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Led Zeppelin Agrees To Digital Distribution
cphilo points out a NYTimes article on Led Zeppelin's decision to sell its music online. The group is one of the last superstar acts to hold out against the digital tide. There was a months-long, trans-Atlantic bidding war for the rights to license the band's catalog. In the US, the only digital holdouts that outsell Led Zeppelin are the Beatles and Garth Brooks.
Under the original terms of copyright in the USA, which I believe was 17 years + 17 more optional renewal if author was alive and wanted it, much of Led Zep's catalog would be in the public domain by now.
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IIRC when he went into retirement he inked a deal which granted exclusive distribution rights, going forward, to Wal-Mart; unless they get into downloadable music in a big way, or can grant digital rights to a big online player like Amazon or Apple, that may come back to bite him pretty hard.
...is that Garth Brooks outsells Led Zeppelin?!? Who knew?
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The true Led Zap fans rip their vinyls to Mp3 :)
Yes, I am aware that Thinkgeek sells devices which facilitate the ripping of analog music to digital.
listening to Led Zeppelin, I can say they are easily one of the best rock bands of all time. Unlike a lot of recent 'talent' which seems to be concerned only with imitating others, Led Zeppelin pioneered rock and roll and actually brought creativity back to a genre which many had dismissed simply as hippie music.
Good to see their catalog online; however, a few years ago I had a rather revealing experience after buying one of their earlier works on CD: I could definitely notice the limitations of the analog equipment used for recording. I hope that the tracks offered online are of better quality, or it will be a little bit of a disappointment.
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Michael Jackson purchased most of the Beatles copyrights. He also owns copyrights to the music of many other artists and whomever wants the rights to use those will have to negotiate with him, at least till his control of the copyrights expire.
Which means it'll cost you an arm, a leg, and a white-woman's nose.
Table-ized A.I.
Don't CDs store data digitally?
:-)
Also why do marketeers always cal them "digital downloads", when can I get them on analogue downloads?
if the stores are all closed, with a click she can get what she came for.
Amazon patents notwithstanding
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
cuz he is falling apart piece by piece. nose is dropping somewhere, ear in another and so on. will one need to talk to individual pieces of michael jackson or the falling pieces have decided on a spokesperson/representative among themselves ?
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whats wrong with hippie music, pal ?
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IIRC, Michael Jackson purchased the publishing rights to the songs, which controls royalties on covers made by other artists, usage in ads, etc. The copyrights on the original Beatles' audio recordings, which determines online availability, are still under control of record labels. (And the earliest Beatles' recording copyrights were set to expire soon in the UK unless that got the Mickey Mouse treatment since I last checked).
My thoughts on possible reasons:
I was annoyed that Led Zeppelin wasn't on iTunes a while back, but it did lead me to the London Philharmonic Orchestra's Led Zeppelin cover album. Highly recommended (and they did a Pink Floyd cover album, too).
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Wouldn't that be nice? The Black Sabbath 1996 Castle Remastered releases were amazing compared to the original releases. I hope Led Zeppelin does the same. We could finally hear what they are saying before the songs (not even yet?). If iTunes had their say I'm sure the quality would be reduced. Would Verizon be able to get reels or would they use CDex like everybody else? So... I guess I already have all the digital Zepp?
Seriously, who doesnt have all the Zep songs in MP3 by this point already if they like them? I dont get this concept of downloading bands that have been purchased over and over and over again in the past. If I didnt have the MP3's I could get them in short order from rip of my cd, or a library, or have em dropped off on my server by a friend, or turn on any classic radio station for more then 20 minutes.
I was a big fan, I even have hours of boots, back when that was interesting, and I still like them, but think about it, even 20 years ago (1987) you didnt have to buy an album or cassette because someones big brother or friend would give you one. They were very common during the transition to cd. And about 8 years after that I think you could pick up a cd in the $2 used bin.
It's true, the band should have been more up front about the music they were covering, but you are exaggerating the case. They did not "steal everything." They did cover some songs and there were lawsuits to force them to credit Willie Dixon and I don't know if they've ever credited Jake Holmes. But that is a small handful of songs in a large catalog -- Led Zeppelin has plenty of "original" songs. Sure, they were basically a blues band, but they used the blues to basically pioneer a new hard rock sound. Rock n Roll is itself basically ripped off from the blues and country music. And a lot of heavy metal ripped off Led Zeppelin. And so on.... that's how progress occurs in the open source world of popular music history. You're right that they should have credited (and paid respects -- not to mention some percentage of their profits -- to) the musicians whose work they used. But I don't think you can define all of their work by that.
A couple years back, Plant pledged to some Seattle(?) public radio station after they cited as a positive fact the that they'd never play Stairway on public radio. Clearly, he isn't a huge fan of the song either. The main reasons Led Zeppelin didn't release their songs as singles during the 70's were 1) Jimmy Page was a tightwad and wanted everyone to buy the whole album and 2) LZ wanted people to listen to the whole album, not just a song by itself. It will be interesting to see if the songs are available individually or per album or per album side even. I used to love the Zepp with a passion (still like them more than Tool ;)), and part of me wishes they'd charge serious $$ to play their big hits so that radio stations would mix up their LZ playlists. Also, I'd love for them to clean up some bootlegs and release them. Maybe this method of distribution will create the incentive.
Your fight against bad puns in Slashdot posts looks like it's going to be a Battle of Evermore.
Perhaps if current bands had the musicianship, stage presence and overall talent that Zeppelin had, we'd not be so concerned what such an old band was doing these days....
Why has there not been a valid 'superband' rock band of the likes of Zeppelin, The Stones, The Who (to name a few) to have taken their place LONG ago?
I think the record industry killed it to a large extent, but, there's got to be something else....just not sure what.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Reminds me of the article on beavers where somebody kept putting in something like "Beavers devour people with their powerful fangs. They are the most dangerous animals alive."
You mean where somebody kept removing that critical piece of information about those savage creatures?