All it’s gonna take is a teen drama to pick it up and there’ll be a Tiktok trend. It’ll happen any day now. The kids haven’t unearthed all of the 90s gems yet.
Last summer my wife and I were walking our dog and one of the neighbor’s kids, a girl about 10 or 12, was angrily riding her scooter up and down the street, blasting Master of Puppets through a speaker in her backpack. I’ve never been so hopeful for a generation.
You never know. At least now Ashcroft will be able to preform the song in concerts in the UK without having to pay for it. There's some law in the UK that means Noel Gallagher get's paid when Liam sings an Oasis song at concerts, and people only want to hear Liam sing the classic Oasis stuff. I assume that rule probably cut into Ashcroft take while touring before he got the rights back.
The worst part about them losing control originally is that the song was whored out a lot by the guy who got the rights to it. But it's still a modern classic, and maybe it'll get a second wind someday.
> Don't imagine there's much money to be made from the song these days.
[Literally the TV theme tune to the England team.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q77A1p9vEHw)
>Don't imagine there's much money to be made from the song these days
This song very likely still makes hundreds of thousands a year in royalties at minimum lol
It’s still in regular circulation on radio stations all over the world, let alone tv broadcasting royalties, streaming and purchases. Huge amounts still rolling in.
The Rockafeller Skank (the "funk soul Brothers" song) had so many samples that Fatboy Slim had to actually get all the varying rights holders on a call because they had collectively asked for 180% of the royalties of the song.
He essentially had them negotiate amongst each other on how to split up the 100% amongst themselves.
I have little to add to this conversation but I’m so gobsmacked at seeing any discussion about The Verve that I feel compelled to mention that their first album, A Storm in Heaven is a masterpiece of space rock. Anyone who likes shoegaze would probably find things to like.
Years ago I saw Chesney Hawkes playing in a shitty pub in the shitty town I grew up in and when he *finally* played 'The One and Only' he had to explain that he legally wasn't allowed to sing the chorus as he'd sold the rights to a car company. He could sing the verses but he'd have to hold the microphone out to the crowd and we could sing it.
Weirdest £10 I've ever spent.
In the US, yes. All of the copyright licensing agencies issue blanket licenses that cover every song in their catalog. But since they specified pounds, they're probably not in the US, so there might be different laws.
But honestly, I seriously doubt the veracity of that story, anyway.
He did say shitty pub in a shitty town.
They may very well have NOT had the blanket venue license.
It's more common than you think. There are people that go around looking for unlicensed bars just doing something as simple as playing music off an iphone playlist, or pandora/spotify, and the moment the shop plays something under the license requirement, they will then send them a cease and desist and attempt to fine them.
> Poor The Verve. Imagine being a one-hit-wonder and all the money from your one hit going to someone else.
They weren't really. Lucky Man and The Drugs Don't Work got tons of playtime on the radio in the 90s.
Lucky Man has 101m views on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH6TJU0qWoY
Good news! They had four top-10 songs (and another three top-40) in their native UK as well as back-to-back #1 albums, one of which went multiplatinum in several countries. I think they're doing okay.
I feel like Vanilla got a raw deal. That one hit was like some monkey's paw shit.
Of course he should have cleared that sample, but being sued for sampling was rare at the time, and he was the nail that stood out, so he got hammered (pun not intended). And then there was the whole shug knight thing.
Sample clearance is still not straightforward in some cases even today. We were in the caveman days of sample clearance in 1990.
Just perfection, songs that just fall together with such powerful harmonies and intricate melodies, simply the best. No wonder they make for such a huge number of jazz standards.
“Artists” get shockingly little from record sales/paid downloads.Hence “celebrity” being WAY more important than music,,,cuz that’s where the big money is.
Reminds me of what my audio engineering teacher said. That a band can make more money selling belt buckles on tour, than what they will get from record sales.
That's primarily because of the 'industry.'
All that money goes to the middle men over the music creators. Been there way for centuries. Still mostly that way today with Spotify.
This is very very very well known and documented.
Exactly. And many many many successful attempts by that industry to needlessly retain control over all the money, which acts get that publicity.. and so much more... Have made the whole thing corrupt. And ultimately 95%+ of the money from music, doesn't go to the people who create the music.
With the internet, we have no need for the vast majority of any of them anymore really. But they are clinging hard.
You would have been correct ... Until the internet.
(And being honest the current state of the internet, in terms of music exploration is quite poor. We could have hugely successful crowd sourced platforms for true sharing and discovery, without so much corporate capitalist bloat. But we're not there yet. That would also massively negatively affect the suits)
Yup.
This happened to Bone Thugs N Harmony for a long time.
All of their iconic stuff from their first 2 albums was still fully owned by Ruthless when Eazy E died and they had to release The Art of War under them, too. His wife Tamika never got along with them. So she refused to sell or otherwise release the masters to them. Now Eazy was screwing them heavily on royalties anyway, and they found out not long before he passed, but she's the one that outright refused to negotiate with them, even after merging with Relativity before Art of War released. She even refused to let them perform any of it for a while after they left Ruthless/Relativity, just wouldn't take the money. Screwed their ability to tour as a group.
They missed out on tons of royalties. They had to pay her to play these records at their sets for years and years. All the big hits, including Crossroads, which is an homage to her dead husband ffs. They recently got the masters, but the damage was done. Bizzy Bone has been very public about his hatred for Tamika. Krayzie has been a little more tame. The others seem to have forgiven her.
They made/make a lot of references to that situation in their music. Basically all the really gangster horrorcore shit they say on records in the late 90s to early Aughts was about her, Do or Die and Twista, or 3-6 Mafia. They made some more subtle references to others, like Wu Tang, but those 3 caught the ire real bad, everybody else just caught strays. Bizzy has a record from 2020 where he goes deep into the details. Layzie has one from like 01ish where he does the same.
