DuranDuran;4178058 said:
That would have been approved by The Beatles record label. Mike had nothing to do with their recordings. Publishing & master recordings are 2 different things. That's why you don't have to get permission to remake a song, but you do to sample one. Legally you don't have to get permission to do a parody of a song either, but Weird Al does so out of courtesy. The person doing the parody does have to credit the original writers though.
barbee0715;4178064 said:
^^They only sued EMI and Nike because they used the master recording. They didn't sue Michael/ATV.
Personally I liked the commercial.
You're right, The (remaining) Beatles did not sue Michael. However, Michael was still involved as he signed it off and made money from it. According to the chairman of Nike, they made a deal with Capitol-EMI and Michael Jackson, not with The Beatles or their record label Apple (separate from Apple Computer Inc., to be clear).
"We negotiated and paid for all legal rights from Capitol-E.M.I., which has the licensing rights to all the Beatles' original recordings, and S.B.K., which represents Michael Jackson's interests as owner of the publishing rights,'' - Phillip Knight, Nike Chairman
[Source]
It's quite a complicated story (The Beatles various rights always have been), and many of the details aren't available publicly. From what is public however, Apple claimed that it was not informed of the use of the song, nor were they not paid for it's continued use so they therefore sued the companies for $15 million (The Beatles were still owed royalties which weren't being paid, in addition McCartney still had additional royalties as songwriter). EMI-Capitol thought the claims were baseless as they had licensed the song along with the support of Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, who liked the idea of it reaching newer generations. However, The Beatles were quite a democracy in the sense that they only went forward with ideas if all 4 of them agreed, and in this case, only "1" of them agreed to it. They felt it was attacking the artistic integrity of their music, they didn't want to see this for any other of their music and so they sued in order to stop it happening again.
The lawsuit didn't take long to be settled out of court, in which The Beatles won. The settlement agreement was kept secret, however one of the likely conditions was that Apple now owned the master recordings to The Beatles music. You can see this because suddenly after the lawsuit, there were no more random Beatles compilations put out without their permission (as there were in the 70s/80s), there were also no more unrelated commercials that utilised their music.
Perhaps more convincingly, the very first Beatles release after the lawsuit, 1994's
Live at the BBC, had the Apple logo on the back and now said "© Apple Corps Ltd. under exclusive license to EMI Records Ltd."
[See here] It continues to remain like this (with some alteration, as EMI was bought out by Universal etc etc). Going back to the idea of the "democracy" is how it continues to runs now, The Beatles only go forward with a project if John, Ringo, Yoko and Olivia (George Harrison's widow) all agree.
aazzaabb;4178071 said:
Great point. McCartney sort of makes me laugh; he's the one who advised MJ to buy music catalogues and The Beatles catalogue was offered to him and Yoko first but they wouldn't pay the money lol. I mean I'm pretty sure Macca made a few dollars from the music he owns that was created by other artists?
aazzaabb;4178074 said:
I'm pretty sure there would have been instances where Paul bought catalogues from musicians that would have also loved to own their own work but couldn't afford it? I'm a fan of The Beatles but I do find Paul annoying as a person.
Yeah so it's very much a case by case basis, when it comes to making money off music being utilised in that way. McCartney isn't necessarily against the use of music in commercials, for example he has licensed his own solo material for use in commercials. However, he felt The Beatles was another beast all together because along with the other 3, he decided back in the 60s that they weren't going to commercialise their music in that way.
aazzaabb;4178074 said:
Paul is an extremely wealthy guy and could have afforded the catalogue.
DuranDuran;4178079 said:
From what I understand, Paul mostly bought the publishing of songs and/or artists that he personally liked such as Buddy Holly. So I guess that's why he didn't want to buy a bunch of songs he wasn't interested in, when the songs he wanted was only a small portion of the catalog. Some of the general public think that Mike bought The Beatles songs as that is what was reported, when the ATV was maybe thousands of songs at the time.
So keep in mind, when Paul was approached, John's death was still
very recent. McCartney was extremely conscious of the fact he would look
incredibly selfish if he bought the remaining rights all for himself. It could be easily spun by the media as him moving in to take any profits off his recently dead friend (and aside from that, McCartney did want Yoko Ono/Lennon's Estate to get their fair share). So he went to Yoko Ono to split the cost and they weren't able to come to an agreement, primarily because Ono thought they could get it for a lot cheaper than the $20 million it was offered to them for. Because an agreement wasn't able to come through and because he didn't want the likely immense backlash of buying it all by himself, McCartney reluctantly let it go.
Over the past few years, McCartney has been working to get back the publishing rights to the music thanks to a Copyright Act of 1976. This time next decade, he will own his publishing rights to the Lennon-McCartney catalogue. The rights for John's share, however, reverted to Yoko Ono in 1990 (as Lennon had died) but she has since made a deal with Sony/ATV that will continue to run for the remainder of the copyrights life.
