Are legendary music catalogues worth the money? | Hacker News Reader

Are legendary music catalogues worth the money?

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48 pointsTomte67 comments

Music has been a cash cow that seems to just keep on giving. I mean how much money does the Beatles catalogue make and will likely continue to make?

As a consumer, this can be pretty annoying. Often TF shows (as one example) might only get music rights for the inital broadcast and not reruns. I've come across a few shows that are never released on DVD because th emusic rights would just be prohibitively expensive to do that.

But what I'll be interested to see is in the coming years if Western governments will "allow" such catalogues to enter the public domain. They should but we're all familiar with the repeated and unjustified mouse-related copyright extensions.

I mean up until Happy Birthday entered the public domain (which came down to a century-old song book and a court case [1]) it was stil generating ~$1m/year in royalties.

Aren't we well beyond the point where this sort of thing is justifiable?

[1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/old-songbook-could...

TF?

TF commonly stand for "Team Fortress" a popular Quake mod.

Probably TV.

Ah, of course.

Telefission

Similarly there are some video games you can't buy anymore because music rights have expired. It's more common in racing games. The Forza series tends to go on sale dirt cheap before the music license rights expire and then can never be purchased legally again. You can still install and play the game with that music, but no new sales.

https://mspoweruser.com/forza-horizon-3-no-longer-available-...

As someone who was once a producer on a movie, the movie was cut with an awesome soundtrack, but when the movie was sold the buyers realized they couldn't afford to distribute it because the soundtrack was too awesomely expensive and so all the music got replaced with lame shit. I wonder how often music is downgraded in movies because a good royalty deal can't be negotiated for certain tracks?

The original version of Donnie Darko was “downgraded” from INXS to Echo and The Bunnymen, among others. The director’s cut replaced or repurposed several tracks. The original was better, a little too much tinkering, I think.

Ooo, and I remember that the movie of 1984 had a much better soundtrack on its original release on VHS, which I have somewhere...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(For_the_Love_of_Big_Brot...

Seems more of a creative dispute than royalty issue, though.

Yeah this happened with Daria. MTV had the broadcast rights to a whole bunch of music, and was able to use it all throughout the run of Daria, but when they released the VHS tapes of the movies and the DVDs of the series, all the licensed music was replaced with similar but legally distinct music, which really makes the show feel weird. This version was used for the streaming release as well.

There was a small movement a few years back that digitally removed the royalty free music and re-added the original music, but that means that depending on how loud the royalty free music was, the audio quality of the characters' dialogue can get really bad. I still liked it better than the royalty free version though, because Daria really is a time capsule into the late 90s and without the original music it loses a lot of that power.

As far as I've been able to find, there's no way to watch the original episodes. If anyone happened to tape every episode, they didn't upload them anywhere. I'd kill for an official release with the original audio.

I always found it insane when the feature that allowed you to export songs from Rock Band 1 to 2 and then 2 to 3 required Harmonix to get new licenses. Was very annoying losing songs because of license bullshit.

Financial models tend to use interest rates to discount future income streams. Interest rates have been very very low lately, even rates going far out into the future.

So where before a £100 income you get in 10 years might have been worth £50 now, you might get £95 now instead when rates are lower.

Incomes from music would be inflated by low rates.

The other thing that is very hard to model is that songs might become unpopular. This is probably more of a downside risk though I suppose it's happened that a song becomes more popular due to a new recording.

If you're an artist it makes a lot of sense to cash out given these two things. Rates cannot get much lower, and chances are your songs will go out of fashion.

Now why does anybody want to buy them? Well just like before the GFC people are looking for all sorts of bonds to sell, and this is one of those unusual deals you can pass by your investors that will make them feel young again, dressed up as a sound financial investment. Of course there's also actual income being made, so it's not a complete scam, but the logic is like any other financial instrument that has long and uncertain future flows.

A number of pretty important things missing from this article:

1. The administration of publishing rights is often really badly executed. Investors like Hipgnosis are really good at finding both historic uncollected revenues and making sure the catalogue is getting very penny it is due.

2. A lot of these investors are not “bankers”. The founder of Hipgnosis is a very shrewd and very successful music industry artist manager. Many of the other acquisitions are by music conglomerates. Eg Sony has spent a huge amount in the past year - hundreds of millions.

3. Aggregated data is hugely powerful in valuing catalogue.

4. Streaming is a market share game. If you have more market share you get a bigger slice of the pie. Streaming revenues from the significant platforms are not based on number of streams directly or minutes listened.