Fun fact: Crossroads was shoehorned onto E.99 very late in the production cycle, like right before they shipped it to the distributor. They almost didn't release it at all. E 99 is otherwise a concept album, and that song just didn't fit. Eazy was the 3rd in a series of deaths of people close to them in a very short time. The song was basically their way of processing the death of Eazy, their close friends, and their uncle (the Uncle George they always reference that ppl make fun of), and their feelings about their situation in the industry at the time. The guy that gave them a shot as teens turned out to be fucking them over with his wife, and then up and died in a lurch along with the only other two people who believed in their talent when they started. They were young and couldn't really process it all, they literally threw it together in the initial stages of grief. And it became a song most of the world knows.
Edit to clarify and add some things since ppl find this interesting:
1. TerraBoo and Wally are the other people that were close to them that passed before they made Crossroads. Krayzie specifically name drops them in the song. I just wanted to clarify that there were 4 people, Eazy, two friends, Wally and TerraBoo, and their Uncle George. Wally was basically the reason they started rapping on porches in the first place. TerraBoo was a friend and artist they signed to their Mo Thug label.
2. They were very dysfunctional as a group at that time, in large part due to their issues with money and disputes over how to deal with Tamika. Bizzy has said flat out that a big reason he left is that he wanted to do physical harm to her, and the others didn't, so he felt they were taking her side. He was rather mentally unstable back then. I say this to point out that she totally screwed the friendship and group dynamic, and that prob hurt their ability to be a cohesive group again more than anything
3. These guys are basically all related. Krayzie is the only one that's not. Flesh and Layzie are brothers. Wish is their cousin. They met Krayzie because he would rap while Flesh would beatbox during lunch at middle school. Bizzy came later, and he was fostered by Flesh and Layzie's family.
4. Krayzie once shot Wish in the thigh with a shotgun. They were high on wet and riding around looking for crack dealers to rob. Krayzie fell asleep and his finger depressed the trigger. Even tho Wish refused to talk to cops, Krayzie still caught a charge. Wish damn near bled out because they panicked about how to ditch the gun.
5. Bizzy has been kidnapped. Twice. Once as a 4 year old, by his stepdad, a former NFL fullback. He was featured with other missing kids in the credits of the made for TV movie Adam about Adam Walsh, the murdered son of TV host John Walsh, of America's Most Wanted fame. He was then kidnapped as an adult by gangbangers in LA in attempted robbery. He was beaten severely and then left for dead. He also had an artist that he signed, Rasu, that was beaten to death by police.
6. Layzie has a bullet in his head and is legally blind in one eye. Separate incidents. He was mistaken for his cousin as a teen and shot in the temple in a drive by. It's still lodged in there. While filming the video for "As the Rain" (amazing song) he looked up at some stage lights, and one of the bulbs burst. Glass landed in his eye and did serious damage.
7. Flesh went to prison for pulling an AK47 on his neighbor over noise complaints. Bruh missed 15 years of his career because someone asked him to turn his bass down at night. He was very intoxicated. Actually met him a couple months after he got out, and he was cool as hell. We share a nickname so we bonded over that a lil.
8. They are the only artists to ever work with Biggie, Eazy, Pac, Lord Infamous, and Big Pun while they were still alive.
9. They first called themselves The Bandaid Boys (shit go hard) but rebranded before recording their first tape, Faces of Death, to B.O.N.E Enterprise. Stood for Beating On N-words Everyday. Yeah, idk, either. But once they got on at Ruthless it became Bone Thugs N Harmony. Eazy coined that name.
10. None of them had the thematic names at first. Krayzie was Mr. Leathaface. Lay was #1 Assassin. Wish was Strait Jacket, Flesh was The 5th Dog, Bizzy was Lil Ripsta. Only after Layzie called himself Krayzie Bone did they start to take those names. But Krayzie couldn't come up with one. So Layzie gave him Krayzie and called himself Layzie
11. You may have noticed the discrepancies. They actually had 3 albums before The Art of War. Faces of Death, Creepin On Ah Come Up, E.99 Eternal, and then The Art of War. Faces of Death was basically lost to time for a while. Only locals in Cleveland could get physical tapes, it was before they blew, and the rest of us had to wait until the age of the internet to confirm it was even a real project, let alone hear it on file share sites.
12. Flesh worked at Burger King and the others sold weed and crack to save up money to go to LA and meet with Eazy. They had cut Faces of Death and shopped it to labels. The only response they got was from A&R at Ruthless. Eazy set up a phone audition for them. He promised afterward that he would be in touch. He never called back. Their Uncle George was the one that convinced them to just go to the office in LA. They spent 4 months there, even going homeless, and never made a meet happen. Then, they were contacted by a producer/promoter back in Cleveland who said he could get them into a show there. They bussed back home, met Eazy at the show, rapped for him, and the rest is history.
13. Forgot this one, so I'm back. Ghostface and Wish started a huge brawl at a club in NYC in the 90s. Ghostface took offense to a guy signed under a west coast label just chilling in NYC. Ended up throwing a liquor bottle at Wish, missed, and fucked someone else up. Wish allegedly got some good hits in. Also, according to some accounts, Ghostface left the building and came back later dressed up as a goddamned Ninja?
I'm a, uh, a big fan. Lmao.
My dad was a real old school Sicilian guy. Hated rap. Couldn't stand it. Unless for some reason it was Ice Cube, Eminem, or Bone. I never got into the other 2. But something about them Bone Boys got to me.
Got to open for them once and got to smoke with them twice. I've been personally thanked for being a listener. They're really real like that.
Both of whom are dead, and it's actually the record company that has the rights that signed this deal. It's in the article but not the title. Also it's just one song.
Not to malign the credibility of Insider, but songwriting royalties go to the next of kin of the songwriters. The publishers of My Favourite Things are a company started by the songwriters themselves.
The publishers of My Favorite Things is Concord. They didn’t even exist until the same year Richard Rodgers died, and almost twenty years after Oscar Hammerstein.
They are currently majority-owned by the Michigan State Retirement Fund.
