Why are some licensing fees so high?
For the past six or more years, music being used for television shows, films or in advertising has been cleared under this criterion. All media, worldwide, in perpetuity. This came about because of some of the newer media that original television shows did not foresee being developed later on.
Some TV shows that aired during the 80’s for example are yet to be released on DVD and in many cases they are held up because the music was originally only cleared for the airing of the show. They were not purposed for DVD, Blue Ray or other media distribution, modes of distribution that were not even imagined at the time the shows originally aired.
A good example of that was something I worked on. “Life Goes On” a popular show that aired originally in the late 80’s. As their theme song they used a re-recording of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” which was written by Lennon and McCartney and made hugely popular by the Beatles. I was hired to write and record a replacement theme song because licensing the Beatles song for each of the episodes would have been cost-prohibitive for even considering releasing the series on DVD. My theme entitled “Life Goes On” was probably a real surprise to hard-core fans of the show but fans would probably never have been able to own the series had the song not been replaced. Surprisingly most fans had some idea as to why the swap was made and were fairly forgiving.
One byproduct of this more recent standard of clearing music for all media now conceived or conceived of in the distant future are higher fees for licensing. Since one license fits all future purposing it makes sense that artists and even music libraries will charge more because that fee will be the last licesning fee they will ever see for that placement.
MJ
