Timmy84 said:

CocoRock said:

Timmy84 said:

... his cover of "Betcha By Golly Wow" was... uh... yeah.

#I'm fuckin' dyin' ova heah!

electricberet said:

shayde said:

SagsWay2low said:

!

I think we both know, SagsWay2low, that he wasn't talking about the occasional one-off cover live in concert. Obviously, from the Super Bowl and his performing a D-Train classic RIGHT AFTER THE INTERVIEW he'd have to be one whopping hypocryte to be talking about live covers in concert.

He IS a whopping hypocrite.

Fuck him. I'm going to do a whole ALBUM of his songs. Maybe one of his actually GOOD albums that never got released OR one of his shitty albums, change the lyrics like he does on covers he performs and make it a good album. Hmmm.

I don't really see much difference between live performances and selling records when it comes to covering songs.

When you perform it live, you make money without permission by doing a cover of somebody else's song, while (in most countries) you only have to pay a compulsory 'public performance license' fee to do so legally. And when you sell records by doing a cover, you also make money without permission using somebody else's song, while you also (in most countries) only have to pay a compulsory 'mechanical license' fee to do so legally.

One general rule: you may not significantly change the original composition and lyrics of the song. The cover has to respect the song and author's integrity and stay musically as well as lyrically true to the original to stay legal. Otherwise you need specific permission from the author and/or copyright owner to cover that way. And you also generally need to give credit on records, but not live, which is a major difference, tho' not in favour of live covers.

Prince surely got all the necessary licenses in writing from the original authors and/or copyright owners for a (combination of a) song like 'Crimson and Clover' and 'Wild Thing' on Lotusflower, as well as for not giving credit to the authors, nor to his drummer John Blackwell for playing on it, for example.

I guess that for Prince this is all about rules and control, possibly money too, sometimes (when it's a huge hit). In other words, about demanding to be asked permission first to cover his songs on record and not be at the mercy of a system of compulsory licenses, so he will always be able to exert control on the way his songs are covered and by whom and under what (financial) conditions.

Fair enough you could say, from his point of view of having total control. But when he talks about it, it's superficially and he loses sight of all the other aspects of the issue.

In the wider scheme of things, compulsory licenses aren't about Prince and his latest crusade on people using his music without his permission. Instead they have a long history regardless of Prince and are all about having a relatively fair and easy to use system for ALL artists, not just Prince, as well as record companies and music publishers, to be able to legally perform and release covers.

While it is further about a crumbling industry that has always relied heavily on this system to have a steady stream of income, because it makes it possible to re-sell hits over and over and over again. The last thing it needs now, is losing this cash cow.

So I don't really know what Prince is going for here, but I suspect he won't follow up on this in any serious way.

Also, when the radio plays your song, they don't get permission first either, but any artist is very happy when they do. Because it means promotion and you (should) get paid royalties.

Also based on a system of compulsory licences.

Not that this was easily accepted in the days when radio was born. Oh no. Popular radio stations were sued left and right all over the world for copyright infringement. How dare they broadcast copyrighted songs to the general public without permission of the owners of the copyrights!

Needless to say, this couldn't go on for long and goverments worldwide stepped in. Everybody wanted music on the radio, like they do these days on the internet, so radio wasn't going anywhere but was there to stay!

All that was needed was a system of compulsory licenses to make it work.

I'm sooooo sick of ignorant people who rant and rave about this subject w/o first taking time to actually THINK about what Prince meant when he talked about covers. First off, performing a song live isn't the same thing as going in a studio and recording it, putting it on your album, and selling it off as yours. And permission should be asked FIRST when doing the latter out of RESPECT! That is the right thing to do!! And no one knows if Prince ASKED permission to cover Crimson & Clover, Betcha By Golly Wow, etc. So STFU about those, he could have asked!

He's never appeared mad @ Chaka for covering his song...Usually when an artist covers his songs, they butcher it (Tom Jones Kiss)! Prince has never butchered a cover song that he's recorded on an album. And he did say fans/friends were ok to cover his stuff. He just doesn't want the record companies to get overly greedy and constantly shell out his art like it belongs to them. He created these songs, not them. He should have say so over who covers them. Period. All artists should if they wrote it. Playing it live at a show, No big deal. Recording it on an album, releasing it, etc. is a totally different story. And Prince aint the only artist that don't want people stealing his crap, blocking vids from YT, etc.

