And the re-recording of it is atrocious.
That was honestly my first thought as well. Don’t have to budget for licensing fees if there aren’t any licensing fees on public domain works…
1 Like
But the ability of the copyright holder to limit the public performance of a work is one granted by copyright. It expires when the copyright does. Of course nothing prevents the company that owns a copy from insisting on a contract that forbids the organization that they are lending it to from doing things that would otherwise be legal.
Edited to clarify my point.
Right.
You lose some licensing fees on your own copyrighted works. And some income from re-release or re-airing some of the oldest stuff in your catalog. But in the trade off you gain the potential of making money off something else. And in the long run your not exactly making a ton of money off that stuff to begin with.
Media companies don’t neccisarily need the small amount of income from re-airing the 1923 version of the Ten Commandments on TCM every once and a while. Or selling copies of it to students and academics. When they’re making exponentially more on, like socks with Harry Potter house logos printed on them.
There’s a lot more money in merchandising and ancillary media these days then their used to be. And for more than just movies. And everything on the money/corporate end is increasingly about long running, serialized properties with tons of socks.
1 Like
I think that’s the main point. The rights holders with the lobbying power aren’t relying on having one work which generates income for years to come. Their current model is lots of works, making lots of money in a very short time. Then another set of works, making lots of money, etc.
As long as you have enough creative workers beavering away producing new content for you and as long as you can ruthlessly crush any attempt to interfere with your monetising your remix of old content for as long as it takes you to squeeze out as much as you’re realistically going to get before everyone has moved on to the next big thing, it works.
From that point of view, the cheaper you can get your content for the better and what is cheaper than free?
I don’t know that that’s how I would describe it. The marvel films have been coming out continually. Some times multiple films in a year. For over a decade. There are multiple TV shows going at any given time. Star Wars is slated to do the same, And every big media company is scrambling to create something comparable. While TV is going for heavily serialised “event” TV with avid fan followings.
The thrust is to go with long running, serialised properties. Often across multiple platforms. And the opportunities for merch and ancillary revenue streams are a lot more than they used to be. Cloths. For kids and adults. Collectables. Books. Comics. Video and board games. The TV shows if your a movie, movies if your TV show (and spin offs). Toys for the kids.
TV, books, comics, movies all seem to be moving this way. Record companies seem to be foundering and they’re increasingly in a streaming + live performance model. Though musicians themselves are often doing better (or at least more of them are making a living).
The small amount to be made from the bulk of your 100 year old back catalog doesn’t really compare. And it might very well be worth it to risk the handful of total hogs. (think gone with the wind. Which is apparently still a massive money maker).
1 Like
I’ll believe this when it doesn’t happen. (Legislative extensions of copyright until the sun grows cold.)
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
