Money can buy me love?

October 16, 2009 6:34 PM

Okay, whats the deal. When did The Beatles become fair game?

I just saw a BlackBerry ad featuring All You Need is Love. Its the second Beatles' song I've seen in the last few weeks (I can't remember the other one). However, neither of them were by The Beatles, they were covers. Plus, there's Rock Band, and the reissued catalog. All of a sudden, The Beatles, for the first time, have gone commercial.

Is it a move by Apple to capitalize on the IP while they still can (and by Apple, I assume I mean Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and various heirs)? And why now? Is someone short of cash? Did Michael Jackson's death have something to do with it? I didn't think he still had a stake in the catalog, but maybe I'm wrong. It just seems odd the floodgates open after almost forty years.

posted by rtimmel to media & arts (36 comments total)

It Macys, using Come Together. And it is a cover.
posted by rtimmel at 6:38 PM on October 16

There have been Beatles songs, mostly covers, in commercials for as long as I can remember. I'm in my mid-20s. The one specific one I can remember is some insurance thing that had "When I'm Sixty-Four" in it, and it was at least 10 years ago.
posted by ishotjr at 6:42 PM on October 16

Revolution was used to hawk shoes over two decades ago.
posted by Aquaman at 6:47 PM on October 16

Related.
posted by rokusan at 6:47 PM on October 16

"Getting Better" was used in the Good Guys commercials.
posted by just.good.enough at 6:51 PM on October 16

As much as I love Target, they had some really awful ads with some really awful Beatles covers in the last few years as well. That's when I first heard people getting up in arms about it.
posted by june made him a gemini at 6:52 PM on October 16

I'm pretty sure Michael Jackson bought the rights to a bunch of songs years ago and started selling them as commercials. So, blame him.

Then again, I'm sure Sir Paul needs some spare cash as well.
posted by bondcliff at 7:00 PM on October 16 [1 favorite has favorites]

With RB: Beatles, the surviving members and estates had direct input on its development and release - it wasn't just a case of them cashing in. I believe that the digital re-release was an offshoot of this - since they had to remaster the tracks for the game, they redid them for the re-release at the same time. This has all be in the works for years, so at least these two were not related to MJ's passing.

I'm not sure of the legality of using covers, but I would not be surprised if a loophole was used to cash in on the popularity of the two official releases.
posted by GJSchaller at 7:01 PM on October 16

Okay, whats the deal. When did The Beatles become fair game?

1963.
posted by Ironmouth at 7:07 PM on October 16 [4 favorites has favorites]

The legality of covers is that (U.S., and probably Berne Convention) copyright law provides for mandatory licensing of them. You can always do a cover.
posted by rhizome at 7:12 PM on October 16

The legality of covers is that (U.S., and probably Berne Convention) copyright law provides for mandatory licensing of them. You can always do a cover.

Could you expand on this, please?

If the original artist is compelled to offer a cover license, couldn't she simply set the fee at forty-brazillion dollars and accomplish the same thing as refusing to license?
posted by Netzapper at 7:18 PM on October 16

That's when I first heard people getting up in arms about it.

The Nike Revolution ad in the 80's got a fair amount of outrage. I remember thinking it was "wrong", somehow, myself.
posted by rokusan at 7:20 PM on October 16

This will probably answer your question.
posted by cooker girl at 7:26 PM on October 16

I am not your intellectual property lawyer, but as I recall, the deal is as follows: Michael Jackson bought the rights to most of the Beatles' the songs (the sheet music), and he (or his heirs, now) can therefore license re-recordings of them for commercials and the like. The Beatles still own their original recordings, and so they control where and how they can be used, including the recent Beatles Rock Band.

