Weird Al Wonders Why Sony Music Never Gave Him His White & Nerdy Cut Of YouTube's Equity Payout

from the white-and-nerdy dept

Back when Google bought YouTube in 2006, one of the side notes on the deal which didn't get that much attention was that right before the deal closed, YouTube gave a bunch of equity to the major record labels, structured more or less as a payoff in exchange for not suing YouTube for a few years. The most beautiful part in all of this for the labels, of course, was that they got a ton of free cash which they never planned to share with artists. Since the deal was done as equity, the labels could insist that it had nothing to do with royalties, and they could keep the whole amount -- and they did. But, of course, if artists expected the labels to protect their interests, they were out of luck.

It seems that some artists are finally bringing this point out. We've covered the many, many lawsuits over the past few years where artists are suing their labels over whether or not iTunes purchases count as a sale (tiny royalty) or a license (big royalty). However, some are also bringing up other wrongs. Eminem's producers, FBT, who were one of the first of these cases, specifically called out the fact that they never received any of the YouTube money.

And, now, Weird Al Yankovic is joining the party. In yet another one of these lawsuits about the difference between a license and a sale, Weird Al also focuses on the missing YouTube payments and points out that his song White & Nerdy was hugely popular on YouTube around the time of the buyout.

This may be a difficult legal argument to win, but if Weird Al (or, rather, his production company Ear Booker Enterprises) can show that Sony Music did the equity deal under that structure specifically to avoid paying out royalties, things could get interesting, especially for other artists whose work was popular on YouTube at the time...

Filed Under: royalties, termination rights, weird al
Companies: sony music, youtube

Weird Al Denied Permission To Parody Lady Gaga... Releases New Song For Free Anyway [Updated]

from the fair-use-doesn't-need-permission dept

Updated this story to make it clear that it was Lady Gaga's manager who apparently failed to forward the song to Lady Gaga for permission.

A few weeks ago, in discussing the takedown on Dan Bull's "Death of ACTA" song, some of the discussion in the comments turned to parody in music and whether or not Weird Al has to get permission for his parody songs. What was noted is that he does ask for permission, but almost certainly doesn't need it. He appears to have now put that to the test somewhat. A bunch of folks are submitting the news that Lady Gaga's manager snubbed a permission request from Weird Al, but since she had asked to first hear the song before giving her permission, he already had it done and released the song anyway... for free, on the basis that he was protected by fair use. As a side note, the report (from his agent) notes that this is only the second time he's been refused, with the other time being (you guessed it) from Prince:

Justin wrote to me last night: "You're going to love this. Lady Gaga denied Weird Al the right to release his parody of BORN THIS WAY, only the second time in his career that he's been denied [ed: the other refusal came from Prince]. But he recorded the track at her request as a part of the approval process... the first time any artists has made that request. She summarily passed without comment. So instead of selling a couple hundred thousand or a million copies... he gave PERFORM THIS WAY away for free to his 2 million followers on Twitter."

Of course, it's nice to see him stand up for his fair use rights. The post script to the story is that after this got so much attention, Lady Gaga's manager finally caved and got Lady Gaga to grant permission. But it's really unfortunate that we still live in "permission culture" where people feel the need to ask permission to create culture.

Filed Under: fair use, lady gaga, music, parody, weird al

Weird Al File Sharing Censorship Was To Mock MTV

from the it's-all-explained dept

Last week we broke the story of Weird Al Yankovic's "Don't Download This Song" video being bleeped on MTV when the names of file sharing apps were mentioned. The NY Times thankfully got to the bottom of the story after a conversation with Weird Al himself. Apparently, MTV had told him two years ago (when the video was released) that they would not play it on TV without the file sharing names taken out. Yankovic himself added the beeps and tried to make them as extreme as possible to highlight the ridiculousness of it all:

Instead of subtly removing or obscuring the words in the track, I made the creative decision to bleep them out as obnoxiously as possible, so that there would be no mistake I was being censored.

He doesn't know if the video ever actually aired on TV, so it's likely no one even saw the bleeped video until MTV launched their online video site. He points out, as we noted, that the uncensored version is available on YouTube, but doesn't explain why embedding that video is forbidden as well.

Filed Under: bleeps, music, videos, weird al
Companies: mtv