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Originally Posted by gideongallery
i am well aware of the liciencing relationship for SC, which obviously you are not.
SC was created by a company called C2. it was licienced to fox thru standard first distribution deal. While the liciencing fees did fund the production and part of fox lots were used in the filming it still is a C2 production. So you are dead wrong. The analogy fits really well.
That being said, record companies have to be very careful what they put in their contracts, as you pointed out the ONLY way to get to the mega star level of fame is to sign with a record company, that makes them a monopoly and anything that locks an artist out of the marketplace/restrict their actions significantly after the contract is done, could face very severe anti-trust sanctions (see the mpaa screener ban)
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Ok. I'm wrong about SC.
You would be surprised at what goes into a record contract. Some artists sign away all publishing rights and just about every other right they have when they sign a record deal. There are many acts out there these days that had some hit records and are now broke because they had bad deals.
A record company is not a monopoly. If there was only one company that would be different, but there are many different records labels. You can sign, or not sign, with any number of them. If there was only one record label then it would be a monopoly for sure, but there are many to choose from.
The record labels don't own the radio stations (well, I think some of them may own a few now) nor do they own companies like MTV and VH1 and other media outlets. They simply have access to them.
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unless the contract explictly prevents the artist from giving away, authorizing the non commercial gifting of their music (outside the scope of the record companies exclusive distribution rights) you are demanding that they be given rights not defined in the contract.
Given the anti-trust liability, i am absolutely certain that no such declaration exists in any contract of any artist on the record companies books.
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Again you would be shocked what is in these contracts because unless the artist sues the label can and will get away with it and most artists don't sue.
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again the key is the contract
and given the anti-trust implications of having such a lock out clause in a contract, i am certain radio head does not have such a clause.
in fact given the amount of time between when they had a studio contract and themselves being self produced the technology that studio is trying to sue didn't even exist in the marketplace to consider.
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I have said a million times Radiohead is a different story than many bands. They started small and built up a career for themselves so they were able to dictate more of the terms of their old contracts and walk away from it when they did.
Current new acts may not have that freedom.