You’ll be able to go to Eagles.com (currently under construction) and get all their songs. They’re going to do it; it’s coming up in about 2 months.

November 14th, 2009 § Leave a Comment

And the music labels thought that the seas of music are calmer these days? Hoping to re-napster themselves and capture licensed music in a bottle this time around, the very core of the labels music is leaking and the ship might never really leave the store. The vast majority of music revenue is generated from its catalog. It sells way more than the current fare released on itunes, etc. ENTER: The copyright monster.

If an artist or author sold a copyright before 1978 (Section 304), they or their heirs can take it back 56 years later. If the artist or author sold the copyright during or after 1978 (Section 203), they can terminate that grant after 35 years. Assuming all the proper paperwork gets done in time, record labels could lose sound recording copyrights they bought in 1978 starting in 2013, 1979 in 2014, and so on. For 1953-and-earlier music, grants can already be terminated.  The Eagles plan to file grant termination notices by the end of the year, according to Law.com.
The record labels have two options for fending off notices of termination, neither of which looks good. The first is to continue to claim that albums are compilations, which doesn’t pass the common-sense test (compilations include songs from different artists), and probably won’t pass legal muster either. The second is to re-record the album in order to create new sound recording copyrights, which would reset the countdown clock at 35 years for copyright grant termination.
But wait, didn’t’ someone just try that? This might sound familiar, because BlueBeat.com employed similar logic in creating new copyrights to Beatles songs — right before it was sued by EMI and a judge barred them from continuing to sell the songs. So the music industry now needs to prepare for a new round of bleeding. And, its not just the Eagles, the same lawyer that represents the Eagles ALSO reps Barbara Streisand, Journey among others. Those three artists alone sell a significant back-catalog of music. Next year, it will all change.

Cloudy With NO Chance of Meatballs for $24.95

November 11th, 2009 § Leave a Comment

Someone over at Sony must be watching too many 3 Stooges episodes late at night to think up a promotion like this.

What a terrible value for consumers. I guess their DVD outlets complained so instead of changing their thinking they upped the 24hr. ‘rental’ price. Yes, that’s right. If you’ve got a Sony Bravia TV you too can rent ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ for the incredibly fair price of $ 24.95 for a 24 hour term. Don’t everyone rush at once. And, those renters will be proud to know that they got to see the film BEFORE their friends got it on DVD….ooooohhh. Sony thinks that there’s a rush to see THIS film 28 days before you can see it or buy it on DVD (Jan 4th, 2010) for less than $24.95 and own the plastic disc and box? I feel really sorry for the suckers who rent it on Jan. 3rd, 2010 the day before its DVD release. If they wait just 24 more hours they can OWN it for less.

Sony, why not offer consumers something of value? Netflix list of 20 Sony films for free? 3-6 month pass to EpixHD online? Something on iTunes? Anything? This is ridiculous.

Virginia Execution of of John Allen Muhammad SHOULD be on PPV

November 10th, 2009 § Leave a Comment

Since we still live in ancient Greece and execute individuals in front of a private audience, we might as well open this up to the privacy of our own homes. So, if you wanted to, you could ‘buy’ on demand the execution. The imagesproceeds should go to the families of the victims. Morbid? Perhaps. However, technically do-able and my hunch is that it would be widely subscribed to. Each stream would be individually watermarked across the entire screen with a see-through watermark dissuading further distribution, but not preventing it. OK, what do you think?

What Content Can NOT be Pirated, Is still 100% Free and Millions of People See DAILY?

November 9th, 2009 § Leave a Comment

It’s not the movies. They are all over everywhere. It’s not music. It’s not photo’s or documents. C’mon…Its TELEVISION! What I mean is this: TV isn’t pirated out of the box because the episodes of LOST or V or the last NY Giant football game (sorry, I’m a fan) debut on TV. I can’t find the upcoming episode of V which is on ABC tommorrow -10/10/09 – on any torrent or newsgroup. It may show up AFTER its debut on TV, but never before. There are no ‘screener’s’ floating around the newsgroups. This being said, the content on these networks becomes all that much more important. And, I believe because its so accessable, that’s one of the reasons its NOT on the newsgroups or torrents as much as the movies and music are.

-Coming up:

Wal-Mart and Target – The last DVD standing

 

Are CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX must haves ??

November 2nd, 2009 § Leave a Comment

I’ve taken quite a bit of time off from posting any thoughts, but the media business is changing so rapidly that I just had to put a few thoughts down for kicks.

Question: If you were required to pay to receive the broadcast networks (as we’ve come to know them), how much is too much? That means, what is it worth to you to see shows on ABC, CBS, NBC or FOX each month? $ 1.00 a month per network, more? Would you pay to get these channels?
receive
For years these ‘broadcast’ networks have been free, over-the-air channels that are supported by advertising. They still are. But you might say, ‘c’mon now, these are free channels’ why should I pay now? Answer: its NOT Hulu. Think about what you’d not be able to watch if you decided NOT to pay; Super Bowl, the Grammys, CSI, The Final Four, Survivor and David Letterman, The World Series and I could add another dozen or so shows and events. How about now, is $ 1.00 a month too much?
I believe that soon, we will be seeing a ‘fee’ to have these channels included in our cable packages, satellite packages, etc. And the reason we’ll see this fee is that these networks can charge for this and will most likely get it. They will charge a fee to cable op’s to carry the network and cloth them as ‘retransmission’ fees.
“Going forward, we will be seeking retransmission dollars from our distributors,” said Murdoch, FOX Chairman. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves announced that he intended to charge retransmission fees for CBS.
I think its just a matter of time before we will see those fees ‘bleed’ into our monthly bills. And once Hulu begin to charge, there won’t be anywhere else to go…except the torrents and newsgroups which are out of the reach of most people.
Welcome to the future.

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