http://www.low-life.fsnet.co.uk/copyright/part3.htm
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www.mp3.com/thexodus <-ME!!
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Wow, PM Dawn had to split the royalties 50/50 with Spandau Ballet?! They deserved a cut sure, but 50%??? That's crazy!! Good thing it was a number one hit!
Louis...think about it. The way a song is usually broken down is by melody (in this case music) and lyrics, with equal importance given to each.
Therefore if they had originally written and recorded the song together the publishing would be a no-brainer...50/50 split. Spandau Ballet did the music and PM Dawn did the lyrics. The artist royalties would also be the same because Spandau Ballet did the musical performance while PM Dawn did the vocals.
However, because they DID NOT do the song together this arrangement is actually FAVORABLE to PM Dawn.
If the song was previously published and released all rights in it are already established. In the case of the sound and sync rights (sampling) permission and amount of compensation is the SOLE discretion of the owner of those rights. The owner can demand ANYTHING that they want...including exorbitant clearance fees and/or artist royalties...don't like it, don't sample it.
In the case of publishing...ie perfomance and sampling rights, it's a little more cut and dried. In the case of a cover (doing over the song with no changes to the original lyrics) you don't even need permission. Of course, you don't get any of the publishing either. In an interpolation (using parts or all of the song for the creation of a new song) you request permission and negotiate a publishing split...the split of course again being the sole discretion of the original publisher, but there is rarely a fee or an advance involved.
So think about it...in "Set Adrift" the music is basicly all "True" by Spandau Ballet...thus making it EXTREMELY fair to split it down the line 50/50. I wonder if PM Dawn even had to pay a clearance fee.
I GUARANTEE you that if they had done it in today's sampling climate they probably wouldn't have gotten anyway near as fair a deal.
BTW, that looks like a great article...all ya'll samplin fools need to read it...heheheh.