We wrote a longtime ago about the complexities of music licensing and nothing much has been solved in the last two years. If anything, new digital efforts have only created more gridlock between the many various rights holders of a single track. This means an era of one step forward of experimentation tempered with one step back of cease and desists and innovative ideas hindered by licensing realities.
Case and point is this little tale from John Healey's BitPlayer blog...
NBC announced Monday that is making it full episodes of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" available online the morning after they air, starting Aug 28th. It's the first time any late-night TV has made it onto the Net, which seems odd -- you'd think that anything on the air after 11 p.m. would be a prime candidate for the Web's time-shifting magic. Vivi Zigler, EVP of NBC Digital Entertainment, explained in an interview that the problem was the cost of obtaining online distribution rights -- for the music on the shows, not the stars or the guests on the couch. Whaddya know -- yet another Internet deficiency to blame on music copyrights!
In the case of Conan's show, Zigler said there's the rights not only to the songs performed by the musical guests and the house band, but also to the brief snippets of music played going into and coming out of commercial breaks. These "bumpers" may last only a few seconds, but the rights still have to be cleared. NBC considered putting Conan's show online without the musical segments, Zigler said, and that would have sped the process considerably. But the network ultimately decided to stick with the complete show, which makes sense, given that the musical guests are a highlight of the show (e.g., the Arctic Monkeys on July 2 and Art Brut on July 11).
And, if NBC Universal has trouble getting rights, just imagine the issues faced by your average entertainment start-up without a bevy of lawyers and deep-pockets.
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