A Pig Week for Music

This is a big week for music.  Three live episodes of The Voice.  Country Music Awards on Wednesday.  And last night was Cher Night on Dancing with the Stars.  The pigs sure are in a musical mood.

After watching Cher, this one pulled out his Beatles lunch box.  He wonders why The Beatles didn't keep the copyright to all their songs. 

It's because back in the early 1960s, they were losing 90% of their income to taxes.  Lawyers advised them to find a way to channel their revenue into capital gains instead of income, which would mean a much lower tax rate.  So in 1963 they assigned their publishing rights to Northern Songs, a company created in part by their manager, Brian Epstein.  This affected songs written after 1963, but not early ones like "She Loves You", "I Saw Her Standing There", "From Me to You", "There's a Place", "I Wanna Be Your Man", "Misery",
"Please Please Me", "Ask Me Why", "Love Me Do", and "P.S. I Love You."

John and Paul each owned 15% of the shares; George and Ringo each had .8%.  Northern Songs was bought by Associated Television Corporation (ATV) in 1969.  In 1984, ATV (who also owned the publishing rights of many other artists) put their music catalog up for sale.  This is when Michael Jackson bought it, outbidding Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono.  In 1995, Sony Corporation paid Michael Jackson $95 million to merge with ATV and form Sony/ATV, thus diluting Jackson's share.  

Interesting fact: Publishing agreements call for royalties to be split 50/50 between the publisher and the songwriter.  So even though Michael Jackson owned the publishing rights, that portion of the royalties hadn't ever gone to The Beatles.  They continued to receive their songwriter royalties as always.

"That was too much information!", this pig says.

He wants to play, but can't quite reach.

"Need some help?"

New plan - sit here and look cute until a human comes along to play for them.

She's really good at playing the radio.  

Ever wonder how royalties are handled for digital music?  SoundExchange is a not-for-profit agency that collects and distributes royalties from some web, satellite, and cable radio broadcasters (such as Pandora, SiriusXM, and Music Choice).  

They pay 50% of the royalties to owners of the sound recordings, 45% to the performing artist, and retain a 4.9% administrative fee.  They started in 2003, paying out $3 million; this year the projected payout is $500 million.  The top song in 2013 is "When I Was Your Man" by Bruno Mars. 

During the finals of this past season of So You Think You Can Dance, Aaron and Melinda did a beautiful, emotional tap dance to that song. 

Pigs love tap and accordian, too.

"You pick it up."
"No, YOU pick it up"

THIS is how you pick it up, and draw a crowd, too.

Enjoy some music in your life, whatever kind you like.