I’ve been writing about music clearance but the act of getting the legal permissions to use copyrighted content in your production applies not just to musical works but to art and literary works as well. Not taking the time to get the appropriate licensing can land you in legal trouble as ESPN has just found out.
Last year ESPN broadcast “The Bronx Is Burning”, a popular TV series created by their in-house production company ESPN Original Entertainment. The series portrayed the background events leading to the 1977 New York Yankees dramatic World Series run.
Included in the second episode, “Team In Turmoil“, was a full screen shot of Norman Rockwell’s painting “Bottom of the Sixth“. The painting depicts three umpires looking skyward as raindrops begin to fall. It is a classic Rockwell capturing a unique and wonderful baseball moment. The original painting hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
On May 3rd, the Associated Press reported that ESPN is being sued by Curtis Publishing Company, the owner of the Rockwell painting, for using the image without obtaining a license.
Curtis sent an e-mail to ESPN lawyers notifying them that ESPN did not have a license to use the painting and was committing willful copyright infringement, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit seeks to bar ESPN from rebroadcasting the series until it withdraws use of the painting. In other words, until it removes any footage of the painting from the episode.
Compounding the problem for ESPN is that The Bronx Is Burning has been sold on DVD and VHS format. Recalling the unsold copies and destroying them and having to issue a new movie with the infringement removed will prove costly for the cable network.
UniqueTracks has added four brand new sound effects sets from Blastwave FX to our growing collection of royalty free Sound Effects products.
Podcaster
Podcaster has everything you need to produce a professional podcast. Add music or just a beat loop to your intro and immediately give a focus to the theme of your show. With over 500 sound effects (Animals, Cartoon Effects, Crashes, Human Effects, Vehicles, Weapons and more), this set will let you underscore the humerous, contentious and exciting moments of your podcast.
WebTones
If you design and create professional Flash productions or web sites, then you will want to add this large assortment of multimedia sounds to your production toolbox. The WebTones collection features 1000 unique buttons, clicks, rollovers, pings, beeps, hits and production elements that can easily be plugged into your next production. This collection will provide you with the tools you need to add sonic life to your virtual creations.
Spoilers - Movie Trailer Sound Beds
If you’ve ever wondered where to find those great sonic effects that Hollywood post production editors lay into movies, trailers and commercials, look no further. This incredible set by Blastwave FX will amp-up your production with the latest, most modern audio effects available on the royalty free market. This collection, on 4 DVDs, has 300 stereo movie trailers and compositions with matching 5.1 surround files, plus 200 high impact stereo imaging elements.
Drones
Using long, sustained, audio drone effects is one of the most effective ways of using sound to build drama and interest in a media production. The material contained in the 4 DVD set Drones by Blastwave FX is specially made to give your production a professional, Hollywood-caliber sheen. In total, this collection has over 10 hours of unique sound effects in stereo and 5.1 Surround Sound.
Blastwave FX develops next-generation HD sound effects libraries for professional audio production. Their design and engineering team constantly pushes the sound envelope with innovative product formats, rich metadata, multi-channel libraries and the highest resolution audio that technology allows.
The latest issue of UniqueTracks’ newsletter features an article I wrote that defines Music Clearance - the act of getting the permissions necessary to use music in your production. It also recommends some companies that will handle your music clearance problems when attempting to license a famous or even an obscure recording.
All Clear?
Music Clearance and Music Licensing
Every few weeks or so I’ll get a phone call with an inquiry that goes something like this…
I’d like to use Elvis Presley’s recording of ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ in my film. Can you help me do that?
Regretfully, beyond recommending some other companies to investigate, I am not much help in this regard. Though licensing music is our core business, UniqueTracks only licenses recordings that we have created in-house or that we control the publishing rights to.
What these folks are looking for is a firm that will do “music clearance” work for them. Yes, there are companies you can turn to when you are looking to obtain music licensing rights but have no idea where to turn. These companies will help you acquire the rights to use famous songs but they are even better at finding the rights for obscure songs. Music clearance companies are experts at finding the needle-in-the-haystack information that will eventually track down the song you’re interested in. They will then act as your advocate with the publisher and record company to try and get you the best pricing available.
Just wanted to mention that I’ll be at NAB this year in Las Vegas. We don’t have a booth but I’ll be wandering the floor looking at the orgy of new gear. If you’ll be there and would like to hook up for a latte or beverage of your choice, please let me know.
Democratization of content
Democratization of information
Democratization of media
I’m noticing more and more use of the term “democratization” in articles about the media business.
The term is especially popular in discussions about social media. Social media, a relatively new term, has come to mean those Internet tools that facilitate the “wisdom of the crowd” model where meaning and value are derived through mass collaboration. Examples of social media sites would be such Web 2.0 stars as Wikipedia, Myspace, Facebook Digg, Flikr and Youtube.