An interesting question I don't know the answer to is: did the producers of Beatles Rock Band have to buy the rights to the songs from MJ Inc. in order to make the game, which after all involves you playing the notes as they flow past on the screen?
posted by The Tensor at 7:28 PM on October 16 [1 favorite has favorites]

Cover songs have a statutory license fee. The copyright owner of a song can't set the fee to a brazilian dollars because the amount is set by law. Look at the Wikipedia article's references for the legalese.
posted by mkb at 7:34 PM on October 16

I knew my childhood was over when I started hearing Beatles tunes in the background music at my grocery store. That began happening about 30 years ago.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:39 PM on October 16

There's a difference between doing a cover and using a song in a commercial, I would think.
posted by delmoi at 7:43 PM on October 16

The Beatles for Blackberry doesn't surprise me. Blackberry demographics always trended older and now they are trying to portray themselves as hip (in a middle-aged sort of way). What surprises me is that the Beatles haven't been used extensively given the statutory cover licenses. It seems like they would have tracked baby boomer products all the way up.
posted by rtimmel at 7:46 PM on October 16

And this just came out: http://www.8bitoperators.com/beatles/
posted by rocco at 7:48 PM on October 16

1963.

Seconding this. The early Beatles were an incredibly commercial band. My aunt still has a Beatles lunch box--there were also dolls, little booklets of Beatles facts, coin purses, pins, wallets, keychains, really ugly hats, colorforms, and wigs (of course), among other things. I love the Beatles, but I mean, I'm not quite sure where the view of the Beatles as non-commercial came about, especially with strong evidence like this to the contrary.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:55 PM on October 16 [1 favorite has favorites]

Revolution was used to hawk shoes over two decades ago.

Yes, though it's worth pointing out that that happened in about 1989 (IIRC) and that it followed on the heels of a sale of the rights to license the Beatles catalog, and was the first time a Beatles song had been used in an advertisement to sell a product besides Beatles recordings.
posted by Miko at 8:34 PM on October 16

I'm not quite sure where the view of the Beatles as non-commercial came about, especially with strong evidence like this to the contrary.

I think the difference is between the Beatles selling the Beatles as a franchise, and Beatles music being licensed to sell something else.
posted by Miko at 8:35 PM on October 16

I think the difference is between the Beatles selling the Beatles as a franchise, and Beatles music being licensed to sell something else.

The remaining Beatles seem at least cooperative, if not complicit, with their images used in Beatles Rock Band, which OP specifically mentions in the question.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 8:39 PM on October 16

An interesting question I don't know the answer to is: did the producers of Beatles Rock Band have to buy the rights to the songs from MJ Inc. in order to make the game, which after all involves you playing the notes as they flow past on the screen?

You don't play the actual notes as they appear on a staff. Rather, you're playing an abstraction of the notes that correspond to buttons on the controller. As in, instead of playing C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, you're playing yellow, green, blue, red, yellow, green, blue, red. Note that there are many, many more notes (and flats, sharps, keys, etc) than there are buttons, so the abstraction is very rough.

Moreover, depending on the difficulty level, you won't be playing every note in the song. Easier songs = fewer buttons to press = you're skipping "notes" that actually appear in the song.

How this affects (or even whether if affects) how a song is licensed is beyond me. Only the earlier versions of Guitar Hero made do with covers of the songs; when it was clear that really huge sums of money could be made, later versions of GH and the subsequent Rock Band releases actually licensed the songs themselves.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:41 PM on October 16

The remaining Beatles seem at least cooperative, if not complicit, with their images used in Beatles Rock Band, which OP specifically mentions in the question.

Yep, I'm aware of that, but the OP also mentions a Blackberry ad. The Beatles were always capitalized upon, but their music didn't appear in ads for other products until about 20 years ago, which is the point I wanted to make.
posted by Miko at 8:49 PM on October 16

Looking up the use of the Beatles' licensed music in commercials, it appears that the first use was by a "sound-alike" cover band who did a version of "Help!" for Lincoln-Mercury in 1985.