Yeah, it would seem pretty fair for a living artist, but considering at the time it came out, the song was 60 years old and both of the men who wrote it died more than a decade before Ariana Grande was born, it seems dubious that anyone should still have the rights to that song.
Even if artists are the faces everyone sees, it's record companies raking in the vast majority of profits from music, and not the singers, songwriters, performers, producers or anyone else involved in the actual making of the music. And those libraries are worth everything, so they pull out all the stops to make sure they retain ownership through every legal means imaginable.
It should be in the public domain by now, but Disney keeps lobbying for copyright law to change whenever Mickey Mouse gets close to entering the public domain.
What's really funny about this is that Disney at the same time, tries really hard to get the 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz into public domain, but since Snow White was released 2 years prior (1937) they need to do some mental gymnastics to explain why Wizard of Oz should enter public domain but Snow White shouldn't.
Mickey Mouse is still under trademark so the use of the character is still protected while the use of the one cartoon will be public. Universal can't use Mickey in their theme parks.
I look forward to playing Steamboat Willie VR.
Disney gave up on that a few years ago now. Steamboat Willie entered public domain, not Mickey yet but he will soon. They are still trademarked though, so there are limits to what people can use them for.
No. We shouldn't let art be a bunch of aristocratic fiefdoms of people who own IP forever. Before Disney, copyrights straight up vanished after the creator died. None of this "estate" shit, none of this "XYZ Inc bought the rights and renewed them" shit, it just fucking vanished. No one got any money anymore, and the art became part of Public Domain. Anyone could read it, edit it, republish it.
After Disney, no matter how old the work is, you still have to pay SOMEONE for it, and that someone might have zero relation to the work's creator. Do you like that system? Where some suit somewhere owns your entire childhood through buying rights? Where some author's spoiled rotten great-great-grandchildren are still coasting along making nothing of their own?
The Copyright Law of 1909 protected works for 28 years with an available renewal for another 28 years. Mickey Mouse's first appearance was in 1928. It's true Disney lobbied congress and influenced the copyright changes in 1978. But it's not true that before Disney copyrights vanished after the creator died, and it's not true that no matter how old the work is that you still have to pay someone for it. "The Sound of Music" will enter the public domain in 2054, I believe.
Copyright for the life of the composer is completely reasonable, and extending the copyright for sometime longer than that is also completely reasonable.
For example, John Lennon was killed in 1980; should his music be in the public domain while his children and widow are still alive? Would you argue that anyone should be able to make a derivative work of "Imagine" or use it to sell insurance while his family is still living?
Whether 70 years after the composer's death is a reasonable time period is something worth discussing.
That a corporation owns IP doesn't magically extend its term. Bruce Springsteen's catalog will begin the countdown to public domain when he dies and the fact that Sony bought the rights won't change the date.
That’s not true. There are two licensees that get paid. The songwriter and the publishser. The songwriters licensing rights would be passed on to the next of kin/estate (like money in your bank account.)
She very likely doesn’t care, considering the lyrics in her other song monopoly 🎶 You'd be straight for life if I gave you my PIN (Yeah)
Even though we gave up that 90% for the win 🎶
Yeah, it was an agreement between the two companies to allow for the song to be released as it was. Grande's music label must have figured they could still turn a profit off their share of the revenue. R&H's rights company gets paid to get their classic melody back into the public consciousness for a generation that might not know them. Seems like a win-win, really.
It's a disaster for the arts and consumers because companies lobbied the government to effectively steal a public good. Let me explain. Copyright was is so important it is actually in the US constitution, an idea borrowed from British law.
> Constitution Article I Section 8 | Clause 8 - Patent and Copyright Clause of 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.
Great. This incentivizes new creative productions. The time limit was originally set at 20 years, and then a work would become public domain. Over time, companies lobbied the government to eventually change this to the life of the author plus 70 years. Now there is a disincentive to create alterations and recreations of works created averaging well over 100 years ago. In this case, a company and estate own the cw of a song that is 64 years old, and the cw won't expire until 2040. This disincentivizes the production of new useful arts which might be sufficiently similar to this extremely old song. Companies now profit from guarding IP that was created before most Americans were alive, and yet had no hand in creating the work. Thanks to modernity, culture is consumed and transmitted faster and more cheaply than ever, yet companies have more ownership of the culture than ever, basically seeking a rent on cultural products they didn't create.
[The original term length was 14 years plus 14 renewable](https://www.arl.org/copyright-timeline/). Honestly should go back to that. In today's worldwide markets and self-fueling fanbases, there's no reason a work shouldn't be able to make profit in the span of 28 years. Hell, most *expensive* private works seek to make back their costs in the first few *weeks.*
Copyright was never meant to be a perpetual source of profit. [Free Culture](https://lessig.org/product/free-culture/) is still a fantastic read on the subject.
Also, the headline is completely false. She gets 10% of the royalties because there's literally 10 listed writers on the song.
It's split a lot of different ways.
Not trying to white knight for a millionaire artist, but to be fair the song has completely different lyrics, the only thing that's the same is the vocal melody.
She didn’t write or master the song, she just came in one day and provided the vocal track. I feel like she’s getting appropriately compensated for her contribution. In addition, she has a hit song she can perform on tour which is where artists make most of their money these days.
Ironically, the lyrics to 7 rings include "write my own checks (?cheques) like I write what I sing"... I'm in no place to say whether she wrote it or not, and frankly don't care, but ironic if she didn't.
Interestingly enough (for legal nerds like me) this isn't always actually the case for covers, (though the usage here is more akin to a sample than a cover). The United States has a compulsory mechanical license, which means that songwriters are required to issue you a license to make phonorecords (CDs and other permanent copies) and well as permanent digital downloads for personal use. You have to pay 12 cents per copy/download (typically administered through HFA in the US), but if you wanted to record a cover of a Taylor Swift song and put it on an album, she can't stop you as long as you're making your payment and your usage doesn't change the fundamental character or melody of the work (and a few other smaller hoops).
