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Using John Lennon For Advertising Is Wrong...


Murph

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Dylan is alive, CHOSE to do them, and was compensated. That's cool. It's capitalism and Bob is a GREAT capitalist..... John's voice being used for advertisements after his death and without his permission feels wrong to me.

Herein lies the rub. There are parts of capitalism that make sense & work well, and other parts that don't. Similarly, there are parts of socialism that make sense & work well, and other parts that don't.

 

Unfortunately, people have forever been trying to make a buck by riding on the back of someone else's talent, alive or dead. That's opportunistic capitalism, sometimes at the pond scum level.

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Dylan is alive, CHOSE to do them, and was compensated. That's cool. It's capitalism and Bob is a GREAT capitalist. He was getting $40.00 for t-shirts when I saw him last.

 

John's voice being used for advertisements after his death and without his permission feels wrong to me.

 

To be clear, I have NO problem AT ALL with artists making money. The music industry is super rough and is slanted against the artist. And now, artists can barely even sell their music because most people are acquiring it free or nearly free from cut-rate sources instead of paying $1/song from Apple or Amazon. Have at it!

 

And as for the John Lennon thing, everything regarding him is legally controlled and sold. I have no problem with that either. I would just hope that the estates of dead artists only get involved with "tasteful" advertising. They are allowed to make money too. This included many artists such as Johnny Cash, Prince, et al, et al.

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So it could be Sony, as the publisher, who let Google use the song, Help.

 

However, since Help was from the United Artists movie by the same name, I have to wonder if the Hard Days Night and Help movie songs are separate from the rest of the Beatles catalog. As, I recall before Apple Corp at last consented to allow digital rights to the Beatles catalog, so that they could be streamed on Sirius XM, bought/heard on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, etc., the only Beatle songs that already had digital rights were the songs from Hard Days Night and Help as those digital rights were under a different category or ownership. I don’t know the details, but do wonder if the movie songs, as they were from the early movies, are under a separate publishing agreement with ???

 

Anyone know on this? Just food for thought.

 

QM aka “Jazzman” Jeff

Edited by QuestionMark
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Didn't Michael Jackson buy the entire Beatles catalog back in the 90's? Who owns it now?

Yes -- Michael Jackson was good friends with Paul McCartney who had told MJ about his plans to buy the Beatles library as it was coming up in an auction. However, MJ used this inside knowledge of Paul's auction plans to instead buy it for himself to beat out McCartney. From I understand, Paul was (rightfully so) a little pissed off, and that was the end of their friendship. I believe Paul owns it now, though.

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Bob Dylan on his songs as commercials. (Excerpted from his speech at MusiCares, a few years back, but not that long ago.)

 

“The Byrds, the Turtles, Sonny & Cher -- they made some of my songs Top 10 hits but I wasn't a pop songwriter and I really didn't want to be that, but it was good that it happened. Their versions of songs were like commercials, but I didn't really mind that because 50 years later my songs were being used in the commercials. So that was good too. I was glad it happened, and I was glad they'd done it.”

 

QM aka “Jazzman” Jeff

Edited by QuestionMark
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Dylan is alive, CHOSE to do them, and was compensated. That's cool. It's capitalism and Bob is a GREAT capitalist. He was getting $40.00 for t-shirts when I saw him last.

 

John's voice being used for advertisements after his death and without his permission feels wrong to me.

 

John Lennon bequeathed the rights to his music to someone that doesn't agree with you or anyone else. It is the owner of the rights that gets to decide, not the dead guy. This is where all the vitriol is all wrong. If you own the rights, you do whatever you want with those rights.

 

Another thing to consider is something along the lines of Van Halen allowing their Right Now to be used in a Pepsi commercial. As he said at the time, why let them pay standard usage and have some bunch of hacks like rct and his band cover it? Just use ours was his answer.

 

rct

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Missing from this discussion, is that John Lennon wrote the song “Help” for a United Artists movie, which basically was a commercial for the Beatles. Now true, it was not a commercial for Google, but, by its use in the Google commercial it also is still a commercial for Beatles music.

