e. they might end up losing money for every CD they sell if they have to get a compulsory!

― Eppy (Eppy), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 05:44 (twenty years ago)

you lost me with "sync rights".. much more "a regular old on an album cover", "compulsory licenses", etc.

Do you mind explaining these? Many thanks in advances, obviously.

― Dom iNut (donut), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 05:48 (twenty years ago)

Sure. The license you have to get for a video is different than the license you have to get for an audio track without any visual accompaniment. (If I'm remembering correctly.) The license for a video is called a "sync" license because you're syncronizing the song with the visuals. This can be denied. But if it's just a plain ol' audio track (what I so indelicately called "a regular old on-an-album cover" which I've now added dashes to in order to clarify things) i.e. a cover of someone else's song you're putting on your own album, you can get a compulsory license if you agree to pay the statutory ("stat") rate to the songwriter/person who grants the license, which is currently $0.085 per song per unit sold in the US. So whether or not the Hendrix estate wants to grant you a license to put your cover of "Purple Haze" on an album, as long as you haven't sampled anything or made any substantial alterations to the composition, you can apply for a compulsory license and they are required by law to grant that to you. As I said, they can drag their feet in actually getting the signed license back to you, but their hands are tied--they have to let you put out that cover as long as you pay the license fee.

Their power comes if you want to pay less than the statutory rate, which most people do for various contractual reasons too boring to really get into. Then you have to negotiate with them and they can say no. And if the old licenses were negotiated at less than the statutory rate, it may make it economically awkward to re-release.

Is that any clearer? There's probably a website somewhere that explains this much more lucidly.

― Eppy (Eppy), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 06:04 (twenty years ago)

I thought music was for the people maaaaaaaan.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 06:06 (twenty years ago)

I just want to give a big shout out to the Andy Warhol estate who seriously let most people do whatever they want with Warhol stuff for free so long as they prove they're using it for artistic purposes. Mega cool.

― ~~~~~~, Tuesday, 17 January 2006 08:09 (twenty years ago)

Oh and Eppy, a question:

How do samples or covers that include extreme composition change differ in terms of licensing and rates? What if I change every single note of the music but use the artists lyrics, or vice versa? How about parody? Does Weird Al pay licensing?

― ~~~~~~~~, Tuesday, 17 January 2006 08:13 (twenty years ago)

Eppy, thank you very much! I wasn't aware of the freedom of a compulsory license, which -- granted -- isn't for people who want to establish a large profit, but for people who don't mind giving up something just to include a cover of anybody, despite the potentially long wait.

That's nice to know there's that option. Was unaware of it, as I thought anybody who owned the rights to a song could stop ANYBODY from using it, no matter what..

― Dom iNut (donut), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 08:18 (twenty years ago)

Before he died, Sonny Bono was working to change the copyright law so that it never run out and could be handed down to future generations like ownership of other property.

― earlnash, Tuesday, 17 January 2006 21:18 (twenty years ago)

Thank God he died then.

― ~~~~~, Tuesday, 17 January 2006 21:25 (twenty years ago)

Mechanical licenses are, like so much of entertainment law, a remnant from an earlier period, in this case from when sheet music was pretty much the extent of your options for listening to music at home. So the framework isn't that you heard someone's recording and do your own version, it's that you're reading the sheet music and playing off of that. Thus, while I'm not totally familiar with the legal nicities, I do know that I went through a weird little version of hell when I tried to get a mechanical license for a version of "Magic Carpet Ride" that was sort of a live mashup with "Love Rollercoaster" keeping the melody and lyrics (ostensibly the important part) but changing the chord structure and arrangement and inserting a rap. (Yes, I know. The things we do for health insurance.) This caused a lot of problems because the publisher was under instructions from the writer not to license it if was anything other than a straight cover. So this was a situation where you could still get a compulsory license but the publisher was making a fuss about copyright infringement (!) in an effort to scare us away. We eventually worked something out but there were many times when I wished that they just did a different goddamn arrangement already.

Weird Al probably pays for a full license and doesn't make any publishing income on his parodies, as I doubt he'd be able to get a license otherwise.

Samples make it different because then you have to get a clearance for the master use (i.e. the use of the actual recording) in addition to a clearance for the songwriting. I probably shouldn't have mentioned this, it's just getting needlessly complicated.

― Eppy (Eppy), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 21:57 (twenty years ago)

Although actually, now that I think about it, I recall Al having a few stories about getting denied permission to do parodies by the original artists. This may have only been when he wanted to make a video with the song, though. This would be another thing you could google if you wanted.

