Finn’s age is totally fucked up. His dad died in the Gulf War, which means he’d have to be at least 20 now (there was a picture of his dad holding him as a baby, so no “mom was preggers, used preserved sperm, etc” type outs allowed).
Or his mom is a liar and his dad didn’t die in the Gulf War.
[QUOTE=TBG]
Or his mom is a liar and his dad didn’t die in the Gulf War.
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Which even so you’d think that he’d have noticed. I’ve always assumed this will be an episode; maybe he’ll start to college and wonder why he doesn’t have any veteran’s survivor benefits.
That’s bothered me too – my best fanwank is that Finn’s dad survived the Gulf War but died a couple of years later from war-related medical problems. Or maybe Finn was held back in school and his mother lied to him about his birthday so he wouldn’t feel bad on it, like Troy on Community.
Last week I was wondering just how old Burt is, since he said he wore a Tony Orlando-esque powder blue tux to his own prom. I think of that as a mid to late '70s look, but I would have assumed Burt was in high school in the '80s. (Actor Mike O’Malley was born in 1966, although his character isn’t necessarily the same age.) Maybe we’re supposed to believe that Lima, or at least Burt, were a few years behind in terms of fashion.
The kids also seem to have a much broader knowledge of classical rock than most kids their age. They didn’t have to be told who Fleetwood Mac was for instance; I might be wrong but I don’t think most 16 year olds would be that familiar with their body of work. For that matter even the gayest kids in 10th grade rarely know Gypsy.
Teens today may know more about classic rock than you’d guess, just because a lot of classic rock hits are now commonly used in commercials/TV shows/movies. They’d presumably be familiar with whatever music their parents liked, too.
I think it’s kind of a running gag that a lot of Kurt’s interests seem more (stereo)typical of a much older gay man.
Hello, I’m Crayons and I used to work as a licencing agent. Yes, you are correct, the licencing for a non-original song is extremely costly, and in the end it often profits the original composer who gets a big share of, if not most of, the royalties for the composition’s use.
With recordings alone, if you record a cover tune, you generally have to get a Statutory Licence and pay the statutory rate. So I could record a Lady Gaga tune and it would not be that expensive - perhaps only $1,500 for me to recored a cover tune and sell it on my album. That amount is unlikely to deviate from the industry prescribed rate. To licence music for movies or TV, you are dealing with completely different animals: the Synchronization Licence, and the Master Use licence (if you are using an existing recording also). Those licencing agreements can be as expensive as the market will withstand - remember how much Microsoft spent to licence “Start Me Up?”. Then there are upticks for how the song is used, in what context, how much of the song is used, whether or not you see the source of the song onscreen, or whether or not the song is performed onscreen or is just back ground music, and so on.
For example, for a completely unknown independent artist, I would accept no less than $10,000 if you wanted to use his song on a TV show as background music for a 30 second scene of a romantic dinner. If you wanted the song as background music for a violent rape scene, you will pay more. You want one of the actors to put a vinyl record on a record player and the audience actually sees the source of the music? That will cost you even more! What’s that? Someone is going to actually SING the song onscreen? Oh then that uptick is going to make you bleed money.
When a song is played on the radio, the composer gets a percentage of the performance royalties. These are collected by performing rights associations based on tracking radio station playlists. It does not matter who is singing the song, whether it’s the Glee kids or Lady Gaga, the person who wrote the song will get their cut of the performance royalties. Similarly, every time a song appears on TV or is screened in a theatre, royalties accrue. So the Glee guys, are paying ungodly amounts of money for the privilege of using Madonna songs, and every time an episode airs and/or plays in reruns, Madonna’s composers are getting a cut of the royalities. If they make a “Songs from Glee” album, licencing the song will just be the statuory rate, but that means 6.5%-8.5% of your sales of the Glee version of the Madonna single go back to the composer and cut into the Glee profits. The Glee version plays on the radio, a chunk of the performance royalties go back to the original composer.
For a film or TV production the least costly way to get music is through a work-for-hire agreement. In the same way you hire a baker to bake your wedding cake and then disappear from your life, you contract someone as an employee for a flat fee they write you a song for which they have no intellectual property claims, the song belongs entirely to the production company. You don’t have to worry about licencing fees, and all the royalties come back to you. You don’t have to share the $.
This was a very interesting post. Thank you.