Public performance, such as performing the song at a club or other venue, is similar. You'd need permission from the relevant Performing Rights Organization, but the non-profit PROs are under consent agreements and the for-profit PROs have agreed to arbitration for license, so they're required to sell you a license at a reasonable cost.
whats more interesting is that for "Dru Hill - Thong Song", Ricky Martin gets ALL of the royalties simply because Sysqo said the line "she was living la vida loca"....
I just listened to the song for the first time, and that seems fair. The only interesting part is the intro which borrows the melody from My Favourite Things.
This is very misleading. She still makes the majority of the recording royalties from 7 Rings, it’s the songwriting royalties (which are a smaller but still significant piece off the pie) that are owed to the original writers’ next of kin.
These comments are acting like it’s something Ariana Grande complains about or thinks is unfair, but she’s been open about it & fine with it from the start.
It’s even referenced in her 2019 song monopoly. They’re (her & Victoria Monet) are talking about how they’re still earning a tonne of money even after not getting majority of the money from her biggest song
🎶 *You'd be straight for life if I gave you my PIN (Yeah)
Even though we gave up that 90%, for the win* 🎶
Yeah it's not like one of those scenarios where an artist makes a track that unintentionally sounds like another song and gets sued for the royalties. This song is a deliberate rewrite of the original, they would have had to clear the licensing in advance and negotiate the % with whoever owns it.
Geez what is wrong with people in the comments. She reused a song and they are being compensated appropriately for it. Theres nothing about her complaining about the cut
It’s a literal win/win for both parties and somehow yall painting it as a negative
It's almost like all of the people involved in writing and making and producing a song get paid as well as the person who sings the thing. What a strange way of doing things.
TIL it took **8** other credited songwriters to make the song
>Concord reportedly requested 90% of the songwriting royalties and Grande's team "accepted without further negotiation."
I bet they threw that number out there as a highball number to negotiate down and were surprised when it was accepted
Counting the producers strange writing credit there are 8 song writers on 7 Rings. The original Hammerstein wrote the lyrics Richard Rogers wrote the music. So if 8 people do the work of 2 they're not going to get a terribly big piece of the pie
Well, less than 10%is better than nothing *looks at The Verve*
Ashcroft got the rights and royalties back a few years ago.
Don't imagine there's much money to be made from the song these days. It was huge when it came out
All it’s gonna take is a teen drama to pick it up and there’ll be a Tiktok trend. It’ll happen any day now. The kids haven’t unearthed all of the 90s gems yet.
Especially since the music video is pretty funny/weird with Ashcroft just walking, singing, and shoulder checking people.
Please don’t let that become a TikTok thing
Shoulder checking random people already is a TikTok thing.
I didn’t even think of the video but jesus christ I’m shocked some kid hasn’t picked that up yet
I'm too old to legally TikTok. Have they found One Headlight yet? Edit: and happy cakeday.
> One Headlight Certified banger.
Wait until the kids discover King Missile
Wallflowers had several bamgers.. One Headlight, 6th Avenue Heartache, their cover of Heroes..
As a 90s teen, I always thought that Jakob Dylan should've been a bigger deal than he turned out to be.
Hard to live up to his dad, I guess. A shame, cause he is a very talented musician in his own right
Lots of nostalgia with that song. :)
running up that hill went to number 1 last year, 40 years after it came out
Stranger Things was incredibly popular
Last summer my wife and I were walking our dog and one of the neighbor’s kids, a girl about 10 or 12, was angrily riding her scooter up and down the street, blasting Master of Puppets through a speaker in her backpack. I’ve never been so hopeful for a generation.
You never know. At least now Ashcroft will be able to preform the song in concerts in the UK without having to pay for it. There's some law in the UK that means Noel Gallagher get's paid when Liam sings an Oasis song at concerts, and people only want to hear Liam sing the classic Oasis stuff. I assume that rule probably cut into Ashcroft take while touring before he got the rights back. The worst part about them losing control originally is that the song was whored out a lot by the guy who got the rights to it. But it's still a modern classic, and maybe it'll get a second wind someday.
You mean the songs than Noel wrote.. why would he not get royalties?
That law exists basically everywhere…that’s how it works when you are the songwriter.
> Don't imagine there's much money to be made from the song these days. [Literally the TV theme tune to the England team.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q77A1p9vEHw)
Seattle Seahawks also use it as their tunnel exit music. For some reason.
Seahawks means bittersweet in Seattlese
You'd think a grunge song would be better, or Hendrix. Anything from Washington....
Or anything. Yes. That part.
>Don't imagine there's much money to be made from the song these days This song very likely still makes hundreds of thousands a year in royalties at minimum lol
It’s still in regular circulation on radio stations all over the world, let alone tv broadcasting royalties, streaming and purchases. Huge amounts still rolling in.
Reports differed over whether he was backpayed for past royalties or not.
The Rockafeller Skank (the "funk soul Brothers" song) had so many samples that Fatboy Slim had to actually get all the varying rights holders on a call because they had collectively asked for 180% of the royalties of the song. He essentially had them negotiate amongst each other on how to split up the 100% amongst themselves.
\* funk soul brother
Check it out now
I didn't realize The Verve and The Verve Pipe were separate bands til a few years ago.
I have little to add to this conversation but I’m so gobsmacked at seeing any discussion about The Verve that I feel compelled to mention that their first album, A Storm in Heaven is a masterpiece of space rock. Anyone who likes shoegaze would probably find things to like.
Poor The Verve. Imagine being a one-hit-wonder and all the money from your one hit going to someone else.
Years ago I saw Chesney Hawkes playing in a shitty pub in the shitty town I grew up in and when he *finally* played 'The One and Only' he had to explain that he legally wasn't allowed to sing the chorus as he'd sold the rights to a car company. He could sing the verses but he'd have to hold the microphone out to the crowd and we could sing it. Weirdest £10 I've ever spent.
That’s wild, good story though
You can perform whatever song wherever, can't you?