Here’s an example from an article by Brian Solis, the owner of the Silicon Valley public relations firm FutureWorks PR.
Social Media is the democratization of content and the understanding of the role people play in the process of not only reading and disseminating information, but also how they share and create content for others to participate. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism to a many-to-many model, rooted in a conversational format between authors and people.
Democratization, as I understood it, had to do with an authoritarian government moving towards a less oppressive, more open society. When applied to media or content, democratization has come to mean a move away from a perceived old and authoritarian media - the major TV networks, film studios, record companies and newspapers - towards a seemingly less oppressive, personally created environment provided by web technology where content is readily available, is free, and can be delivered based on ones likes and dislikes or even the likes and dislikes of one’s network of friends.
We are naturally attracted to words like democracy or democratization in the United States. It’s in our blood. We learn early on that democracy represents freedom. So when democracy is applied to terms like media and information, it’s easy to believe that this must be a good and positive thing.
My own feeling is that democratization can’t realistically be applied to information at all. By casting the media as authoritarian, the term can be used politically by those technologists who are trying to wrest power away from the established media towards their new Web 2.0 innovations.
Content is evaluated on quality, on how well it informs, entertains, teaches or illuminates truths. Using “popularity” as its measure is to greatly misrepresent it.
I enjoyed this blog post by Andrew Keen, author of last year’s controversial book The Cult of the Amateur. He points out in his blog post The end of the middle that democratization of media is in fact a falsehood and that, in reality, wealth and power are just being reallocated to new companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook etc.
Target Corporation has been using the Beatles classic Hello Goodbye in its recent TV advertising. One spot aired during last Sunday’s Grammy Awards broadcast. They have changed the word Goodbye to Good Buy morphing the song’s refrain into an ad slogan “Hello Good Buy, Hello Good Buy, Hello Good Buy….” The campaign is “Say Hello to Good Buys at Target”.
Hello Goodbye is a song from the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour album and was a number 1 hit for the Beatles in both the US and UK in 1967.
Licensing classic songs is attractive to advertisers (those with deep enough pockets) because they can then begin to trade on the cultural significance of the song. Hello Goodbye is part of the soundtrack for a whole generation (or more). By licensing the song, advertisers leverage this collective, accumulated experience channelling it to sell merchandise. But does our culture (do we) pay a price for this?
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There are several spots using Hello Goodbye. Each has a different musical style or arrangement. Here is one version taken from YouTube.
UniqueTracks, a provider of royalty-free media production tools, including music soundtracks, sound effects and animated backgrounds, is happy to announce the release of 2 new royalty free classical music 4-volume CD packs. These new series concentrate on music from the Romantic Era of classical music (from 1820 - 1890).
19th Century Pack Vol. 2 This set includes works of French masters like Gabriel Fauré (Requiem), Hector Berlioz (Symphonie Fantastique), Claude Debussy (Prelude to an Afternoon of the Faun) and Erik Satie (Gymnopedie).
Other featured composers include Felix Mendelssohn (Scottish and Italian Symphonies), Franz Liszt (Faust Symphony and Hungarian Fantasy), Mussorgsky (Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition) and Ottorino Respighi (Roman Trilogy).
Romantic Concerto 4-Volume Pack contains over 4 hours of orchestral music showcasing virtuosic solo performances for piano and violin.
The concertos featured here are part of the classical repertoire and continue to be performed to this day. Volumes include performances of
Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor,
Grieg’s famous Piano Concerto in A minor,
Piano Concerto 1 & 2 by Franz Liszt,
Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor and Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor
Piano Concerto in A minor by Robert Schumann
Max Bruch’s beautiful Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor
Each single volume can be licensed separately. Each individual track can also be licensed and immediately downloaded in WAV or MP3 format.
I’ve come across a fine instructional text that would be very useful for any teacher currently involved with a school television or media production class. The 2 volume course is called Television Production: A Classroom Approach (the first volume is the Teacher’s Edition and the second volume is the Student Edition).
The books were written by two very experienced media specialists, Keith Kyker and Christopher Curchy, who have taught media production in the Florida school system for over 22 years. The text, now in its 2nd Edition, is used by many secondary schools as the main textbook for their courses in television production.
There is also an accompanying CD-ROM featuring editable PowerPoint presentations featuring concepts and illustrations from the chapters and ready-made, fully editable tests for each chapter.
Together, Keith and Chris have written six educational technology books for Greenwood - Libraries Unlimited, and host the popular web-site SCHOOLTV.COM. Additionally, they develop video production software, and have recently authored a DVD and CD-ROM to supplement their latest textbooks. Keith and Chris have presented to thousands of educators at more that 50 conferences and educational gatherings in 14 states.
