Reply-to: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx>
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Cox" <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, July 10, 2006 12:16 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Mercury co-founder Irving Green passes
<snip>
On the whole, that makes sense, but we should distinguish between the
companies and the composers, authors and artists.
Regards
--
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The composers, authors and artists were paid up-front by the copyright owners, or they are the
copyright owners. It may be different with books and artworks, but with commercially-recorded music,
the recording is a paid performance with perhaps a royalty agreement. Yes, any royalty agreements
should be honored, but the commercial recording is owned by whomever paid for the session and
putting out the record way back when. This is different in some cases, but it was the general norm
in the US, particularly with popular genres of music. Some classical arrangements are more complex
because the orchestra's benefactors may be putting up some of the session money, but I think this
was generally compensated by a generous royalty cut
Point is, there were and are generally but not always agreements in place to compensate the
performer. Whether we think it's fair by today's standards is not the issue. The issue is, was and
is the agreement legal and binding.