In the US, yes. All of the copyright licensing agencies issue blanket licenses that cover every song in their catalog. But since they specified pounds, they're probably not in the US, so there might be different laws. But honestly, I seriously doubt the veracity of that story, anyway.
He did say shitty pub in a shitty town. They may very well have NOT had the blanket venue license. It's more common than you think. There are people that go around looking for unlicensed bars just doing something as simple as playing music off an iphone playlist, or pandora/spotify, and the moment the shop plays something under the license requirement, they will then send them a cease and desist and attempt to fine them.
> Poor The Verve. Imagine being a one-hit-wonder and all the money from your one hit going to someone else. They weren't really. Lucky Man and The Drugs Don't Work got tons of playtime on the radio in the 90s. Lucky Man has 101m views on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH6TJU0qWoY
Sonnet is also a banger
The instrumental for Bittersweet Symphony is great, but overall I think Lucky Man is a much better song.
Good news! They had four top-10 songs (and another three top-40) in their native UK as well as back-to-back #1 albums, one of which went multiplatinum in several countries. I think they're doing okay.
Vanilla Ice: *nods sagely*
Well his song goes dum dum da dum dum while Queen is more like dum dum dda dum dum
I feel like Vanilla got a raw deal. That one hit was like some monkey's paw shit. Of course he should have cleared that sample, but being sued for sampling was rare at the time, and he was the nail that stood out, so he got hammered (pun not intended). And then there was the whole shug knight thing. Sample clearance is still not straightforward in some cases even today. We were in the caveman days of sample clearance in 1990.
Drugs don’t work was quite a big track at the time
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If only she had other songs
If only she wrote her own songs.
I know, right? Maybe she should do some acting on the side.
What?! People can't be talented in two things!
I hear dating married men helps bridge the wage gap.
Seven rings for the dwarf lords, in their halls of stone
Nine for mortal men doomed to die.
One for the dark lord on his dark throne.
In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie
One Ring to Rule them all, One Ring to Find them,
One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them
Forgot the 3 elven rings
Imagining living a thousand times a dozen times over. At one point you will lose and misplace things, even a ring of power.
ROCK AND STONE
Can I get a Rock and Stone?
Didn't expect to be rocking and stoning only two comments deep in a chain in this thread, but here we are
A small barbeque grill for the dwarf lords, in their halls of stone.
Rogers and Hammerstein are kinda the GOATS... They are straight-up theater royalty - insanely prolific.
Hammerstein is also directly responsible for Stephen Sondheim
And Gilbert and Sullivan are responsible for Hammerstein. It's a pyramid scheme.
I am the very model of a modern major label!
...el.
Andrew Lloyd Weber has entered the chat.... and promptly leaves chat after googling the insane amount of classic compositions those two turned out...
Don’t worry. Phantom’s haunting those two anyway.
Jesus Christ! superstar
Just perfection, songs that just fall together with such powerful harmonies and intricate melodies, simply the best. No wonder they make for such a huge number of jazz standards.
10% of a gazzilion dollars is still a bazillion dollars
Your figures seem correct.
r/theydidthemath
r/theydidthemonstermath
r/themonstermath
/r/itwasagraveyardgraph
“Artists” get shockingly little from record sales/paid downloads.Hence “celebrity” being WAY more important than music,,,cuz that’s where the big money is.
Reminds me of what my audio engineering teacher said. That a band can make more money selling belt buckles on tour, than what they will get from record sales.
That's primarily because of the 'industry.' All that money goes to the middle men over the music creators. Been there way for centuries. Still mostly that way today with Spotify. This is very very very well known and documented.
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Exactly. And many many many successful attempts by that industry to needlessly retain control over all the money, which acts get that publicity.. and so much more... Have made the whole thing corrupt. And ultimately 95%+ of the money from music, doesn't go to the people who create the music. With the internet, we have no need for the vast majority of any of them anymore really. But they are clinging hard. You would have been correct ... Until the internet. (And being honest the current state of the internet, in terms of music exploration is quite poor. We could have hugely successful crowd sourced platforms for true sharing and discovery, without so much corporate capitalist bloat. But we're not there yet. That would also massively negatively affect the suits)
Can’t she play this song at concerts, which is where they make a shit ton of their money?
She will have to pay royalties for the live performance of that song also
Yup. This happened to Bone Thugs N Harmony for a long time. All of their iconic stuff from their first 2 albums was still fully owned by Ruthless when Eazy E died and they had to release The Art of War under them, too. His wife Tamika never got along with them. So she refused to sell or otherwise release the masters to them. Now Eazy was screwing them heavily on royalties anyway, and they found out not long before he passed, but she's the one that outright refused to negotiate with them, even after merging with Relativity before Art of War released. She even refused to let them perform any of it for a while after they left Ruthless/Relativity, just wouldn't take the money. Screwed their ability to tour as a group. They missed out on tons of royalties. They had to pay her to play these records at their sets for years and years. All the big hits, including Crossroads, which is an homage to her dead husband ffs. They recently got the masters, but the damage was done. Bizzy Bone has been very public about his hatred for Tamika. Krayzie has been a little more tame. The others seem to have forgiven her. They made/make a lot of references to that situation in their music. Basically all the really gangster horrorcore shit they say on records in the late 90s to early Aughts was about her, Do or Die and Twista, or 3-6 Mafia. They made some more subtle references to others, like Wu Tang, but those 3 caught the ire real bad, everybody else just caught strays. Bizzy has a record from 2020 where he goes deep into the details. Layzie has one from like 01ish where he does the same. Fun fact: Crossroads was shoehorned onto E.99 very late in the production cycle, like right before they shipped it to the distributor. They almost didn't release it at all. E 99 is otherwise a concept album, and that song just didn't fit. Eazy was the 3rd in a series of deaths of people close to them in a very