― Eppy (Eppy), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 21:58 (twenty years ago)

Eppy, thank you very much! I wasn't aware of the freedom of a compulsory license, which -- granted -- isn't for people who want to establish a large profit...

Eh, let's not get too idealistic here. Let's say you're doing an album of all Hendrix covers done in your inimitable style. Your contract with the label says you have an 11-song cap on your mechanical royalties at 3/4 of the statutory rate, not an unusual point. That means that no matter how many songs you actually have on the album, you only get paid royalties on a maximum of 11 songs and you only get $0.0638 per song. So if you have 10 original songs, you get $0.638 per album sold. If you have 12 original songs, you get $0.70 per album sold, and if you have 14 original songs, you still only get $0.70 per album sold.

But if you get a compulsory license, it's not bound by the cap or the 3/4 statutory rate. This means that if you have 10 Hendrix covers, you owe the Hendrix estate $0.85 per album sold. But the record label will only give you a maximum of $0.70 per album sold. This means you would owe the label 15 cents for every record you sell! And this would mean you probably wouldn't do the album.

This is a pretty straightforward case; I won't bore you with what happens when you have a cap and multiple writers on each song and then one song's a cover and one song has a sample you have to pay publishing on. For instance, here is the amount of money each individual writer got for a hip-hop album I worked on that was particularly troublesome:

0.0174375
0.011625
0.0058125
0.0058125
0.0058125
0.0058125
0.0058125
0.0058125
0.011625
0.011625
0.002325
0.000290625
0.000290625
0.002325
0.000290625
0.000290625

I should've expensed the lawyers for my headache medicine. And then, of course, people get pissed off that they're only getting 2/100 of a penny per unit. Ha.

Anyway, point being, it's compliated, but yes, ultimately if you're willing to work within the requirements and the economic realities, you can always get a license to cover a song.

Of course, legally, you're supposed to pay the performing rights organization(s) when you cover a song in concert. But who does that?

― Eppy (Eppy), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 22:07 (twenty years ago)

...uh, that was how much money each writer got per unit on one particular song, rather, not for the album as a whole.

― Eppy (Eppy), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 22:08 (twenty years ago)

That's nice to know there's that option. Was unaware of it, as I thought anybody who owned the rights to a song could stop ANYBODY from using it, no matter what...

Again, this is only for the publishing, not the master use. So if you replay it, you can get a compulsory. If you sample it, you have to clear it with whoever owns the master, and they're free to say no. This is why certain hip-hop producers started getting bands to replay the samples they wanted to use rather than using the samples themselves.

― Eppy (Eppy), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 22:09 (twenty years ago)

Which explains, to some degree, Schoolly D's "The Signifying Rapper", which has a band playing the "Kashmir" segments instead of just sampling it... right.

Again, thank you Eppy for the breakdown. You obviously don't need to detail everything. I think you already gave a hint at how hair-pulling this can be... (but if you enjoy it, and it pays the bills, hey...)

― Dom iNut (donut), Tuesday, 17 January 2006 23:07 (twenty years ago)

eppy, do you hang out at the Velvet Rope with the same screen name?

― don weiner (don weiner), Wednesday, 18 January 2006 00:58 (twenty years ago)

That Magic Carpet Ride song... I think I've heard it. Was it used in a commercial?

(Stay Free magazine has run some really great articles on issues related to this thread)

― ~~~~~~~~~, Wednesday, 18 January 2006 02:16 (twenty years ago)

The whole Hendrix situation has been a mess since. . .well, since he died. There's probably a good (if somewhat dry) book in it.

'Allen Klein estate' -- he's still very much alive.

― Jeff Wright (JeffW1858), Wednesday, 18 January 2006 02:27 (twenty years ago)

I thought seeing his son's name on the Stones reissues meant that something had happened to Allen... I was wrong.

― Dom iNut (donut), Wednesday, 18 January 2006 18:08 (twenty years ago)

artists shouldn't have children (only lawyers).

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 18 January 2006 18:13 (twenty years ago)

eppy, do you hang out at the Velvet Rope with the same screen name?

Hi Don - I used to, but I don't think I've posted there for two or three years now. Although I did check yesterday to see what they were saying about Love Monkey.

That Magic Carpet Ride song... I think I've heard it. Was it used in a commercial?

Chevy used a bunch of different versions in a campaign, I can't remember if this version actually got used or not, we were trying to release it as a single. But I've said too much already.

― Eppy (Eppy), Wednesday, 18 January 2006 19:24 (twenty years ago)

nine years pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdg2yYHnZ8g

― how's life, Friday, 20 November 2015 16:49 (ten years ago)

lol

― brimstead, Saturday, 21 November 2015 00:15 (ten years ago)

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