More evidence that the commercial jingle is making a comeback can be found in Cablevision’s campy ad for its Optimum’s Triple Play service (High Speed Internet, Digital Cable TV & Digital Phone Services).
The jingle uses the dance style Reggaeton to create a fun, over-the-top spot that targets the urban, Latin American market. Reggaeton - a dance style that blends Jamaican reggae and dancehall with Latin American dance rhythms, hip hop and electronica - first gained popularity in Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican musicians and producers have spread the music to the U.S.
It’s a jingle. The music is original and was written specifically to underscore the important elements of Cablevision’s Optimum campaign. The catchiest part of it, and the part that seems to be resonating with viewers, is the chanting of the toll free phone number - the “8–7–7-3-9-3–4-4-4–EIGHT” part.
Here are some comments pulled from YouTube, Yahoo and other sites…
lmao i lovee that comerical.. its catchy lol.. i cant even memorize my boyfriends number that fast..
HAHAHAHA <3333
I Love this ssongg everyone sings it in school
When I was sick in bed this was the only thing that kept going through my head “877 393 444 EIIIIGHT!” I want to kill them.
This is GREAT!! Especially love when the hot mami’s sing,. “8–7–7-3-9-3–4-4-4–EIGHT!!!” Great!
there is no point to this video but i love it it is so funny!!!
When viewers are laughing and teasing each other with your commercial and the music, the jingle, has embedded your toll free number into their consciousness, then you have hit an advertising grand slam.
Yes there are negative comments about the commercial as well but they are mostly complaints about frequency. The ad is being shown a lot. It is currently bombarding the NYC market. But again, the frequency is probably driven by the ads apparent success.
I’ve been writing about jingles lately because I believe their power has been neglected by creatives at ad agencies. Jingles have an uncool or old-fashioned stigma and have, until recently, been ignored.
Taken individually, lifestyle spots, which typically license hit songs from the 1970s/80s/90s pop catalog as their soundtrack, seem creative and funny but they run into problems when watched one-after-another during a commercial break. The ads tend to blur together. Instead of shining a light on the product, the overall effect is weakened by a slew of similar approaches. Everyone is branding the same upbeat lifestyle. There is no product differentiation. The commercial goes to great lengths to keep viewers entertained but it forgets its actual purpose.
Jingles, on the other hand, get right to the point and directly sell your campaign.
I’m very happy to see AAMCO using an actual jingle in their latest “I Got A Guy” campaign. I believe jingles sell better than today’s “lifestyle” spots. Lifestyle spots typically show glossy images of contemporary folk enjoying life while accompanied by a recognized hit song. The ad tries to gain influence from the song’s established popularity. Lifestyle ads are the most popular type of TV commercial. And that’s the problem. The spots all merge together in the viewer’s mind. So many ads are created in this style that viewers don’t differentiate between one spot and the next. Everyone is basically selling the same upbeat lifestyle therefore the products become muddled together or just forgotten.
A jingle is more specific because it is written for the actual product. It’s a custom piece of music writing tailored tightly to the spot or campaign. Jingles are seen as hokey throwbacks but their power is still evident. If you are over 25 years of age you can probably still think of jingles you heard in your youth. That’s real branding. The jingle has ingrained the product into your consciousness, probably for life.
Jingles have been out of the picture for so long that AAMCO is almost breaking new ground with their campaign. Their “I Got A Guy” campaign features the upcoming band Whiskey Falls. With echoes of great southern rock bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Whiskey Falls creates a hard-driving and very entertaining spot. Make no mistake - this is a jingle. It sells the AAMCO brand and even ends with AAMCO’s famous “Double A - M - C - O” brand slogan (a slogan which was conceived during a time when jingles were valued).
The AAMCO spot shows what today’s jingle could be. The song doesn’t have to be lame or corny. There are plenty of modern music styles that could be composed directly to the product. The me, the jingle is a far better way to sell. It might not be the hippest way to sell but I’ll bet it pulls better.
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The other thing I like about the use of jingles is that they are a move away from the rampant plundering of our greatest recordings and the excessive attempts to link hit songs to products which they have nothing to do with.
The article, written by Randy Kennedy, is about the working methods of the artist Richard Prince. Mr. Prince’s art is currently being celebrated in a 30-year retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
One of the methods Mr. Prince uses to create his art is to take photographs of other existing photographs that he finds published as advertisements in magazines.
The strength of the art is that the images he photographs, once removed from their function as advertisements, comment on our culture showing us archetypical images of our society - images that Madison Avenue ad execs have learned have great power. One of Prince’s favorite co-opted images is the Marlboro Man.