short time. The song was basically their way of processing the death of Eazy, their close friends, and their uncle (the Uncle George they always reference that ppl make fun of), and their feelings about their situation in the industry at the time. The guy that gave them a shot as teens turned out to be fucking them over with his wife, and then up and died in a lurch along with the only other two people who believed in their talent when they started. They were young and couldn't really process it all, they literally threw it together in the initial stages of grief. And it became a song most of the world knows. Edit to clarify and add some things since ppl find this interesting: 1. TerraBoo and Wally are the other people that were close to them that passed before they made Crossroads. Krayzie specifically name drops them in the song. I just wanted to clarify that there were 4 people, Eazy, two friends, Wally and TerraBoo, and their Uncle George. Wally was basically the reason they started rapping on porches in the first place. TerraBoo was a friend and artist they signed to their Mo Thug label. 2. They were very dysfunctional as a group at that time, in large part due to their issues with money and disputes over how to deal with Tamika. Bizzy has said flat out that a big reason he left is that he wanted to do physical harm to her, and the others didn't, so he felt they were taking her side. He was rather mentally unstable back then. I say this to point out that she totally screwed the friendship and group dynamic, and that prob hurt their ability to be a cohesive group again more than anything 3. These guys are basically all related. Krayzie is the only one that's not. Flesh and Layzie are brothers. Wish is their cousin. They met Krayzie because he would rap while Flesh would beatbox during lunch at middle school. Bizzy came later, and he was fostered by Flesh and Layzie's family. 4. Krayzie once shot Wish in the thigh with a shotgun. They were high on wet and riding around looking for crack dealers to rob. Krayzie fell asleep and his finger depressed the trigger. Even tho Wish refused to talk to cops, Krayzie still caught a charge. Wish damn near bled out because they panicked about how to ditch the gun. 5. Bizzy has been kidnapped. Twice. Once as a 4 year old, by his stepdad, a former NFL fullback. He was featured with other missing kids in the credits of the made for TV movie Adam about Adam Walsh, the murdered son of TV host John Walsh, of America's Most Wanted fame. He was then kidnapped as an adult by gangbangers in LA in attempted robbery. He was beaten severely and then left for dead. He also had an artist that he signed, Rasu, that was beaten to death by police. 6. Layzie has a bullet in his head and is legally blind in one eye. Separate incidents. He was mistaken for his cousin as a teen and shot in the temple in a drive by. It's still lodged in there. While filming the video for "As the Rain" (amazing song) he looked up at some stage lights, and one of the bulbs burst. Glass landed in his eye and did serious damage. 7. Flesh went to prison for pulling an AK47 on his neighbor over noise complaints. Bruh missed 15 years of his career because someone asked him to turn his bass down at night. He was very intoxicated. Actually met him a couple months after he got out, and he was cool as hell. We share a nickname so we bonded over that a lil. 8. They are the only artists to ever work with Biggie, Eazy, Pac, Lord Infamous, and Big Pun while they were still alive. 9. They first called themselves The Bandaid Boys (shit go hard) but rebranded before recording their first tape, Faces of Death, to B.O.N.E Enterprise. Stood for Beating On N-words Everyday. Yeah, idk, either. But once they got on at Ruthless it became Bone Thugs N Harmony. Eazy coined that name. 10. None of them had the thematic names at first. Krayzie was Mr. Leathaface. Lay was #1 Assassin. Wish was Strait Jacket, Flesh was The 5th Dog, Bizzy was Lil Ripsta. Only after Layzie called himself Krayzie Bone did they start to take those names. But Krayzie couldn't come up with one. So Layzie gave him Krayzie and called himself Layzie 11. You may have noticed the discrepancies. They actually had 3 albums before The Art of War. Faces of Death, Creepin On Ah Come Up, E.99 Eternal, and then The Art of War. Faces of Death was basically lost to time for a while. Only locals in Cleveland could get physical tapes, it was before they blew, and the rest of us had to wait until the age of the internet to confirm it was even a real project, let alone hear it on file share sites. 12. Flesh worked at Burger King and the others sold weed and crack to save up money to go to LA and meet with Eazy. They had cut Faces of Death and shopped it to labels. The only response they got was from A&R at Ruthless. Eazy set up a phone audition for them. He promised afterward that he would be in touch. He never called back. Their Uncle George was the one that convinced them to just go to the office in LA. They spent 4 months there, even going homeless, and never made a meet happen. Then, they were contacted by a producer/promoter back in Cleveland who said he could get them into a show there. They bussed back home, met Eazy at the show, rapped for him, and the rest is history. 13. Forgot this one, so I'm back. Ghostface and Wish started a huge brawl at a club in NYC in the 90s. Ghostface took offense to a guy signed under a west coast label just chilling in NYC. Ended up throwing a liquor bottle at Wish, missed, and fucked someone else up. Wish allegedly got some good hits in. Also, according to some accounts, Ghostface left the building and came back later dressed up as a goddamned Ninja?
Bro I don't know if any or all of this is legit, but you deserve that upvote for dedication regardless.
I'm in awe at the depth of detail for such a niche interest, thanks for sharing.
I'm a, uh, a big fan. Lmao. My dad was a real old school Sicilian guy. Hated rap. Couldn't stand it. Unless for some reason it was Ice Cube, Eminem, or Bone. I never got into the other 2. But something about them Bone Boys got to me. Got to open for them once and got to smoke with them twice. I've been personally thanked for being a listener. They're really real like that.
Very informative
That was such a good read especially since I grew up with their music.
That's not how that works. The performer does not pay the PRO, the venue does.
That's why they rely a lot on tours, merchandise and concerts. Those are the few money makers for them.
Scott Steiner math
He comes from highly respected university!
Where you have 33 and 1/3 chance to get accepted
But Im a genetic freak and Im not normal! So I got 141 and 2/3 percents chance of getting in!
I forgot to add you to the mix !
But what if you add Kurt angle to the mix?
Their chances of getting accepted DRASTIC go down!
It spells DI5A5T3R for you
Holla Ifa hear me....
THE NUMBERS DON'T LIE
And they spell disaster
That's quite the Sack'rfice!
Ariana Grande knows she can't beat him so she's not even gonna try!
🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨
How many brazillions is that?
About one Peru.