BTW, The D-Train thing don't even count in the argument since it was Shelby doing most of the singing. Geez!

DaphneLovesPR1NCE said:

I'm sooooo sick of ignorant people who rant and rave about this subject w/o first taking time to actually THINK about what Prince meant when he talked about covers. First off, performing a song live isn't the same thing as going in a studio and recording it, putting it on your album, and selling it off as yours. And permission should be asked FIRST when doing the latter out of RESPECT! That is the right thing to do!! And no one knows if Prince ASKED permission to cover Crimson & Clover, Betcha By Golly Wow, etc. So STFU about those, he could have asked!

He's never appeared mad @ Chaka for covering his song...Usually when an artist covers his songs, they butcher it (Tom Jones Kiss)! Prince has never butchered a cover song that he's recorded on an album. And he did say fans/friends were ok to cover his stuff. He just doesn't want the record companies to get overly greedy and constantly shell out his art like it belongs to them. He created these songs, not them. He should have say so over who covers them. Period. All artists should if they wrote it. Playing it live at a show, No big deal. Recording it on an album, releasing it, etc. is a totally different story. And Prince aint the only artist that don't want people stealing his crap, blocking vids from YT, etc.

BTW, The D-Train thing don't even count in the argument since it was Shelby doing most of the singing. Geez!

We do know that one of the people who wrote Crimson and Clover, Peter Lucia, died in 1987. If he got Peter's permission, he sure did wait a long time before releasing his cover version.

DaphneLovesPR1NCE said:

prince hasn't butchered a cover song??? he's fucked up every single one! songs like one of us and winding road are musical turds anyways so who cares, but when he performed creep and changed the lyrics to meaningless drivel was he showing respect to the original spirit the song was wrote in?? and slaughtering whole lotta love and having the audacity to actually release it is a sign of a man with his head up his own arsehole.

DaphneLovesPR1NCE said:

I'm sooooo sick of ignorant people who rant and rave about this subject w/o first taking time to actually THINK about what Prince meant when he talked about covers.

Just to have this issue 'covered' and not have any misunderstanding about it: were you, by any chance talking about/to me here?

I think the opposite of going to a Prince concert, with real music by real musicians would be watching an episode of Glee.

Perhaps he is talking about the fact that this show can take an artist's song without permission, record it with this group called "The Warblers" (lol...give me a break) and watch it hit the billboard charts in a big way. See article below

http://www.billboard.com/...5842.story

LayDownMisty said:

I think the opposite of going to a Prince concert, with real music by real musicians would be watching an episode of Glee.

Perhaps he is talking about the fact that this show can take an artist's song without permission, record it with this group called "The Warblers" (lol...give me a break) and watch it hit the billboard charts in a big way. See article below

http://www.billboard.com/...5842.story

Agreed...

ParanoidAndroid said:

DaphneLovesPR1NCE said:

I'm sooooo sick of ignorant people who rant and rave about this subject w/o first taking time to actually THINK about what Prince meant when he talked about covers. First off, performing a song live isn't the same thing as going in a studio and recording it, putting it on your album, and selling it off as yours. And permission should be asked FIRST when doing the latter out of RESPECT! That is the right thing to do!! And no one knows if Prince ASKED permission to cover Crimson & Clover, Betcha By Golly Wow, etc. So STFU about those, he could have asked!

He's never appeared mad @ Chaka for covering his song...Usually when an artist covers his songs, they butcher it (Tom Jones Kiss)! Prince has never butchered a cover song that he's recorded on an album. And he did say fans/friends were ok to cover his stuff. He just doesn't want the record companies to get overly greedy and constantly shell out his art like it belongs to them. He created these songs, not them. He should have say so over who covers them. Period. All artists should if they wrote it. Playing it live at a show, No big deal. Recording it on an album, releasing it, etc. is a totally different story. And Prince aint the only artist that don't want people stealing his crap, blocking vids from YT, etc.

BTW, The D-Train thing don't even count in the argument since it was Shelby doing most of the singing. Geez!

He didn't ask Radiohead, neither the band or the management. And what more, he blocked their song on youtube. How nice of him, so STFU, purple-writing-lady.

Nor did he ask Foo Fighters when he not only performed their song "Best of You" live at Superbowl XLI, but sent a recorded version of it to Howard Stern's Sirius show for promotional airplay.

[Edited 4/30/11 6:34am]