Posted on 02/20/2024 7:52:16 AM PST by Recovering_Democrat
Are any of his cats still alive? Maybe they left several heirs.
Have you seen the video for “Turn the Lights Back On”? Kind of creepy how they can take his old videos and make it look like he’s singing it.
AI is going to make it so you won’t know what’s real and what isn’t.
The Songs were written 40-50 years ago
typical copyright period is life of the author + 70 years, so I suppose while “the band” still lives, the clock has not started ticking (?)
Reminds me of the only direct to disk vinyl recording I had decades ago, big band music.
Trying to LOOK like Superfly sure. It definitely set a fashion, especially for people already in the drug world. But nobody watched Superfly and said “ooh, I should get into an industry where you can’t trust anybody, people are trying to kill me, and the more successful I am the worse everything gets”.
That’s American copyright, pushed to insanity by Disney. The rest of the world has more reasonable copyright that needs to be renewed every 5 to 10 years by republishing with “marked differences”. It’s the reason British bands are constantly releasing remixes, and bonus tracks and all that. Trying to keep that copyright.
Joel’s catalog is not worth more Queen.
Queen wasn’t as big in the US, but Worldwide they are one of the biggest bands ever.
“Princes of the Universe”
by Queen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEJ8lpCQbyw&ab_channel=QueenOfficial
I"m probably biased...I like Joel's songs much more overall than Queen.
“Probably worth 1.2 billion.”
You pay that much to own the music. How do you get that much money back?
I hear ya. :)
One way is filmmakers and production companies pay to use the music in shows.
Meh. Overpriced imo. Because of the music, not the price.
My 27 year old and 32 year old sons both love Queen, particularly the younger son.
He often tells me that we got all the good music.
He was the one who pointed out to me how great 1978 was for music...if you ignore disco...
It’s a shame that copyright law has been so perverted. The majority of their ‘catalog’ should be in the Public domain by now.
Amen. 14 years with one possible renewal for 14= 28 years total. That is all they should get. Anything before 1996 should be in the public domain.
I’m OK with the British system where you can keep renewing, but you have to do something to make it different. Yeah some of the remixes are pointless. But some are pretty awesome. All the ones done by Steven Wilson, that guy is just magic. But you have to keep putting in the work.
That tour was so ugly, I went to two shows and they got pelted at both; the latter show midway through "Jailhouse Rock" someone landed the perfect shot at Brian (aiming at Freddie) with a full 24oz beer in a disposable cup. Waste of a bad brew, imo.
May was playing the Red Special. He was so viscerally angry (he had been warning the crowd up front all night, it was SRO on the floor, festival seating 2 years before The Who disaster in Cincy), he said, "We'll never play here again.". And they never did.
Can't see how that catalog is worth a billion. May would be smarter to float a bond against future earnings, like Bowie did.
"Bowie Bonds""Bowie raised $55 million from Prudential Financial, using 25 albums consisting of 287 songs he had recorded before 1990 as collateral. These "Bowie Bonds" were enormously popular. Bowie essentially forfeited royalties for ten years in exchange for the upfront payment of $55 million. The singer took the upfront cash and bought songs owned by his former manager. The bonds, which were issued in 1997, were liquidated in 2007 and the rights to the song income went back to Bowie."
The public domain exists for a reason. So does copyright, said reason being explicitly spelled out in the constitution.
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
Perpetual copyright does not benefit the public. The fact that corporations are effectively immortal beings has perverted copyright beyond any reasonable bounds.
Even back when you could renew the original 14 year copyright for one term the vast majority of works were not renewed.
I might be willing to make one change to copyright: Make it 10-year terms that must be renewed, and can be renewed up to 8 times, but the fee for renewal is logarithmic. First one is free, then every 10 years renewal goes to $10, $100, $1,000, $10,000, $100,000, $1,000,000, $10,000,000, $100,000,000. That would be fair. The vast majority of works would never make it past $100. If these corporations think their "works" are so freaking valuable, they should pay the piper.
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