But it seems some of Mr. Prince’s photographs are nothing more than enlargements of existing photos. Mr. Prince has done little more than make the decision that the image matches his artistic sensibility. He then calls his enlargement of the existing photo his work and sells that work for increasingly high dollar values. In fact, one of his Marlboro Man pictures set an auction record for a photograph selling for 1.2 million.
The NY Times article centers around Jim Krantz, a successful commercial photographer who took several of the Marlboro Man ad photos “appropriated” by Mr. Prince. One Prince photograph, which sold at Christie’s for $332,300, is an exact duplicate of Mr. Krantz’s original except that it has been blown up to a huge size. Mr. Krantz says, “there’s not a pixel, there’s not a grain that’s different.”
Jim Krantz was paid by the Philip Morris Company for the original photos but has received nothing from Richard Prince. To date, Krantz has asked for no monetary compensation. He is asking for some type of acknowledgement or credit as the original photographer. After all, it’s not just the photo itself, it’s the composition - the conception, the pose, the exact moment to capture - these things were decided by Krantz and re-used by Richard Prince.
The matter provides a stunning look at the challenges facing interpretations of the Fair Use statue within US copyright law. The NY Times article says…
Mr. Krantz, who has shot ads for the United States Marine Corps and a long list of Fortune 500 companies including McDonald’s, Boeing and Federal Express, said he had no intention of seeking money from or suing Mr. Prince, whose borrowings seem to be protected by fair use exceptions to copyright law.
My interest concerns whether Mr. Prince’s use of other people’s photographs truly qualifies as fair use. Here is the law….
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In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include —
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
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(1) clearly Richard Prince’s art is of a commercial nature.
(2) a photograph is a copyrightable work.
(3) in some cases, it appears that Prince has used 100% of the copyrighted work.
(4) this is the main issue - the effect upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work - when an ad campaign is over, do the elements of the campaign, the photo, the copy, do they have any further value? Has the use by Prince harmed the further value of the photograph? This would be the crux of any fair use challenge.
Mr. Krantz said it best, “If I italicized ‘Moby Dick’, then would it be my book? I don’t know. But I don’t think so.”
Though Jim Krantz owns the copyright to most of his photographs, he no longer owns the copyright to the Marlboro Man photos. The Philip Morris Company, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, owns the copyright. Any fair use challenge to Richard Prince’s art would have to initiate from Philip Morris.
I keep thinking about an op-ed article I read in the NY Times while flying to Chicago this Thanksgiving. The article entitled Pay Me For My Content, written by Jaron Lanier, urges Internet developers to move away from the “content must be free” mantra and points towards designing systems that fairly compensate creators for use of their work on the web.
The impetus for the article is the ongoing strike by television writers which, among other things, is challenging the studios for a better portion of residual payments from use of movies and shows on the Internet.
“Like so many in Silicon Valley in the 1990s, I thought the Web would increase business opportunities for writers and artists”, Lanier writes. “Instead they have decreased. Most of the big names in the industry — Google, Facebook, MySpace and increasingly even Apple and Microsoft — are now in the business of assembling content from unpaid Internet users to sell advertising to other Internet users.”
“There’s an almost religious belief in the Valley that charging for content is bad.” says Lanier. In fact, Lanier once felt this way himself. Back when the Internet was new, he wrote an article titled “Piracy Is Your Friend”. Now he says he was wrong.
Should information be free on the web? Lanier says, “Information is free on the Internet because we created the system to be that way. We could design information systems so that people can pay for content - so that anyone has the chance of becoming a widely read author and yet can also be paid. Information could be universally accessible but on an affordable instead of an absolutely free basis.”
It’s an important turn. A web pioneer, once firmly behind the idea (the ideal) that information on the web should be free, now says “We need to grow up. Affordable turns out to be much harder than free when it comes to information technology, but we are smart enough to figure it out. We owe it to ourselves and to our creative friends to acknowledge the negative results of our old idealism.”
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An early Internet pioneer, Jaron Lanier is most known as the creator of the term “virtual reality” and for pioneering several early VR products. He is also an accomplished musician and composer.
“What’s to stop an online mass of anonymous but connected people from suddenly turning into a mean mob, just like masses of people have time and time again in the history of every human culture? It’s amazing that details in the design of online software can bring out such varied potentials in human behavior. It’s time to think about that power on a moral basis.”
It’s a very inciteful statement. The damage done by music piracy comes to mind.
copyright, copyright+infringement, curtis publishing company, espn, infringement cases, infringement lawsuit, intellectual+property, intellectual property issues, television production, the bronx is burning 
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