5. There are legislative changes going on just now which could radically shake up the publishers share.

6. A big big issue with publishing revenues revenue leakage and multiple commissions. A Collective Management Organisation handles local royalty collection - and takes a commission for doing so- but before those royalties hit the bank account of the rights holder there may be several other people commissioning. Rights investors can establish direct relationships on a territory level meaning double/triple commissions vanish, vastly increasing the value of the revenue streams.

7. It’s very easy to assign asset value to music rights because there’s a HUGE amount of detailed data. People aren’t simply sticking a finger in the air.

8. I personally believe that publishing rights are undervalued and will increase in value quite significantly as we enter the next phase of music consumption, linked to metaverse/tokenisation/digital fandom. There are huge opportunities around digital artefacts in the decade ahead. If you’d asked me a few months back what I thought about the metaverse and NFTs in the context of music I probably would have said “emperor’s new clothes”. I’ve spent a couple of months doing some pretty detailed research and I now believe there are really significant opportunities opening up. Kids who are 12 years old now - so younger than instagram - are growing up in “blended reality” where physical and digital existence are completely blurred, digital existence is a significant part of identity and physical artefacts may begin to be seen as inconvenient and unwieldy. That opens significant opportunities for digital exploitation of publishing rights. Want an interactive 3d music related artwork for your metaverse space? If that uses lyrics you need a licence.

“ linked to metaverse/tokenisation/digital fandom”

What does this buzzwordiness mean in practical reality?

He's going to raise money to buy the rights to music, mint NFTs, sell bite-sized ownership chunks to thousands of people for the nostalgia value, and then hire lawyers to sue people violating copyright(such as people playing copyrighted music in online video games), and distribute the rewards based on ownership of the NFT.

Sort of like creating a new RIAA - some of your profit is licensing the music, and some is settlement money from mass lawsuits that you send to every torrent pirate or streamer on the internet.

I’m curious to discuss point 8 further, do you mind emailing me or putting your contact in your HN profile?

I guarantee 20 years from now most of the popular music we'll hear in franchise movies will still be from the late '50s to the early '2000s.

We'll still be putting The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Zeppelin etc. as the soundtrack to these movies.

I think they are worth the money.

Music from 1965 to 1975 has simply never gone out of style. In the 1970s you never heard any music 50 years old.

I was listening to the radio today, and the current hit has the legendary lyrics "A B C D E" (yes, saying the alphabet) and the singer had to have the autotune turned up to 11 to apparently get on key.

Though I do have to admit Gloria Estefan had a "hit" where the words were "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 I'm gonna keep on counting" (please stop!).

I’m a music snob and I like that song. It’s got a catchy hook, and the pre chorus contrasts nicely with the chorus and verses.

For a 17 year old girl, it’s damn impressive.

As Rick Beato reminds, it’s easy to dump on modern music. True music lovers should be able to find something clever about every popular song.

Which is ironic coming from Rick Beato sometimes at least (he's talented but somewhat famous in jazz meme groups for being a grumpy old man)

The issue for contemporary music is not that it's bad. Pop music has always been 99% bad. The issue is that it's not possible to create successful new IP anymore. We see this across entertainment. It used to be that a disc jockey in a mid-sized market could find a record, spin it a bunch, create a regional sensation that would eventually break through nationally. That just cannot happen anymore. Instead, there are YouTube and Spotify niches that go deep like Lofi Chill Beats to Study To or whatever, but they can't break out and grow. They just keep getting the same audience but deeper instead of broader.

How do you this isn't a "kids these days" situation?

Among other trends radio stations stopped giving large numbers of DJ’s freedom to select individual songs and thus allow for organic growth in song popularity across regions. While susceptible to a payola it did introduce people to a lot of new music from relative unknowns.

That happened late 70s and early 80s.

Most radio has been pretty much the top 40 to my memory of the last couple decades. However, there used to be more independent radio stations which at least played the top 40 of a different style. And there were more shows even on those stations that broke out of the box. Now I swear the company that bought the companies that bought up all the stations has decided that that was way too much variation and put an end to it. I've got at least 4 country stations I can get on my radio that play the exact same songs as each other until whoever is in charge releases another set. I don't know if it's gotten worse in the last 5 years because I gave up listening to the radio.

Now I've got a music app that mixes up the smaller, more specific genres I prefer. Basically the drop in the quality of radio caused me to go to streaming which has caused me to develop a taste for less common subtypes of music. If country radio had continued to play anything besides guys with fake southern accents singing about girls in cut-offs and trucks, I'd probably still be listening.

Honestly the reality is there are few to no DJ’s at radio stations anymore unless you’re listening to college-run stations. But outside of colleges? Hell half those stations are running pre-recorded “DJ’s,” ads, and playlists built from the billboard 100.

