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https://www.techdirt.com/2024/10/01/taylor-swift-singer-songwriter-copyright-innovator/>
"Taylor Swift is in the news, and not just because she has become the most
decorated solo artist of all time. The fact that Taylor Swift has already been
mentioned multiple times on
Walled Culture underlines that she is also an
important – if surprising – figure in the world of copyright. That’s because
Swift has been re-recording her albums in order to gain full control over them.
She lost control because of the way that copyright works in the music industry,
where it is split between the written song and its performance (the “master
recording”). Record label contracts typically contain a clause in which the
artist grants the label an exclusive and total license to the master. By
re-recording her albums, Swift can add control of the master to her control of
the written songs.
Swift’s long battle is well-known in the industry. But an article on the
Harvard Law Today site from a few months back adds an important detail to
this story that I have not seen reported anywhere else. It draws on comments
made by Gary R. Greenstein, a “technology transactions partner” at Wilson
Sonsini, one of the top US law firms. It concerns a common legal requirement in
contracts to wait a certain number of years before artists are allowed to
re-record an album:
It’s significant, Greenstein said, that the first Taylor’s Version wasn’t
released until she’d been off [record label] Big Machine for three years.
Until then, she was legally bound not to re-record any of the material, and
this time frame was typical of record deals in the past. But this is the
part of the equation that Swift likely changed for good.
According to Greenstein, the major record labels used to be fairly reasonable
in terms of the length of the prohibition they imposed on on re-recording. But
he says that’s no longer the case as a result of Swift’s successful project to
regain full control of her own works:
record companies are now trying to prohibit re-recordings for 20 or 30
years, not just two or three. And this has become a key part of contract
negotiations. “Will they get 30 years? Probably not, if the lawyer is
competent. But they want to make sure that the artist’s vocal cords are not
in good shape by the time they get around to re-recording.”
In other words, as soon as a creator finds a way to take back control from
intermediaries that have routinely derived excessive profits from the labor of
others, the copyright world fights back with new legal straitjackets to stop
other artists daring to do the same. That’s yet another reason for creators to
retain full control of their works, and to shun traditional intermediaries that
try to impose one-sided and unfair contracts."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