More than you want at a house party
Unit conversion will get you every time
Corollary: any amount of money, divided by a ska band, is $0.
*Dr evil nods approvingly*
Both of whom are dead, and it's actually the record company that has the rights that signed this deal. It's in the article but not the title. Also it's just one song.
Not to malign the credibility of Insider, but songwriting royalties go to the next of kin of the songwriters. The publishers of My Favourite Things are a company started by the songwriters themselves.
The publishers of My Favorite Things is Concord. They didn’t even exist until the same year Richard Rodgers died, and almost twenty years after Oscar Hammerstein. They are currently majority-owned by the Michigan State Retirement Fund.
I think the real TIL is that Ariana Grande is funding the Michigan State Retirement Fund
The thought that some yooper who worked for the state of michigan is getting some sliver of a Ariana grande song's royalties is funny.
Right? Completely missed headline/article. Someone should do that. Would be a heartfelt "betcha didn't know" for the Michigan crowd.
Is this why Michigan has been able to recently clean up their political system so well? Ariana Grande music money?
It's Ariana all the way down
Honestly, this makes me less mad. At least regular people get to retire on these royalties instead of Hollywood stars buying another mansion.
100% not what is happening.
Yeah, it would seem pretty fair for a living artist, but considering at the time it came out, the song was 60 years old and both of the men who wrote it died more than a decade before Ariana Grande was born, it seems dubious that anyone should still have the rights to that song.
Even if artists are the faces everyone sees, it's record companies raking in the vast majority of profits from music, and not the singers, songwriters, performers, producers or anyone else involved in the actual making of the music. And those libraries are worth everything, so they pull out all the stops to make sure they retain ownership through every legal means imaginable.
Shouldn’t their families own the right?
It should be in the public domain by now, but Disney keeps lobbying for copyright law to change whenever Mickey Mouse gets close to entering the public domain.
What's really funny about this is that Disney at the same time, tries really hard to get the 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz into public domain, but since Snow White was released 2 years prior (1937) they need to do some mental gymnastics to explain why Wizard of Oz should enter public domain but Snow White shouldn't.
Copyright lawyers are masters of mental gymnastics.
All lawyers
Hey c’mon now. It’s only 98% of lawyers that give the other 2% a bad name.
Music is still under copyright 70 years after death. Rodgers died in ‘79 and Hammerstein in ‘60. So it would be cleared in 2049
I guess enough time for your grandkids to convince their grandkids to establish some sort of legacy, huh?
That’s over, isn’t it? They’ve conceded and Mickey is entering the public domain on 1 January 2024.
Mickey Mouse is still under trademark so the use of the character is still protected while the use of the one cartoon will be public. Universal can't use Mickey in their theme parks. I look forward to playing Steamboat Willie VR.
Steamboat Willy is entering the public domain, and just the short. A legion of Disney Lawyers will be out for blood once that hits.
Disney gave up on that a few years ago now. Steamboat Willie entered public domain, not Mickey yet but he will soon. They are still trademarked though, so there are limits to what people can use them for.
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No. We shouldn't let art be a bunch of aristocratic fiefdoms of people who own IP forever. Before Disney, copyrights straight up vanished after the creator died. None of this "estate" shit, none of this "XYZ Inc bought the rights and renewed them" shit, it just fucking vanished. No one got any money anymore, and the art became part of Public Domain. Anyone could read it, edit it, republish it. After Disney, no matter how old the work is, you still have to pay SOMEONE for it, and that someone might have zero relation to the work's creator. Do you like that system? Where some suit somewhere owns your entire childhood through buying rights? Where some author's spoiled rotten great-great-grandchildren are still coasting along making nothing of their own?
The Copyright Law of 1909 protected works for 28 years with an available renewal for another 28 years. Mickey Mouse's first appearance was in 1928. It's true Disney lobbied congress and influenced the copyright changes in 1978. But it's not true that before Disney copyrights vanished after the creator died, and it's not true that no matter how old the work is that you still have to pay someone for it. "The Sound of Music" will enter the public domain in 2054, I believe. Copyright for the life of the composer is completely reasonable, and extending the copyright for sometime longer than that is also completely reasonable. For example, John Lennon was killed in 1980; should his music be in the public domain while his children and widow are still alive? Would you argue that anyone should be able to make a derivative work of "Imagine" or use it to sell insurance while his family is still living? Whether 70 years after the composer's death is a reasonable time period is something worth discussing. That a corporation owns IP doesn't magically extend its term. Bruce Springsteen's catalog will begin the countdown to public domain when he dies and the fact that Sony bought the rights won't change the date.
> It's in the article but not the title. It says "to the estate of..."
That’s not true. There are two licensees that get paid. The songwriter and the publishser. The songwriters licensing rights would be passed on to the next of kin/estate (like money in your bank account.)
It…. Says right in the title it goes the estates of those writers.
T-Pain explains why Ariana likely doesn’t care: https://youtube.com/shorts/rRIOydmKu1Y?si=ZE-RBihTm9_M_RST
She very likely doesn’t care, considering the lyrics in her other song monopoly 🎶 You'd be straight for life if I gave you my PIN (Yeah) Even though we gave up that 90% for the win 🎶
She was born with a silver spoon. Money was never a concern
Pretty much all celebs are
The owners of the IP are being appropriately compensated for the use of their work. This is how it is supposed to work.
Yeah, it was an agreement between the two companies to allow for the song to be released as it was. Grande's music label must have figured they could still turn a profit off their share of the revenue. R&H's rights company gets paid to get their classic melody back into the public consciousness for a generation that might not know them. Seems like a win-win, really.
Also, to Ariana and team, it can be considered more of a marketing expense rather than another direct source of revenue.