 

I have to think that whoever sold the music rights to Help for the Google commercial, also had to have thought it’s also promoting/selling Beatles music by it being on TV. ie. How many people watching a TV show now have the ear worm of Help in their head because of it being in the Google commercial, who without the commercial wouldn’t now have it. Like it’s original use in the movie Help, UA benefited as well as the Beatles. Just as Google and the Beatles now benefit.

 

The only difference of course is John wanted the song to be in Help and had no say in it being in the Google commercial, so we’ll never know how he’d feel about it. Anything else is speculation. One can speculate that as he was pro-Allen Klein trying to maximize Beatles profits, whether he ever actually did that or not is a different discussion, perhaps he’d be okay with maximizing profits of the song, Help. Keeping in mind that even if Sony is the publisher, profits to John or his heirs as the songwriter of the song (along with Paul), still remains intact, even if the publishing rights are elsewhere.

 

Just food for thought.

 

QM aka “Jazzman” Jeff

Edited by QuestionMark
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  • 4 weeks later...
It is the owner of the rights that gets to decide, not the dead guy.

 

A dead guy's estate is suing a lot of big companies for copyright infringement...

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-48348401

 

The estate of Harold Arlen - who wrote such American songbook classics as Over The Rainbow and Get Happy - is suing some of the world's biggest tech firms.Arlen's son, Sam Arlen, says he has found more than 6,000 unauthorised copies of his songs on Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft's services - often at lower prices than the originals. His lawyers claim the firms are engaged in "massive piracy operations".

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Missing from this discussion, is that John Lennon wrote the song “Help” for a United Artists movie, which basically was a commercial for the Beatles. Now true, it was not a commercial for Google, but, by its use in the Google commercial it also is still a commercial for Beatles music.

 

I have to think that whoever sold the music rights to Help for the Google commercial, also had to have thought it’s also promoting/selling Beatles music by it being on TV. ie. How many people watching a TV show now have the ear worm of Help in their head because of it being in the Google commercial, who without the commercial wouldn’t now have it. Like it’s original use in the movie Help, UA benefited as well as the Beatles. Just as Google and the Beatles now benefit.

 

The only difference of course is John wanted the song to be in Help and had no say in it being in the Google commercial, so we’ll never know how he’d feel about it. Anything else is speculation. One can speculate that as he was pro-Allen Klein trying to maximize Beatles profits, whether he ever actually did that or not is a different discussion, perhaps he’d be okay with maximizing profits of the song, Help. Keeping in mind that even if Sony is the publisher, profits to John or his heirs as the songwriter of the song (along with Paul), still remains intact, even if the publishing rights are elsewhere.

 

Just food for thought.

 

QM aka “Jazzman” Jeff

 

 

I agree completely.

 

It was John's decision at the time.

 

Using his songs to sell potato chips, margarine or google after he's dead and without his permission just seems to "cheapen" the songs. Like they're jingles.

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Using his songs to sell potato chips, margarine or google after he's dead and without his permission just seems to "cheapen" the songs. Like they're jingles.

 

Pringle's jingles now at a grocer near you

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On 4/5/2019 at 1:05 AM, zombywoof said:

Hell, Jefferson Airplane did Levis commercials. In the mid-1980s the Long Ryders and Del Fuegos did commercials for a beer company.

 

 

 

Well at least this is one advert which is full of grace. It's also pretty slick compared with all the others here.

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On 4/4/2019 at 10:23 PM, scriv58 said:

Perhaps the main difference is that John Lennon is not doing this of his own volition (being deceased), whereas all the other performers mentioned here did sponsorships by personal choice.

 

True, but Colonel Sanders is dead too, and I don't think he invented the Zinger.

Image result for kfc zinger

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On 4/4/2019 at 6:17 PM, blindboygrunt said:

 

 

That's not you is it ?

You might've put a decent shirt on for the photo shoot

 

Gruntfuttle, I think you have started the EuroAussie is dead conspiracy with this post. I can't see any shoes on his feet in that picture, can you? QED.

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