But Your Purpleness, It's A Cover. It's Not *Your* Song.

[krylyr]

Snipped by from CNN.com, oddly enough. 
After word spread that Prince covered Radiohead's "Creep" at Coachella, the tens of thousands who couldn't be there ran to YouTube for a peek. Everyone was quickly denied -- even Radiohead

Comments

[garunya]

Just one of many reasons I love Radiohead :)

[krylyr]

Yup. Nothing but respect for them.

[prusik]

IANAL, however, I think the Artist Formerly Represented By A Glyph gets to assert copyright over his specific performance. This is one of the reasons why it's so hard to make (legitimately) recorded stage performances of musicals and plays commercially available. Everyone has to agree to it.

However, just because you can assert copyright on something doesn't mean you have to take it out of circulation. i.e., when you have the right to control distribution of X, you have many options available to you. Only one of them is making sure that no one ever gets to experience it in any way, shape or form.

I think this is a bad move for him. He had people all excited about his work, and now he's thrown all that excitement away. *sigh*

[krylyr]

I'm not even sure how playing someone else's song at a concert works, honestly. Obviously, people don't always get permission, but it seems like if you're going to try to control distribution of concert footage of someone else's song you're covering, you should have some kind of legal agreement with the original band. Although I'm not a lawyer, either.

[prusik]

Oh, there are agencies whose sole purpose in life (AFAICT) is to administer performance rights. e.g., ASCAP and BMI. It's pretty much always the case that as long as you pay your licensing fees, you get to perform whatever works controlled by those licensing agencies you want. It's in their interest to encourage performance.

What I'm not sure of is how those agencies track exactly who played which songs and how often so that they can divide up the money to the rights holders correctly. e.g., do they demand a set list for every concert that every cover band in the US plays?

[krylyr]

Interesting. I always wondered how that worked. Although, yeah, who keeps track of it all? That'd have to be a pretty intense job.

[rufusthered]

It would be great if the guys from Radiohead showed up at one of his concerts. Then when he started playing the song, they walked on stage and pulled the plug on the guitars and amps.

BTW, one good/bad thing about the internet is that once something is put on it, it is hard to take off. Here is the video.

[krylyr]

I couldn't find it there, but I did find another clip on youtube. It was pretty lame (though I've never quite gotten Prince) but I don't think anyone would've cared if he hadn't made such a big deal out of it.