There are two kinds of rights at stake here: the rights to the master recordings of an artist’s work, and songwriting rights, known as publishing. One senior music publishing executive says their part of the business was ahead of the curve, explaining that publishing deals tend to work on exclusive licensing terms or retention periods. “Publishers pivoted from a rights-ownership business to the servicing of rights,” they say. Those retention periods are getting shorter, they add, down from about 25 years three decades ago to between 12 and 15 years today.
Message says he steers acts away from ownership-based contracts. “We have a default position that we won’t advise our artists to do life-of-copyright deals,” he says. “It’s not that we wouldn’t do them, but our strong advice would always be to come up with a licence arrangement of some description.”
This is the ideological underpinning of BMG and AWAL (Artists Without a Label), which is now under the ownership of Sony Music Entertainment. “The philosophy is flipping the relationship,” says Alistair Norbury, president of repertoire and marketing at BMG UK. “There had to be a fairer and more transparent way to work with the creative community.”
Acts on BMG’s roster – notably Kylie Minogue, Suede, Sigur Rós and Louis Tomlinson – are on licensing or assignment deals, so ownership of the recordings eventually reverts to them. “They want to be with a record label where they have creative control and ownership coming back to them at some point,” says Norbury.
AWAL sings from a similar hymn sheet. “AWAL emerged to help what we now call ‘independent artists’ to remain independent,” says Paul Hitchman, the company’s global COO. “Independent in the sense of owning their rights and retaining control over their career, but without having to compromise in terms of the expertise and support they can tap into, without having to compromise on the global reach and success that they can achieve.”
Norbury believes that, with more choices for acts, music companies have to repeatedly prove their worth and think about mutual gains rather than offering one-sided deals that are land grabs for all the rights. He says, “You want something successful in a long-term partnership rather than owning something that failed.”
In light of all this, the majors increasingly have to offer more flexible deal terms. They are also heavily investing in other artist and label services companies to gain a share of the boom in DIY and independent acts. Sony owns Awal and the Orchard. UMG has both Virgin Music Label & Artist Services and Ingrooves. Warner Music Group has Ada.
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[Ed.: Louis Tomlinson’s licensing deal is with BMG. His publishing is through LT Publishing administered by Kobalt Music Group. This article implies that all rights for masters and publishing belong to Louis, and are licensed for a contracted period to BMG.]
[Ed.: In the second quarter of 2024, BMG has switched to in-house digital distribution and download services, and changed partners for physical distribution from Warner to UMG.]
I've been working on the height comparison chart/updated refs and it's finally done. When I started I said it would be fun, easy and not emotionally taxing, and haha, well. let's just say it wasn't. Now I'm thinking of gradually making individual sheets for them too... we'll get there when we'll get there. Idk how bad tumblr compresses stuff so I'll leave the original version here. Note: the timeline is blurred, these are the just the "default" versions of the characters.
Trivia: Pets face right. Those living in Small City often wear blue because it's the most available dye (Blue Forest is right there); Giant City offers much more variety. Suits are the Organisation's loose dress code. Krazukh's scarf is a gift from Astrid. Kosha is bald here – her wig doesn't completely match her natural fur colour. Pol's eyesight is like -8. All three beast siblings bear the symbol of Fortune; Anzie just doesn't care to hide it. His ear isn't healed because that was a pre-deal injury.
Flynt tormenting his teammates with his cover of You Can Call Me Al. They got rotten drunk and Neon asked him if he plays the rusty trombone. Do not fuck with the only sober person you know! They're hung over and coming down off their bender, the last thing anyone fucking wants is him and his damned trumpet.
Flynt: you guys seem down. How bout some funky jazz!? *plays trumpet*
Neon: nooooo
Kobolt: *tries to drown his hearing in his cereal*
Ivori: Flynt! I swear to the brothers I will burn all your fedoras!fedora!
No because why am I seeing bootleg Sally Face and bleach blonde Raine Whispers? And how are these two supposed to be the dress meme while their fits are complete garbage?
Kobalt and Ivori have such bad fits which is why I had to redesign them-
Twins with the same dresses, just different colours and styles. Play on the meme when designing them.