Labels Barely Release 1964 Dylan, Beach Boys Archive Materials Solely To Get Extended Copyrights
from the promoting-the-progress! dept
Two years ago we wrote about the very odd release, by Sony, of just 100 copies of a set of previously unreleased Bob Dylan tracks. Why so few? Well, Sony sort of revealed the secret in the name of the title. See if you can spot it:The other major labels have been doing the same. Last year, there was a series of releases of 1963 music, including more from Dylan, along with some previously unreleased Beatles tunes (at least those were somewhat more widely available). This year, we're getting a new crop of barely released 1964 songs including (yet again) more from Dylan, along with some from the Beach Boys as well (and some expect more Beatles tunes as well).
The Beach Boys released two copyright extension sets this week, both as downloads. The first, “Keep an Eye on Summer: The Beach Boys Sessions 1964,” is a collection of session outtakes, including working versions and remixes of “Fun Fun Fun,” “Don’t Worry Baby,” “I Get Around” and other hits, as well as live BBC recordings. The second, “The Beach Boys Live in Sacramento 1964,” includes two full concert performances.At least when they're released on iTunes, people can get them, unlike the very limited CD releases some have chosen. But, either way, this music isn't being released for any legitimate reason. They're solely being "released" to keep them out of the public domain. It's difficult to see how that has anything to do with furthering the interests of the public and culture. And it certainly highlights how ridiculous the copyright extension effort from 2011 was in the first place. It doesn't serve the public in the slightest, but it has offered up a chance for record labels to keep works out of the public domain for as long as possible.
A spokeswoman for Universal said that the label has “no current plans” for a Beatles release, but last year Universal and the Beatles’ label, Apple, kept plans under wraps until just before “The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963” turned up on iTunes. The group’s unreleased 1964 recordings include studio outtakes from the “Hard Day’s Night” and “Beatles for Sale” albums, as well as several BBC appearances and soundboard tapes of the band’s concerts in Paris, Melbourne, Adelaide, Vancouver, Philadelphia and several other cities.
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Filed Under: beach boys, beatles, bob dylan, copyright, copyright extension, copyright term extension, eu, music
Companies: sony, universal music
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The internet has routed around Sony's damage
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:bd92a9b6eca367d2ee68bb2c8cf64a6e30df943f&dn=Bob%20Dylan%20-%20The%20C opyright%20Extension%20Collection%20%282013%29%204CD%20MP3%40320kbps%20Beolab1700&tr=udp%3A%2F%2 Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftra cker.istole.it%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337
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Re: The internet has routed around Sony's damage
The link doesn't work.
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Antirelease
Every minute of non-copyrighted music on the radio is a minute of lost profits for the labels. And worse, much worse: it doesn't stop there. People get reminded of artists for which they already bought records in their prime time. So they take out their old records and listen to them instead of buying new records.
The main purpose of this release is to keep this music from, well, being released.
The music industry kills off other has-beens even without copyright being in danger of running out, never mind that they are better than the current crop of the year. Because the most profitable music is the one people buy, but then don't really listen to a lot.
Obviously, half-naked youths and/or boy groups are good for that: you buy the discs because of their cover rather than the music that gets on your nerves too fast. And half-naked youths tend to become old fast anyway.
With boy groups, this works because of their fans growing older, too. They become uninterested and embarrassed, but by the time they would be handing their CDs on to someone else, nobody knows the group any more.
If old Beatles or Dylan recordings were able to come into the game without royalties, they would really cut into air time, and they would also make other old records (even if copyrighted) interesting both for listening and resale.
Any record that is resold or relistened to cuts into the purses of the music industry as they don't get another cut for it.
So it's important to keep the old recordings dead and buried, to make room for the living.
Let's raise the dead and kill them.
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As someone who's always despised that ridiculous nasal twang of Dylan's, I'm grateful. Please *do* keep sitting on it. How anyone could manage to bring themselves to enjoy his singing, I'll never know.
I'm aware he's a composer/poet and lyricist too, and others have done good things with that part of his work, but no, I don't want to hear him sing ever again.
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"It don't matter if I'm nevah doing nuthing but sittin' on this and lettin' it rot and fall down; it's my proppety!!!"
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Uncommon honesty on the part of Sony
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But "use it or lose it" might be the only viable copyright reform in the internet age. If the people that own the copyright on something can't make the material available to the public, then it should revert to the public domain. There's just no reason that everything ever created shouldn't be online somewhere.
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Really?
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Backdate the copyright?
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Re: Backdate the copyright?
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Re: Backdate the copyright?
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Legit Question
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Canada 'releases'
Can't say that such a clause offers a cast-iron guarantee against disingenuous 'releases' like this, but it probably helps, especially given that the reasonable demands of the public over unreleased Dylan music would likely exceed 100 people.
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