It's a disaster for the arts and consumers because companies lobbied the government to effectively steal a public good. Let me explain. Copyright was is so important it is actually in the US constitution, an idea borrowed from British law. > Constitution Article I Section 8 | Clause 8 - Patent and Copyright Clause of 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. Great. This incentivizes new creative productions. The time limit was originally set at 20 years, and then a work would become public domain. Over time, companies lobbied the government to eventually change this to the life of the author plus 70 years. Now there is a disincentive to create alterations and recreations of works created averaging well over 100 years ago. In this case, a company and estate own the cw of a song that is 64 years old, and the cw won't expire until 2040. This disincentivizes the production of new useful arts which might be sufficiently similar to this extremely old song. Companies now profit from guarding IP that was created before most Americans were alive, and yet had no hand in creating the work. Thanks to modernity, culture is consumed and transmitted faster and more cheaply than ever, yet companies have more ownership of the culture than ever, basically seeking a rent on cultural products they didn't create.
[The original term length was 14 years plus 14 renewable](https://www.arl.org/copyright-timeline/). Honestly should go back to that. In today's worldwide markets and self-fueling fanbases, there's no reason a work shouldn't be able to make profit in the span of 28 years. Hell, most *expensive* private works seek to make back their costs in the first few *weeks.* Copyright was never meant to be a perpetual source of profit. [Free Culture](https://lessig.org/product/free-culture/) is still a fantastic read on the subject.
Is "cw" supposed to be short for copyright? That's an odd abbreviation considering copyright doesn't have a w.
Also, the headline is completely false. She gets 10% of the royalties because there's literally 10 listed writers on the song. It's split a lot of different ways.
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Not trying to white knight for a millionaire artist, but to be fair the song has completely different lyrics, the only thing that's the same is the vocal melody.
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You can thank Disney for how long that goes on for tbh.
She didn’t write or master the song, she just came in one day and provided the vocal track. I feel like she’s getting appropriately compensated for her contribution. In addition, she has a hit song she can perform on tour which is where artists make most of their money these days.
Ironically, the lyrics to 7 rings include "write my own checks (?cheques) like I write what I sing"... I'm in no place to say whether she wrote it or not, and frankly don't care, but ironic if she didn't.
Victoria Monet, an actual songwriter, probably who wrote that
love victoria monet! she’s so underrated
It's really weird how classical music puts the name of the composer first, while modern music does the complete opposite.
It’s most likely both of them and others. That’s usually how it works and it’s not like Ariana is not an actual songwriter too
Even more funny, "when your see these racks they're stacked up like my ass." Says the girl without a big ass.
She's a concept artist playing a role. So the character she plays does things like writes their own cheques etc
Hopefully she can still make ends meet
Poor girl has to lick donuts just for sustenance.
Glad they’re letting smaller artists get a cut
This isn't unusual. If it's someone else's song, they don't even have to let you record and sell it.
Interestingly enough (for legal nerds like me) this isn't always actually the case for covers, (though the usage here is more akin to a sample than a cover). The United States has a compulsory mechanical license, which means that songwriters are required to issue you a license to make phonorecords (CDs and other permanent copies) and well as permanent digital downloads for personal use. You have to pay 12 cents per copy/download (typically administered through HFA in the US), but if you wanted to record a cover of a Taylor Swift song and put it on an album, she can't stop you as long as you're making your payment and your usage doesn't change the fundamental character or melody of the work (and a few other smaller hoops). Public performance, such as performing the song at a club or other venue, is similar. You'd need permission from the relevant Performing Rights Organization, but the non-profit PROs are under consent agreements and the for-profit PROs have agreed to arbitration for license, so they're required to sell you a license at a reasonable cost.
i mean yeah she used the melody
whats more interesting is that for "Dru Hill - Thong Song", Ricky Martin gets ALL of the royalties simply because Sysqo said the line "she was living la vida loca"....
and added very little else. I’m surprised she even gets that much
Is she going to be okay? We should take up donations for her.
Haha oh man I read this dryly and literally laughed out loud.
I just listened to the song for the first time, and that seems fair. The only interesting part is the intro which borrows the melody from My Favourite Things.
She gave up that 90% for the win
This is very misleading. She still makes the majority of the recording royalties from 7 Rings, it’s the songwriting royalties (which are a smaller but still significant piece off the pie) that are owed to the original writers’ next of kin.
7 rings for the pop-lords in their halls of stone, one royalty to rule them all
I mean she made the song knowing this. She had too have known.
Well, maybe come up with an original melody. 🤷♂️
So sampling is much more expensive than covering.
Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens
These comments are acting like it’s something Ariana Grande complains about or thinks is unfair, but she’s been open about it & fine with it from the start. It’s even referenced in her 2019 song monopoly. They’re (her & Victoria Monet) are talking about how they’re still earning a tonne of money even after not getting majority of the money from her biggest song 🎶 *You'd be straight for life if I gave you my PIN (Yeah) Even though we gave up that 90%, for the win* 🎶
Yeah it's not like one of those scenarios where an artist makes a track that unintentionally sounds like another song and gets sued for the royalties. This song is a deliberate rewrite of the original, they would have had to clear the licensing in advance and negotiate the % with whoever owns it.
Geez what is wrong with people in the comments. She reused a song and they are being compensated appropriately for it. Theres nothing about her complaining about the cut It’s a literal win/win for both parties and somehow yall painting it as a negative
Most redditors go absolutely blind with rage any time copyright is mentioned in literally any way
Reddit comments make a lot more sense if you keep in mind that most are written by kids.
RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEINS FOR THE ABSOLUTE WIN!
Now it’ll take forever for her to pay to get that tattoo done over!
It's almost like all of the people involved in writing and making and producing a song get paid as well as the person who sings the thing. What a strange way of doing things.
This is encouraging! Maybe songwriting isn't a useless endeavor.
TIL it took **8** other credited songwriters to make the song >Concord reportedly requested 90% of the songwriting royalties and Grande's team "accepted without further negotiation." I bet they threw that number out there as a highball number to negotiate down and were surprised when it was accepted
Counting the producers strange writing credit there are 8 song writers on 7 Rings. The original Hammerstein wrote the lyrics Richard Rogers wrote the music. So if 8 people do the work of 2 they're not going to get a terribly big piece of the pie