Prince keeps bleating about other people doing his songs and how unfair it is. According to the law, people can legally record someone elses song, as long as they pay that artist a fee for every album that sells.

The most obvious example of this was Aretha Franklin doing Respect, a song written by Otis Redding. Let's not forget, back in the day, Redding accused Franklin of stealing his song.

Ironically, Respect is loved by Prince--Prince once put his foot in his mouth and said that Respect was written by Franklin.

You may not like it Prince, but copyright laws are different than other property laws, you cannot promote monopolistic control of your tunes.

Sorry, but that dog don't hunt. You don't like it, move somewhere else.

2freaky4church1 said:

Prince keeps bleating about other people doing his songs and how unfair it is. According to the law, people can legally record someone elses song, as long as they pay that artist a fee for every album that sells.

The most obvious example of this was Aretha Franklin doing Respect, a song written by Otis Redding. Let's not forget, back in the day, Redding accused Franklin of stealing his song.

Ironically, Respect is loved by Prince--Prince once put his foot in his mouth and said that Respect was written by Franklin.

You may not like it Prince, but copyright laws are different than other property laws, you cannot promote monopolistic control of your tunes.

Sorry, but that dog don't hunt. You don't like it, move somewhere else.

You gotta be kidding. He actually SAID THAT?! Wow.

He hasn't made the claim that it's illegal to do covers, so I don't know why you chose to title this thread as "Prince doesn't know shit about law". On the contrary, he seems to know the law quite well. He's pointed out that it's not legal in any other art forms to do a version of your own of someone else's original piece without seeking a permission first. Apparently he doesn't like that part of it.

He's given quite short comments on the issue and who knows how accurate those interviews he has done recently are (plus the questions he's been asked have been often quite dumb). He used to discuss the problems of the recording industry more in detail in some of the interviews in the 1990s, but I suppose he realized the general audience found them to be pretty boring to read.

Isn't that what Prince has always argued though that an artist can record without permission?

TheDance55 said:

Isn't that what Prince has always argued though that an artist can record without permission?

But most artists usually do ask for permission to cover it. Sampling was a different story until the mid-1990s.

Timmy84 said:

TheDance55 said:

Isn't that what Prince has always argued though that an artist can record without permission?

But most artists usually do ask for permission to cover it. Sampling was a different story until the mid-1990s.

Yeh, I know. But what I'm saying is that 2freaky4church1 has said Prince doesn't know shit about law because artist can record without permission aslong as they give a fee to such artist, when this is what Prince has always argued - that an artist can just record it without the permission. So, Prince does know the law.

[Edited 8/16/11 12:17pm]

Yeah, the thread title doesn't make any sense.

Prince has been criticizing the copyright law itself with his recent comments.

novabrkr said:

He hasn't made the claim that it's illegal to do covers, so I don't know why you chose to title this thread as "Prince doesn't know shit about law". On the contrary, he seems to know the law quite well. He's pointed out that it's not legal in any other art forms to do a version of your own of someone else's original piece without seeking a permission first. Apparently he doesn't like that part of it.

He's given quite short comments on the issue and who knows how accurate those interviews he has done recently are (plus the questions he's been asked have been often quite dumb). He used to discuss the problems of the recording industry more in detail in some of the interviews in the 1990s, but I suppose he realized the general audience found them to be pretty boring to read.

Agree

And anyway - why should Prince be an expert on Law - he is a musician and artist not a lawyer

Bookmark...

2freaky4church1 said:

Prince keeps bleating about other people doing his songs and how unfair it is. According to the law, people can legally record someone elses song, as long as they pay that artist a fee for every album that sells.

The most obvious example of this was Aretha Franklin doing Respect, a song written by Otis Redding. Let's not forget, back in the day, Redding accused Franklin of stealing his song.

Ironically, Respect is loved by Prince--Prince once put his foot in his mouth and said that Respect was written by Franklin.

You may not like it Prince, but copyright laws are different than other property laws, you cannot promote monopolistic control of your tunes.

