Years ago, I worked for WEA Record (Warner Bros), and one of our labels was Rhino Records, who liked to release great reissues and compilations of our-of-print albums and artists.
They did it by the book at first, getting permission from the copyright holders, who were happy to see their stuff back in print, and get royalty checks again, especially since most of them were getting older, and didn’t mind an extra income stream as they headed into retirement, even if it was small.
There were some cult classics that they wanted to release, but couldn’t find the copyright holders. After a while, they decided to go ahead and release that albums anyway, but put the royalties into escrow. When/if the rights holder came forward, their royalties would be waiting for them.
It seemed like a reasonable, moral way to handle the situation, unlike the way record companies usually do business, which is to just steal as much as they can, and if they get sued, bury the plaintiff in expensive litigation. Rhino Records, and the people who worked there, always seemed like a relatively honorable outfit, by comparison.
There were some cult classics that they wanted to release, but couldn’t find the copyright holders. After a while, they decided to go ahead and release that albums anyway, but put the royalties into escrow. When/if the rights holder came forward, their royalties would be waiting for them.
Yeah…
Having gone out for drinks with enough people who deal with financial fraud and the like, here is how that plays out:
Q1: Yeah, we are doing our due dilligence and all royalties go into this account
Q4: So they totally don’t know we have their money, right? Would any of them miss it if we just kept it?
Q5: We’ve updated our royalties program and sent out letters to everyone involved to let them know if they want to opt in to our new awesome program
Q6: Oops, we now only put a fraction of the royalties into this pool and the rest go into profits
Q8: Hey, Fred is retiring. Let’s just empty out the escrow account and blame it on him if anyone ever notices
Years ago, I worked for WEA Record (Warner Bros), and one of our labels was Rhino Records, who liked to release great reissues and compilations of our-of-print albums and artists.
They did it by the book at first, getting permission from the copyright holders, who were happy to see their stuff back in print, and get royalty checks again, especially since most of them were getting older, and didn’t mind an extra income stream as they headed into retirement, even if it was small.
There were some cult classics that they wanted to release, but couldn’t find the copyright holders. After a while, they decided to go ahead and release that albums anyway, but put the royalties into escrow. When/if the rights holder came forward, their royalties would be waiting for them.
It seemed like a reasonable, moral way to handle the situation, unlike the way record companies usually do business, which is to just steal as much as they can, and if they get sued, bury the plaintiff in expensive litigation. Rhino Records, and the people who worked there, always seemed like a relatively honorable outfit, by comparison.
Yeah…
Having gone out for drinks with enough people who deal with financial fraud and the like, here is how that plays out:
Well if you went out for drinks with people, I’m sure the record company is evil after all.
aka the OpenAI playbook