Because even the biggest music stars right now are nothing compared to the reach of even the middling music stars from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. It's not even close no matter how you count it: touring numbers, sales numbers, broadcast numbers, etc.

Think about the command that groups like Van Halen, Journey, Depeche Mode or Metallica had at their zenith. Nothing comes even remotely close today--and I'm not counting groups like the Beatles, Queen, or Led Zeppelin that are absolute legends.

And it's not like these groups were a rare occurrence.

Personally, I think it's just a matter of too much competing entertainment rather than the modern musicans sucking. Video games were compelling when you had to go to an arcade and pump quarters into them. Once they entered the home there was never any question that they were going to absolutely devour the spare time of teenagers who were always the primary driver of pop culture.

I’m a fan of acts like Poppy, Joywave, Hop Along, Lost in Kiev, 100 gecs, and Sir Sly to name a random mix. They’re pretty successful. They’re not super stars and probably won’t be. But why would they? They’re doing their own thing and it’s not going to appeal to most people but it’s weird and it’s cool and good.

I don’t see why you would label this a problem. There’s no such thing as too much competition for art

I am a 40 year old man, so obviously, I am totally out of touch and lame, but I have not heard of any of those groups except Poppy, who I haven't listened to since ~2016. The algorithm on YouTube stopped recommending her and she completely disappeared from my life.

However, I find it impossible to believe that my dad at age 40 would not have heard of Madonna, Salt 'N' Peppa, Ace of Base, Milli Vanilli , etc. Even my dad in his peak lame years would have been aware of the Milli Vanilli scandal as it was happening.

Oh, well check out poppy. She does metal and grunge now. And unlike her earlier stuff, is just unironically good. Still does weird videos every now and then.

My point is more so that these artists are better without striving for mass appeal. It’s ok that they’re not mega stars. They’re doing just fine.

> It’s ok that they’re not mega stars. They’re doing just fine.

But are they really doing fine?

My "go to" example for this kind of thing was the lead singer from one of the metal groups based in Southern California. They had just done a West Coast tour and then did the festival circuit. The interviewer asked him when he was going to tour again. His response: "Well, I think we maybe came out about even from the touring. And now my tattoo business is now pretty much booked up for the next 12 months. So, probably not for at least a year. Maybe we'll probably play some local shows every now and then."

That doesn't sound like an industry doing "just fine" to me.

Ringo Starr said to a journalist in the early days that he just wanted to make a few bob and open a hair salon.

Given that he seems interested in doing it again it seems fine to me. I don’t think musicians need to be mega millionaires.

Because it isn't caused by the moral degeneracy of the youth but by media landscape changes driven by a combination of technological change (the Internet) and government policy choices (not breaking up the YouTube monopoly, not creating a compulsory streaming license).

That sounds just like a "kids these days" problem, simply with a new implementation (Internet vs vinyl records).

“Kids these days” is wrong because it falsely posits that different generations are more or less moral or lazy or discerning when in fact kids are always dumb and then get smarter as they mature, which leads to an illusion of degeneracy. Your position appears to be that change itself is impossible even at an economic, technological, or political level? I don’t understand what you’re arguing for. Obviously things do change and quite a lot too. It’s just that human nature does not change on the scale of generations.

It's a "kids these days" problem in that the same "XYZ thing in the past was better" trend has happened time and time again over history. Music production and distribution isn't even close to being as new as tech, so any changes there feel more unique even though it's already happened in the past times before.

Eh, I don't think this is really true.

Lady Gaga and Lorde and now Billie Eilish were all new sounds that exploded in recent times.

And perhaps gp hasn’t noticed how Olivia Rodrigo songs are already being used in commercials.

Lady Gaga is not new, grandpa.

Pop music isn't meant to withstand the test of time. Stop treating it as such.

Enjoy what does. Lots of stuff from this decade will. If you can't find the stuff you enjoy why bother with modern pop at all?

Almost all music from 1965 to 1975 has gone out of style. That some hits have endured isn’t evidence otherwise.

Plenty of good music, even pop out there. But much of it has gone to niche tastes.

Perhaps the original recording will go out of style, but particularly in pop, R&B and hip hop sampling is extremely common.

TikTok has more or less put this in overdrive. A recent meme uses a sample from a 1964 song, Remember by the Shangri-Las. https://youtu.be/wfxw1uALKgk

Sampling is extremely common. A minuscule proportion of 60s songs will be sampled in a meaningful way.

Heard the Kreepa track 1000 times and didn't realize it was sampled. Amazingly one of the Shangri-Las is still recording recently. I wonder what they make of what's happened to their song? Unbelievable. No possible way to predict that over 50 years after they recorded that track it would be cut and remixed into a catchy 30 second chunk of rap and played billions of times to weird videos that people spend a dozen hours a day watching on their handheld gawk machines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Weiss

Music from 2010 has gone out of style but all of the tv ads still use 1965-1975 music.

