"Plus, if you act now, an ice crusher!"

[captainsblog]

"Everything old is new again," said a famed Canadian rock band. Unfortunately, some of what's new is just as dreggy as hearing someone other than Steven Page sing that line at a 2013 Barenaked Ladies concert.

Remember these fabulous hits?

That era was bad enough when the original artists were recording these songs, but listen to these cheap imitations of Three Dog Night, Cat Stevens and even Paul McCartney's worst years, made even worse because the record company simply issued covers of the then-top hits. This one had the chutzpah to say, "because of low royalties we can't reveal the artists."

I remember others in that era of local afternoon TV advertising, which promoted the songs as all being by "that fabulous group, the Sound Effects!" My mother was easily fooled by this kind of drek- she'd surprise me on Christmas morning with soundtracks from movies or Broadway shows I liked, which turned out to be instrumental versions of the songs by the Cheap Ass Philharmonic. (To this day, I have a bizarre rendition of "Consider yourself" from Oliver! in my head with a two-bar violin riff at the start that I pray YOU never get.)

Gradually, these knockoffs went away; K-Tel and that lot began advertising ORIGINAL HITS BY THE ORIGINAL ARTISTS!



(Rumors at the time had it that the "Sound Effects" simply renamed themseles "The Original Artists," but I can find no proof of that.)

But the covers are back, and they're gonna be trouble, heyla:

There are about 600 versions of Adele’s Oscar-winning song “Skyfall” on the Spotify subscription music service. Not one of them features Adele.

Adele’s label, XL Recordings, keeps her music off of all-you-can-listen subscription plans until download sales peter out. In the meantime, copycat artists fill the void, racking up royalty revenue, often before customers realize they’ve been listening to someone else.

Alice Bonde Nissen found that out the hard way. She once paid 99 Krone ($17) a month for Spotify’s premium service in Denmark. Bonde found a version of “Skyfall” and mistakenly clicked on a “follow” button to become a fan of GMPresents and Jocelyn Scofield, the name for a cover-song specialist with some 4,600 Spotify followers. Scofield, who didn’t respond to a message seeking comment for this story, has the most listened-to cover of “Skyfall” on the service.

Spotifiers are not amused, and the other major service's users are not waxing Rhapsodic.  They're pissed, and the services are trying to keep up with the coverspam and get these posers off their bandwidth.  Yet they're having to deal with an even bigger gorilla in the midst, who has found a way to profit off these efforts:

Obtaining a license to record a cover is easy and inexpensive. Services like Google Inc.’s Limelight, which launched in late 2009, offer commercial song licenses to anyone who fills out a form. For each song they cover, artists pay a $15 fee. By law, Limelight also charges $9.10 in advance for every 100 downloads the artists may sell. TuneCore, which launched in 2006, distributes songs on outlets like iTunes for $10 per track. Selling a couple hundred tracks – because of consumer confusion or otherwise – can earn cover artists enough money to pay the bills.

Sadly, I don't have the vocal skills to cash in on this market, but maybe Google will come up with something similar for aspiring writers who want to pay the bills by reimagining famed literary works.

Allcay eemay Ishmaelay.

Comments

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Apparently, before making it big, Elton John sang on a lot of these things in England. There are several versions of an album of these cover versions. Some of them are actually pretty good, others are pretty funny.

[thediva-laments.livejournal.com]

Shit, guess I gotta go learn some songs to cover. I've got no shame, I'd pay the rent that way.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

I'll buy anything from you except "Seasons in the Sun."