This thread is half GQ and half IMHO so of course I’m putting it here. For videos shown on MTV or other music channels, am I right in assuming that there’s some sort of license agreement between either the artist or the label and the channel? Generally does the agreement allow for the video to be shown indefinitely in any manner the channel wishes? I’m thinking the license agreement must heavily favor the channel, otherwise shows like “Pop-up Video” and that one MTV had a few years ago about which videos sucked so bad they’d never be shown again wouldn’t exist. Do the artists get paid by the channels at all? Can the artist and/or the label revoke the license at will? I’m thinking of 10,000 Maniacs’ declaration that they would never perform “Peace Train” because of Cat Stephens’ support for the Rushdie fatwa. Can the band stop MTV from showing the video for the song?
With the intro of Apple’s iStore for music downloads, I got to wondering whether any market for downloading old videos for a fee exists. I know there are a lot of videos I wouldn’t mind seeing again but I don’t know how much I’d be willing to pay to download them. How about y’all?
I don’t know about the first part of your question as far as licensing the videos. It was my understanding that it was just a one-time licensing fee, but IANARE (record executive).
As far as the videos, there is definitely a “market” for them, and dpending on your morals as per digital piracy, you can get them fairly easily.
Sure they pay for the soundtrack. MTV pays ASCAP a yearly fee, which gives them the rights to use songs in their catalog (they probably also pay BMI and other rights clearinghouse organizations to cover all bases).
As for videos, they do pay someone; I’m not as familiar with the mechanism, so I can’t say whether it’s the record company, the film company, the artist, or some combination (actually, the artist would get ASCAP payments; the question would be for other payments).
I would guess it would be set up along the lines of ASCAP: they pay a yearly licensing fee that gets divvied up among the licensees depending on how often their video is played.
There may be a market to download legal music videos; it’s possible that iStore will move in that direction.
I don’t have a cite, so take this with a grain of salt. But I heard that Joan Jett won’t allow one of her videos to be played on VHI Classic. I don’t know which one, but if she’s letting them play “Do Ya Wanna Touch”, then I can’t imagine what it is she doesn’t want played.