I do suspect that rtimmel was conflating two feasibly separate issues--the use of Beatles' music in commercials, and the identity of the Beatles as a commercial band--but he does say that "All of a sudden, The Beatles, for the first time, have gone commercial" and I still think that's categorically incorrect. There are other very commercial moves by the Beatles that we could discuss here--the remastered reissue of their catalog, for instance, is just another instance in a long line of rereleases and compilations issued since the band broke up, including the Rock n Roll music albums, the Past Masters albums, 1, and Love.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:08 PM on October 16

Good info about the creation of Beatles Rock Band, including what it takes to get official use of Beatles recordings, in the New York Times Magazine a few weeks ago: "While my guitar gently bleeps."
posted by msbrauer at 10:00 PM on October 16

I didn't get into the Beatles until 2001, and as I went through their albums, there were songs here and there that I'd recognized only from being used in commercials, embarrassingly enough. "Getting Better" for Phillips, "When I'm 64" for some insurance company I think... "Good Day Sunshine" from the early 90s for a drink commercial. A couple years ago there was the painful Target "Hello Good Buy" campaign. And of course Revolution much earlier.

So Beatles songs being used in commercials isn't any more of a recent phenomenon than those of other bands like the Who or the Stones. It's just more noticeable now admidst the reissues and Beatles Rock Band. And along with all the other reissues and compilations over the years, there was the Beatles anthology series from '95, and the three double-disc companion albums. And Paul and Ringo aren't hurting for cash now any more than they were ten or twenty years ago.

(And it's funny you mention the Blackberry ad, because TBS has been showing it to death during baseball, and I never paid enough attention to see what the ad was actually for.)
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 10:15 PM on October 16

Regarding the bazillion dollar license: Although an artist cannot set an absurdly high licensing fee, they CAN refuse to license any cover versions at all. There's a famous example that's slipping my mind at the moment, where the artist will not permit any cover versions to be recorded at all.

However, licenses cannot be discriminatory, and once one license has been granted, then all licenses must be granted (that's where the "mandatory" applies, after the first licensing instance) at the statutory rate.

IANAL.

And by the way, my answer of Revolution should technically be marked as your best answer, as 1987 was the first instance of a licensed Beatles recording being used in advertising.

/pout
posted by Aquaman at 10:35 PM on October 16 [1 favorite has favorites]

Delmol, actually, there's no difference, due to a quirk in copyright law.

Before the advent of electronic recording, copyright only protected the composition - the so-called "musical work." That's what would prohibit bands from playing cover tunes, such as in bars, but for the compulsory license. (Anywhere that live musicians publicly perform cover songs, the venue pays licensing fees to rights-management groups like ASCAP)

Once it became possible to record songs and replay them - at this time in the AM, my foggy brain says it was the advent of piano rolls that sparked this - a separate right arose in the sound recording itself. That's protected differently from the composition right, and can be held by someone other than the composer of the song. In the modern music industry, songwriters retain their rights in the composition itself - the lyrics and musical arrangement - but the record labels own the rights to the sound recordings. (It's why the RIAA members, not individual bands, sue college kids and grandmothers for downloading from Limewire.)

So, if a band records a cover tune to a famous song, that band or their record label owns the rights to the sound recording and can allow it to be used in pretty much any fashion, so long as the composer of the song they cover gets the compulsory license fee.

So when an ad agency wants to use a particular song but they can't get the rights to sue the sound recordings - such as most Beatles tunes, with the famous exception of Nike's use of Revolution - all they have to do is pay some studio band to record a cover, and make sure the composer gets paid the compulsory licensing fee. That's it.
posted by mikewas at 4:30 AM on October 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

mikewas is right. There are various licenses in the music world. And it gets more complicated every time a new technology is introduced. But the goal is for artists to be paid fairly for their work, if that's what they choose.

The license to the song itself- the notes played in that order- which is treated nearly identical to any other written word. An author has a "natural" copyright on it when it is created.

But copyrights are hard to enforce if you want to also make money from your creation. So, an author signs up his work with an agency that protects his work, in exchange for agreeing to the statutory license and a cut of the licensing fees. I believe the organization that handles it is ASCAP. (I'm sure there are others.) If you look at a piece of sheet music, you'll probably see it on there somewhere. These are called publishing rights.