I have a question: why would it be more expensive to see the music being played?
I would think it has to do with focus. Background music is not the focal point of the scene. But a group actually performing the song? The music is the scene and so it deserves more compensation.
Edit: Expanding on what Ludy said:
It has to do with prominence, in the same way that an uncredited background performer, like an extra who just walks past the camera silently, is paid differently than a bit actor who has a speaking role, even if it’s only Man on Street #2 saying: “Look, up in the sky!”, who in turn is paid differently than a featured performer who has pages of dialogue. You have featured use vs. background use and various shades of grey when it comes to how prominent it is.
“Score music” is music that the actor/character doesn’t hear. For example, the person swimming in the moonlight does not hear the cello strains going “Daaaaaaaa dum… Daaaaaaa dum… dum dum, dum dum dum dum…” as Jaws is coming in for the big chomp. I licenced a slow song to a movie where they just play background music to add audio texture to a scene, so you get the idea that the scene is supposed to be romantic. You may not remember the song, and truthfully ANY song could be there as long as it was slow and romantic. The actors don’t notice it and won’t react or respond to it anymore than Jaws knows you’re playing his tune. The audience hears it, the characters don’t.
On the other hand “source music” IS heard by the actors/characters. It has an actual onscreen source and/or cue and is much more prominent, like when the kids in Reality Bites yell “OMG, My Sharona - I LOVE this song!” and start dancing around to “My Sharona” in the corner store. In that case, your attention is drawn to the specific song and really no other song will do at that point because it has specific relevance to the scene.
If the song is performed, like Ethan Hawke and his band singing Blister in the Sun, the song is then a really important focal point of that scene. That entire moment is about him saying “fuck you” to Winona Ryder and he does it through the song. It’s not only being acknowledged by the actors who can hear the music, it’s being played and used practically as dialogue and is an intrinsic component of that climactic romantic spat. It’s the prime focus of the scene.
As one would expect, most of the music in Glee is the last. Most of the time, the song IS the scene. The show’s licencing must be unbelievably expensive particularly now that they’re a hit show seen by so many people worldwide . If you are confident the show has a hefty music budget and your client is famous enough to have some leverage, you can try to wring more out of them. But it also benefits you in the form of royalties if a hit show has your song in re-runs and soundtracks for sale, so you don’t want to push too hard either. Basically, the lawyers on all sides are really, really busy.
I remember when Moulin Rouge came out, during that time I was working for the indie record label and with every song I was just blown away because all I could hear was “cha-ching!” and see dollar signs falling off the screen. On the other end of the spectrum, the label I worked for often licenced music to student film productions, with non-existant music budgets, for only $1 and we would go through the entire contract and licencing process because it was a good learning experience for students.
This has been really informative, Crayons, thanks. You should consider starting a thread because these issues have come up before but many people don’t watch GLEE and would never check this thread.
So how do payments for radio play work? I always assumed that artists and publishing companies wanted the music played as that’s where many people hear it for the first time and buy it. Any idea what a radio station would pay for a current hit vs. a Golden Oldie vs. a novelty record (e.g. like the type Dr. Demento would have played)?
You mentioned MY SHARONA above. I read that Tarantino wanted to use that for the rape scene in Pulp Fiction but they wouldn’t license it. Was that more likely a decision by the licensing agency or the artist?
As for original music for GLEE, I wonder what the contracts read like there. If I were an unknown songwriter trying to make a name I could see allowing GLEE to use it even if it meant they made the lion share of the profits, BUT I would want to retain full publishing rights for any future recordings. Can this be done?
Note: for the following, my info may be out of date, I quit the label in 2004 and things were changing at the time. And gosh, you guys are making me think back a bit here. Hopefully, I won’t give you bad info.
Radioplay, concerts, TV broadcasts, podcasts etc. fall under “performance”.
Let’s start with radio and TV:
Radio stations do not pay per individual song, they just pay a blanket licence to play music on the air. The fees collected go to a pot, which is divvied up by the performing rights associations, such as ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, SOCAN, APRA etc. and paid out to artists whose songs have been played. TV stations do the same for the privilege of being able to broadcast content.
