Track 03 -- Bonie and Clyde, [album? -Ben]
I dont know if this has been posted yet but in this new song Beyonce sings a few lines from "If I was your girlfriend", including "sometimes I trip on how happy we could be"

Yeah, the liner nots say that it incorporates the Prince song.
Also interesting is in the "Thankyou's" Prince gets an "extra special thanks" along with Puffy, Suge Knight and others, probably for the sample clearance. (Although it's more common now), I wonder how Jay Z convinced Prince on using the sample. (prince only usually gives a clearance on the condition that the song the artist is creating is "positive", for example MC Hammer probably got the clearance of "When Doves Cry", because the song he was doing it for was "Pray" - positive).

Also interesting to see the copyright notes shows that (as rumored) Universal Music own the rights now to the Prince Back Catalogue

could someone explain the copyright issue. On all Prince albums it has Controversy music etc-which I assume is Prince's copyright. What is the difference between copyright and publishing rights-and if prince doesn't own copyright why is his permission required. I thought everybody owned their copyright these days just not their masters-and Prince has done this from 1978-can someone finally clear this up for me?

Here it is Justin10, publishing and copyright as I know it:

Controversey Music is P's publishing company name. And as a song writer, P owns (I should hope) his publishing. Some artists get themselves into deals, like a production company deal, where they may fork over a part of their publishing to the production company. The percentage the give away can vary, but that's another topic for another time. So assuming P owns all his publishing, someone like Jay Z has to go to P to ask permission to use the song. By this I mean the composition which, to make it easier to understand means what appears on sheet music. (make sense?)

Ok, now that is seperate from let's say a song where the actual track (or sound recording) is sampled -i.e. if Jay Z were to take the original of "If I Was Your Girldfriend" and use that in his song instead of Beyonce singing it. (Think Puffy!) In that case you have a Master use, for which you have to get the permission of the owner of the Master -usually the Record Company.

The reason why the Master and Copyright to the song is owned by the record company is because the typical recording deal is set up as a work for hire where the end result of artist's work (the Master) is owned by the record company, and the copyright is registered to the record company as well. But -(nd not to go too far off the topic) there are different types of copyrights you can register, so while the record company can get ownership of the copyright to the Master, P can retain the copyright to the composition.

Does any of that make sense? And if anyone knows any more about this, does that explain it well enough?

dickiepotter said:

No wonder you passed the bar

Thanks for that-so can someone own the copyright and not the masters. So in real terms apart from a few exceptions does that mean Prince owns as much of his musical entitlements as possible. So if he released say a $16 album through WB what % would he retain (AS producer composer etc)and of a radio play again what would he retain. The reason why I am asking about this is i am wondering the extent of Prince's gripe. i understand that not owning Masters restricts release dates and othrer things but has he earned as much as I would imagine him to have. So say 20 million copies of Purple Rain-what would Prince get?. It is just you see people like for example Robbie Wiliams or even madonna whose income must be divided between so many people and yet they seem to have a far more openly wealthier lifestyle than Prince.