Sorry, but that dog don't hunt. You don't like it, move somewhere else.

mmmm check your lawbooks again my friend: the whole point of intellectual properties rights is to create a monopoly - of you and only you using your intellectual properties rights! So the inventor of a patent has the only right to use his invention - check with Apple versus Samsung law cases that are going on at the moment. As for tunes: if you don't want your song recorded you say either no to a request or ask 4.000.000 dollar for your approval.

As for texts: nobody can copy a large piece of text in his/her book that was written by an author that still lives or is less than 70 years old (copyright (incorrect name btw it's authorsright) remains in the family until 70 years after the death of the creator - the authorsright owner): thus creating a monopoly on who can use that text.

to be honest, who really gives a shit what he thinks of LAW...or Religion

No one is perfect...None of us are angels

Live and learn...give something back to the less fortunate of us...

Peace.

No, you don't have to ask the permission for covering someone else's song. Technically speaking, yes, but there are agencies that can handle the licensing for you very conveniently and you don't really have to do anything else than pay them for their services. It can be just a pain in the ass later on trying to find out how many copies your cover version has sold and how to pay the royalties from the sales to the person that wrote the song.

I'd like to do "If I Was Your Girlfriend" for a very small compilation release, but I'm not sure what type of money I should be paying Prince for something that probably will sell only a handful of copies. Some smaller indie labels don't even have to pay taxes for their smaller releases, because those sales are comparable to, say, girl scouts selling brownies from door to door.

Most of them sound crappy covering his stuff anyway, recorded or live, law or no law.

Trey Songz was horrible! My ears, there ought to be a law against that, kidding, but not really

novabrkr said:

No, you don't have to ask the permission for covering someone else's song. Technically speaking, yes, but there are agencies that can handle the licensing for you very conveniently and you don't really have to do anything else than pay them for their services. It can be just a pain in the ass later on trying to find out how many copies your cover version has sold and how to pay the royalties from the sales to the person that wrote the song.

I'd like to do "If I Was Your Girlfriend" for a very small compilation release, but I'm not sure what type of money I should be paying Prince for something that probably will sell only a handful of copies. Some smaller indie labels don't even have to pay taxes for their smaller releases, because those sales are comparable to, say, girl scouts selling brownies from door to door.

you don't have to ask for covering a song live (the licensing rights (as you correctly call it) is paid by the organiser of the concert - even in your local bar - IE moneymaking system is very well organized with tentacles in every bar/pub/club/dancehall/concertstadium in the world - I can explain how it works but it's beyond this topic).

As for recording a cover and release it without permission (even when given away for free!)... go ahead, learn the hard way... ask ?uestlove - he wants to release a The Roots version of Take Me With U for years now, but he can't (don't want to) pay the price Prince wants for it (it was on okaplayer.com a few years ago).

Taxes has nothing to do with intellectuel properties rights but with earnings - small indie labels make no or not enough money, like you said - to have to pay tax. But that doesn't mean they don't have to pay licensing rights for a cover on one of their releases. If Prince finds out a cover of If I Was Your Girlfriend is covered and released without his permission he can (not saying he will) sue that indie label into bankrupcy because someone forgot to ask permission. But if you don't believe me, good luck - still friends

roverlo said:

novabrkr said:

No, you don't have to ask the permission for covering someone else's song. Technically speaking, yes, but there are agencies that can handle the licensing for you very conveniently and you don't really have to do anything else than pay them for their services. It can be just a pain in the ass later on trying to find out how many copies your cover version has sold and how to pay the royalties from the sales to the person that wrote the song.

I'd like to do "If I Was Your Girlfriend" for a very small compilation release, but I'm not sure what type of money I should be paying Prince for something that probably will sell only a handful of copies. Some smaller indie labels don't even have to pay taxes for their smaller releases, because those sales are comparable to, say, girl scouts selling brownies from door to door.

you don't have to ask for covering a song live (the licensing rights (as you correctly call it) is paid by the organiser of the concert - even in your local bar - IE moneymaking system is very well organized with tentacles in every bar/pub/club/dancehall/concertstadium in the world - I can explain how it works but it's beyond this topic).