Then there is the mechanical rights- determining who can make a recording of that song and sell it, and who gets paid what. I think this is RIAA. They are a bit of a cabal, but their intent is to protect their members. A minor quibble with mikewas' description- RIAA protects whoever signs up with them and whoever is the owner of the song, whether it is a recording label or an individual artist. It is just a quirk of the recording industry that the labels own or control most commercial works.

There are also performance rights, which is a musician playing the song with instruments (versus the playing of a recording of a song).

It is complicated, but that's why there is a difference between having the right to have a copy of a recording versus having the right to broadcast that recording versus having the right to make your own recording. I know this gets into the "no such things as intellectual property" debate, but nonetheless, that's the state of the industry. I like to have the freedom to get paid for my work or not as I choose, artists should have that same freedom.
posted by gjc at 5:30 AM on October 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

This is also why if you watch reruns of a lot of older television shows, you'll hear odd versions of familiar songs. They couldn't get the right (at a price they wanted to pay) to play the actual version of the song. So they found a cover version, or some live performance version of the song that was more fitting with what they wanted to pay.

That's ALSO why shows like WKRP have so much trouble in the DVD world. Their license covered the performance of the song (broadcasting it), NOT the mechanical (selling copies of it). Since everyone wants a piece of any action they can get, the holder of the mechanical rights tries to extract as much money as they can.
posted by gjc at 5:34 AM on October 17

Back to the original question:

All of a sudden, The Beatles, for the first time, have gone commercial.

No, The Beatles haven't suddenly gone commercial (as far as their music appearing in ads), it's just that you are more aware of it because of all the publicity surrounding the release of Rock Band and the remastered catalog.

Also, this isn't a case of mean old Sony and Zombie Michael Jackson maliciously licensing the Beatles catalog to Madison Ave against the will of the surviving Beatles.

Beatles songs have been appearing in ads for many years now.

It's not as if the band (and related parities) are against commerce. Paul McCartney even had a tour sponsored by an insurance company and appeared in commercials for the company.

But let me ask you this. Why is The Beatles appearing in Rock Band and/or remastering their catalog considered "going commercial"? What can the label and the band do to get their music heard and not be considered by some as "selling out"?
posted by jca at 9:42 AM on October 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

But let me ask you this. Why is The Beatles appearing in Rock Band and/or remastering their catalog considered "going commercial"? What can the label and the band do to get their music heard and not be considered by some as "selling out"?

Um, wait, are you talking about THE the Beatles here? I can only assume you're not, as I'm pretty sure the Beatles don't really need to "get their music heard." Somewhere, faint, in the distance, I can hear the sound of an axe grinding.
posted by nosila at 12:41 PM on October 17

Its prorably a bit late to clarify here, but I guess I was imprecise. By "going commercial" I did not mean making money from its catalog directly, either through sales of recording or live performance -- I'm sure Sir Paul still cracks out a rendition of Long and Winding every now and again -- but by licensing the material to other commercial ventures for profit. It must be a pretty valuable piece of IP and I can't believe that the reason we can't come up with more than a handful of instances where someone licensed it in the 30 years prior to 2009 was because no one thought that Octopus's Garden could help sell tuna. I was wondering whether ownership or circumstances had changed recently.
posted by rtimmel at 2:14 PM on October 17

Um, wait, are you talking about THE the Beatles here? I can only assume you're not, as I'm pretty sure the Beatles don't really need to "get their music heard." Somewhere, faint, in the distance, I can hear the sound of an axe grinding.

Do you have children? Would you be surprised that Beatles Rock Band is/was the first exposure for many kids to THE Beatles catalog? That "axe" you hear grinding is probably a group of tweens playing along to the Rock Band version of "Helter Skelter" having never heard it before. ;)
posted by jca at 8:13 PM on October 17