TV ads are for boomers. Incredibly outdated model of pop culture.

There were a ton of technological changes to electric instruments that only became possible in the last half of the 20th century. People aren't making music on wonky synthesizers anymore because they don't have to, and the style of pop music doesn't need to reflect those tech limitations.

We shouldn't forget the Jackson Five hit where they say "A B C, 1 2 3". When it's pop, especially bubblegum, the lyrics tend towards being a bit dumb and repetitive.

At least it was about first grade school :-)

you can be really reductive about most genres of music if you try hard enough.

most western choral music is pretty repetitive lyrically, because there are only so many ways to sing about how much you love God that people appreciate. and I say this as someone who did that kind of music for years.

My dad (WW2 generation) had execrable taste in music, but in going through his records after he passed I ran across this gem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6HoFaYPYs4

I'm sure he picked this up while in Japan during the Korean War.

It's nice to see this hasn't been forgotten.

This was great :)

Some interesting tidbits about this song, if you're interested, from its Wikipedia page [0]:

- The song was written by 2 people of Armenian heritage. One was the Pulitzer-winning author William Saroyan; the other, Ross Bagdasarian, is better known for his creation, Alvin and the Chipmunks.

The melody is based on an Armenian folk song and the song is based on the Armenian custom of generously plying guests with fruits, sweets, etc.

- The song became a hit when it was recorded by Rosemary Clooney (George Clooney's aunt). When the song was presented to her, she hated it and only sang it because band-leader Mitch Miller threatened to fire her if she didn't record it (this [1] was the result and, yes, that rollicking keyboard is, in fact, a harpsichord).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_On-a_My_House

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mriXncI96lw

Haha, I had no idea! But I like the Japanese cover best!

It's easy to point at bad (subjective) songs today and compare them to good (subjective) songs in the past, but remember there was still a ton of garbage music back then, it just got lost to time. There will be hits from every decade that will continue on into the future, but most will be largely forgotten.

It's pretty interesting if you go back 50 years from the 1960's and 70's you wind up in the middle of World War I, just before that you have things like Igor Stravinsky causing riots in 1913 Paris because of how extreme his music was.

I think major reason earlier music was not as popular was due to how people consumed music. For a long time the only way a lot of people would get to experience music would be to attend concerts, which was a relatively privileged thing to be able to do. Records were one of those things that didn't really take off until post world war I.

I have a handful of 78s from the 1920s, and the music on them is, well, let's just say I just don't like it.

This is wrong. In the 1970s there was for instance a big revival of ragtime, popular music from 50-60 years ago (then). Then there was of course the blues and various other folk revivals, which had a tremendous influence on all that 1965-75 music which is still popular.

But of course there were both technical and copyright reasons they didn't just re-release recordings from the 20s!

When was the last time you heard Elvis? Or the Beach Boys? Or any male singer from the 40s and early 50s other than Sinatra?

Sirius XM just bumped their 60s channel up out of the bottom of the dial in preference to pop. The 70s and 80s channels are still down at the bottom. That speaks to the audience.

Time ages things out.

It speaks to who is still driving into work and would find value in Sirius XM these days. That group is probably changing and getting younger.

I remember xm used to have a 40s and 50s channel. Of course that was 20 years ago in its infancy. IANAL, but an interesting case could be made that by the ‘public’ (radio) no longer broadcasting music that they are no longer asserting their copyright. Similar to trademarks that are no longer defended. If there are satellite and or terrestrial radio stations playing something the copyright expires.

Aside from movies that are set in those time periods I doubt it.

I don’t think the Beatles or the stones resonate with millenials and younger much. I’m in my late 20s, grew up on classic rock and still fairly fond of Pink Floyd and Rush. I’ve seen Keith Richards perform live. By all means the songs are good but they mean very little to me. I’m probably top 1% in terms of classical rock knowledge within my age peer group.

Franchise movies made by or targeted to boomers, sure, but I think it’ll slow down quite a bit over the next couple decades.

When I was a kid, I learned about classic rock through the radio because that’s all my dad played on the radio. This isn’t the case anymore. Now you aren’t limited to a few stations all favoring the most mainstream subsets of music.

And that’s cool. Music has never been so diverse. The accessibility of artists is so strong and there’s lots of great talent

Old music now gets streamed more than new music.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/old-music-...

Not surprising. As the total volume of recorded music continuously grows, new music will make up a smaller and smaller fraction.

Article lacks the piece of information needed to come to your own conclusion: current and future revenue projections.

Obviously some think it worth it since these sales are happening.

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