As for recording a cover and release it without permission (even when given away for free!)... go ahead, learn the hard way... ask ?uestlove - he wants to release a The Roots version of Take Me With U for years now, but he can't (don't want to) pay the price Prince wants for it (it was on okaplayer.com a few years ago).

Taxes has nothing to do with intellectuel properties rights but with earnings - small indie labels make no or not enough money, like you said - to have to pay tax. But that doesn't mean they don't have to pay licensing rights for a cover on one of their releases. If Prince finds out a cover of If I Was Your Girlfriend is covered and released without his permission he can (not saying he will) sue that indie label into bankrupcy because someone forgot to ask permission. But if you don't believe me, good luck - still friends

No. You can record a cover version of a song without asking for the permission from the original artist or the writer of the song. Companies such as Harry Ford Agency and Limelight will do the licensing job for you in the States (in all honesty, I had to google up those names). If you had to ask for the permission from the original artist then Prince definitely would have made sure many of the cover versions of his songs would have never been released. That obviously has not happened and he is complaining about not being able to do anything about it himself.

Please don't try to school me with meaningless statements such as "Taxes has nothing to do with intellectual properties rights but with earnings".

2freaky4church1 said:

You may not like it Prince, but copyright laws are different than other property laws, you cannot promote monopolistic control of your tunes.

I disagree with you. I think Prince knows a lot more about the law, especially copyright laws, than you.

roverlo said:

As for recording a cover and release it without permission (even when given away for free!)... go ahead, learn the hard way... ask ?uestlove - he wants to release a The Roots version of Take Me With U for years now, but he can't (don't want to) pay the price Prince wants for it (it was on okaplayer.com a few years ago).

If Prince has the Harry Fox agency handeling his "mechanical rights" in the US as the composer of Take me with you, then questlove can cover it, according to US copyright law. He may not however significantly change the song's compostion, arrangement and/or its lyrics.

Note that the covers Prince does on record are practially all significantly different in lyrics compositon and arrangement. Clearly Prince always arranges for the necessary permission to do this before he covers on record. Same for samples by the way.

Live it works different but it is essentailly the same. Exceptions provided, no permission is required. Organsiations such as Ascap in the US or Buma(stemra) in the Netherlands will collect the royalty fees for peforming covers in concert.

2freaky4church1 said:

Prince keeps bleating about other people doing his songs and how unfair it is. According to the law, people can legally record someone elses song, as long as they pay that artist a fee for every album that sells.

Saying that something is unfair doesn't mean you're saying that it's illegal.

Prince isn't accusing people who cover his songs of breaking the law - he's challenging the very law you accuse him of not understanding.

The most obvious example of this was Aretha Franklin doing Respect, a song written by Otis Redding. Let's not forget, back in the day, Redding accused Franklin of stealing his song.

Ironically, Respect is loved by Prince--Prince once put his foot in his mouth and said that Respect was written by Franklin.

I had always assumed that Aretha wrote Respect - you can say what you like about me, and apparently Prince, not knowing that she didn't - but that only proves the point that Prince is trying to make.

If someone covers your song and is not obliged to give you continued acknowledgement, then the artist who created the song basically 'loses' their work to someone else, particularly if that someone makes it so famous that it becomes somewhat of a signature song for them (like Respect for Aretha or Nothing Compares 2 U for Sinead).

I personally think covers should be handled in modern music the way they are in classical music. On a classical CD, each track is labelled with the name of the piece, who wrote it and who's performing it. Why? Partly because most of the original artists are long gone, so if people didn't cover their work, we'd never get to hear it. Even modern composers are covered willy-nilly because that's also the nature of the genre for various reasons, not the least of which because the composer often writes entire orchestral scores, or even pieces for instruments that are not necessarily their strength.

