Tag Archives: music

Music Licensing Issue – Skins

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When my group for Portfolio 2 was talking about what to write about, copyright relating to music was brought up about one of the topics. This got me thinking about an issue that arose several years back with one of my favorite tv shows of all time, the award-winning English drama Skins. Among the many great things about this show, one of them was the use of great music. However, an issue arose when releasing the DVD for the show. There was an issue because licensing the music for the DVDs would come with a high cost. So, completely different music was chosen to be put in the episodes released to the DVDs. The only way to buy the episodes with the original scores is to purchase them on Itunes. This is a real shame, because the music was one of the things that contributed to this show’s greatness. It almost feels as if something is lost with the original songs taken out.

4 Chords

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This blog post was sparked by a quote from Brian’s blog post: “I have thought about this before. What if in 3000 years, every single possible combination of musical notes has been put together, so there would not be any more original music. What would copyright laws do then?”

At my high school, once a year, we put on a Coffeehouse Show-where people would perform short skits, or songs of whatever kind. One year, some students got up and began singing individual songs, but what was interesting about them was that they all had had the same basic 4 chords to them, much like in this video. In the music world, this does not seem to violate copyright laws. For example in the video, Journey is not given credit for the songs made after it that include the same 4 chords as it uses. However, in the writing world, one can not just take others’ words and get away with it. Each of the songs, although they incorporate the same four chords, are all given credit to be original works. I wonder why this works the way it does?

Copyright Controversy – The Verve

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This week, I’ve spend much time working on the essay for the first portfolio, with the central theme of the essay being the history of copyright laws. Doing this made me think of an instance involving one of my favorite bands, The Verve. During the mid-90’s, while working on an album, the Verve came to an agreement with Decca Records, the company that deals with the music made by The Rolling Stones. Both parties agreed that for a small fee, the Verve would use a five note sample from a relatively unpopular Rolling Stones song in the composition of one of their own songs, “Bittersweet Symphony”. When the album as released in 1997, “Bittersweet Symphony” became a worldwide hit, bringing The Verve both enormous fame and album sales.

After seeing the success of this song, former Rolling Stone manager Allen Klein filed a lawsuit against The Verve, arguing that they had used “too large of a sample” from the original song. This was an absurd claim, as not only did the Verve use the exact amount they agreed to, but their resulting song was essentially unrecognizable from the song that the five note sample came from. Nevertheless, the case went to court. Facing a difficult legal battle, in which there was the potential to lose much money and still lose the case, The Verve had no choice but to hand over 100 percent of their royalties from the song to the Rolling Stones.

This whole controversy represents a disgusting chapter in copyright history. Allen Klein, fueled by greed, created a false claim and cost The Verve all the money they would have made from a worldwide hit. What makes it even worse is that these are the types of instances that copyright laws are supposed to prevent, but it is arguable that they have created this problem.

http://www.thevervelive.com/2005/05/bitter-sweet-symphony-controversy-and.html