Next, comes the tracking. Historically, radio stations would have to submit (on paper!) their playlists that showed every song they ever played and how many times they played it. I think this was weekly or monthly, but I don’t remember. TV shows similarly provided cue sheets, program schedules, and station logs. The performing rights organizations can figure out which exact songs have played on radio and in TV shows. Computer programs have made this MUCH easier as you can imagine, and some can automatically “hear” the tune, compare it to the song database, and count it. Then the performing rights association figures out who gets how much money. “Oh, look. Sampiro’s hit song was played 101,572 times in the U.S. last month. So he gets $XXX,XX. Cut him a check!”
Note for indie artists: if you are starting to get any kind of radioplay, or you get your music in a movie or TV show, please REGISTER your damn songs with your local performing rights association, ASCAP in the U.S. for example, or SOCAN in Canada. If your song isn’t registered, then your money will just sit forever in the big pot because no one will now how to pay you.
Concerts work a similar way along with any live performance venue. Concert halls and bars that have music, whether live or via DJ, are supposed to pay some kind of music licencing fees too. So do other public music providers like the Muzak tunes you hear in elevators or while on hold. Concerts are tracked via set lists. I dated a musician who would play her own songs in bars or in concert, then submit her set lists to APRA and she’d get a royalty check for playing her own music. If you’re some no-name guitar player who sings cover tunes in a bar, you can submit your set list (I have no idea how that is done) and your favorite artists will get some pocket change for your efforts. I’m not sure how Musak and the telephone “on hold” music do their tracking.
Hard to say who exactly. Generally, artists are too busy to deal with publishing issues themselves. Plus, artists are not necessarily good business people, so left to their own devices they’d probably be screwed over regularly. That why publishers and exist. For a percentage of the publishing rights, you can have someone whose entire life is dedicated to finding ways of licencing your music and making money with your compositions. They are your compositions’ pimp! Then there are your various agents and lawyers who do the more complicated stuff, like film and TV licencing, and somewhere along the line the artist has probably signed something to give some of those agents the authority to act on their behalf.
So for all those times you said, with righteous indignaton: “Hey, I can’t believe our favorite rock god, Sampiro, sold out! He let his song be used for a Stove Top Stuffing commercial! The bastard!” chances are it had more to do with publishers and agents.
That said, there are issues when it comes to using music in TV or film under… let’s say “unsavory” circumstances (NB - this part I can only vouch for via my Canadian experience, it may be different in other territories): There are “moral rights.”
Copyright takes care of your intellectual property ownership, but there are some provisions therein for “moral rights” so you have some protection from uses that you feel mutilates your composition or grossly distorts your work. This is essentially what happened when Coolio was upset at Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise.” Weird Al’s people did their due diligence to get clearance for a derivative work from Coolio’s representatives, but Coolio himself was never consulted. The original song was quite meaningful to him and he felt the spoof spoiled the important message of the original. I think they’re okay now, but Coolio was disappointed at the time.
Moral rights can NOT be assigned to a third party i.e. your music pimp (publisher). So unlike cover tunes, sheet music, and ringtones that your publisher has the authority to exploit, TV and film licences include waivers for moral rights, and those contracts have to go further up the chain to someone who has more authority to say: “No, Sampiro is a tettotaller and you can NOT use his ‘Drunk on Jesus’ song for a beer commercial. I know he would disapprove.” Or the contract will actually be seen by the artist directly, it depends on the agent/artist professional relatonship.
When you licence your song to TV and film, you almost always wave your moral rights because the film people don’t want to worry about you freaking out later when everyone only remembers your song as the one Mr. Blond danced around to while holding a chopped off ear in his hand. But the music licencing contract will include a written description of all scenes in which the music will appear: the romantic dinner, the hallucinatory dream, the violent sexual torture… Wait, what?
If your agents feel the use may hurt your brand and/or future income, they will decline or at least ask for lots and LOTS of zeros. If the deal is big enough and the participants important enough, sure, the composer is a lot more likely to be in on the conversation. I don’t know specifically about “My Sharona” being refused, but I would consider that reasonable. Tarantino makes hit movies that linger in cultural consciousness. In that case, there is a risk that people would ALWAYS think of the rape scene when they heard “My Sharona” and that could hurt the future profitability of the song. It risks reducing its already limited radio play and sales if people now find it disturbing, it may affect future licencing and publishing opportunities etc. There are a lot of factors to be considered that go beyond being a good sport and playing ball with Taratino. With adequate compen$ation, you may not care.