It's standard practice in classical music, I don't see why it's so hard to extend it to popular music.

But again, it's not that Prince is misunderstanding the law - the very fact that he could think Respect was written by the artist who is now synonomously linked to it is evidence of his argument against covers.

You may not like it Prince, but copyright laws are different than other property laws, you cannot promote monopolistic control of your tunes.

Sorry, but that dog don't hunt. You don't like it, move somewhere else.

He's clearly well aware of that and yes, he doesn't like it. So he's not allowed to challenge a law? People do that all the time - God help us if they didn't!

I imagine there are a lot of things about the law that Prince doesn't understand (like any of us) and I also think he's been very hypocritical on this issue by recording covers himself and not labelling them as such, but your argument for him not understanding this particular law is fundamentally flawed on the basis that it's the very law that he's arguing against.

Anyways, other than the fact that Prince, like many others didn't know Otis did the original "Respect", which I can understand, I don't think he doesn't know anything about copyright laws. He seems like he's really knowledgeable on that subject.

The dude didn't even know that Respect wasn't written by Aretha Franklin.

The law favors fairness, since copyright laws already tend to favor corporate monopoly.

It sounds like Prince wants common courtesy of people to approach him to cover his songs, and give the yay or nay on it. If someone wants to record a Prince song, he has no say in the matter. If American Idol wanted to do all Prince songs, they don't need to ask him. Some artists do have control over their publishing though. Springsteen actually signs off on people who have covered his songs. When Manfred Mann recorded "Blinded By the Light", he hated it, but he gave them approval to release it.

Lou Reed ran into that incident with Susan Boyle covering "Perfect Day", where it seemed like he didn't want her singing it on TV, but that wound up having to do with a different publishing company in a different country. She cleared it with the publisher in her country, but when she wanted to sing it in the US, the publisher on behalf of Reed told her people no, and made him look like a bad guy. He had already used that song in ads before, so they cleared it up, and he directed her video and did some damage control.

Since when is it illegal to give Carmen Electra a recording deal? I mean it's a crime but its NOT illegal.

(Its an abstract statement-deal with it!)

sp!

[Edited 8/17/11 8:48am]

2freaky4church1 said:

The dude didn't even know that Respect wasn't written by Aretha Franklin.

What does knowing the author of a song have to do with knowing the law?

The law favors fairness, since copyright laws already tend to favor corporate monopoly.

Copyright law favours fairness even tho it already tends to favor corporate monopoly??

Pray do tell, how much do YOU know about the law?

Check the liner notes to Emancipation. It seems to imply that he thinks "I Can't Make You Love Me" was written by Bonnie Raitt. It was wirtten by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin.

steakfinger said:

Check the liner notes to Emancipation. It seems to imply that he thinks "I Can't Make You Love Me" was written by Bonnie Raitt. It was wirtten by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin.

steakfinger said:

Check the liner notes to Emancipation. It seems to imply that he thinks "I Can't Make You Love Me" was written by Bonnie Raitt. It was wirtten by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin.

for fuck's sake, read it yourself.

It clearly says: written by James Allen Shamblin II and Michael Barry reid published by Almo music copr (ascap)

some of you people are just walking , talking bags of SHIT

2freaky4church1 said:

Prince keeps bleating about other people doing his songs and how unfair it is. According to the law, people can legally record someone elses song, as long as they pay that artist a fee for every album that sells.

The most obvious example of this was Aretha Franklin doing Respect, a song written by Otis Redding. Let's not forget, back in the day, Redding accused Franklin of stealing his song.

Ironically, Respect is loved by Prince--Prince once put his foot in his mouth and said that Respect was written by Franklin.

You may not like it Prince, but copyright laws are different than other property laws, you cannot promote monopolistic control of your tunes.

Sorry, but that dog don't hunt. You don't like it, move somewhere else.

Prince doesn't know shit about the law.

Also, word has it that Jose Baez isn't so hot on guitar! Dude only knows like two chords!