Sure. You don’t need to surrender your rights at all. The licence is only a fee they pay to use the song on the show. They aren’t entitled to anything else and no one would actually expect you to relinquish any rights. Although they might try to get you to sign away your rights if they think your agent/lawyer is a complete idiot and they can get away with it.
It’s a different can of worms if you wrote a song but NO ONE has recorded it yet and it is unpublished/unreleased. That is a bit scarier and definitely outside the scope of what I would have ever dealt with contract wise. That would have been out of my league.
But what Glee wants to do when they’re talking about “writing original music for the show” is music as “works for hire.” Basically, they’d hire composers as their staff, the same way they have a team of writers creating the stories and dialogue for each episode. As contracted employees, they are not entitled to ANY rights at all. So ALL income generated by the music on the show will belong to the show. They wouldn’t need to share any pennies with Journey or Andrew Lloyd Webber.
They probably had to pay Webber a big fat lump sum for the synch licence to “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” Now every time that Glee episode is on TV, Webber gets some cash. Whenever the Glee kids go on tour and Kurt sings that song, Webber gets some cash. Whenever anyone buys the album that has Kurt singing that song, Webber gets some cash. If they use staff composers, that revenue stream will go back to Glee’s pockets instead. The risk is that one of the big things that makes the show so popular is the nostalgia value of hearing the songs of OUR youth revived today.
I’d love to do an “Ask the…” thread, but I’m not on the Dope regularly enough, I don’t think. I can’t access the boards from work, and my post-work hours tend to be pretty computer averse.
You … you mean … not everything on the show is realistic? :eek:
I need a moment here … thanks.
cough::Add It Up::cough
That’s almost a certainty. However, you don’t even need to fanwank that much. I can verify that for my sister’s senior prom in 1982, her date wore a powder blue tux – and this was in a chi-chi Long Island suburb. They’re two years older than Burt would be (assuming he’s the same age as his portrayer – and me, for that matter), but I can definitely believe powder blue in 1983 or 4.
Gotta disagree; I think kids obsessed with Broadway would – Gypsy is basically considered the uber-Broadway show, and besides, it’s had two fairly recent B’way revivals in the past ten years (2003 and 2008, with Berndadette Peters and Patti LuPone, respectively). Kids like Kurt and Rachel would probably be able to rattle off the cast list of these productions without batting an eyelash.
Huh, if someone asked me to name the uber-Broadway show I would never in a million years have come up with Gypsy. I would have said one of:
Cats
Les Miz
Phantom
A Chorus Line
Sweeney Todd
Rent
West Side Story
Oklahoma
I would probably pick Rent as “show most likely to be adored by a present-day gay teenage Broadway fan”. Gypsy may be the uber-member of a particular subcategory, the diva-oriented show, but I really don’t think it’s that prominent overall.
(Although obviously who cares…)
:smack: I stand corrected.
[QUOTE=choie]
Gotta disagree; I think kids obsessed with Broadway would – Gypsy is basically considered the uber-Broadway show, and besides, it’s had two fairly recent B’way revivals in the past ten years (2003 and 2008, with Berndadette Peters and Patti LuPone, respectively). Kids like Kurt and Rachel would probably be able to rattle off the cast list of these productions without batting an eyelash.
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Good point on the revivals. I was a Broadway show obsessed kid but when I was Kurt’s age Gypsy hadn’t been revived since Angela Lansbury plus YouTube wasn’t available- you had to actually buy the records if you wanted to listen- but I can see how for a gay-teen today it would be more available.
I was familiar with Gypsy as a teen in the '90s thanks to the Bette Midler TV version, but I see now that this would have first aired in 1993…before Kurt was even born. I know I didn’t see it until a few years later than that, but I still feel old. 
Since Kurt’s been established as a big Patti LuPone fan then choie is probably right that he would have become interested in Gyspsy with the 2008 revival.
It took me a minute to realize that Sue wasn’t wearing a track suit to the funeral. No wonder she didn’t have time to clean out Jean’s room; she had to go shopping for some real clothes.
Yeah, naturally I was expecting her to show up in a black track suit (or another weird track suit skirt/dress). This is only the 3rd time we’ve seen her not wearing a track suit, isn’t it? Last season there was that episode where she learned swing dancing and wore a zoot suit suit, then a few episodes ago she disguised herself as David Bowie & Ann Coulter.
P.S. Also last season she dressed up like Madonna.