Chasing the long tail of new media
by Jim Connelly
An Open Letter To Tom Petty,
Tom, you still don’t know me, but earlier this month I asked you to not sue the Red Hot Chili Peppers for their purported plagarism of your song “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.”
And once again, you’ve provided another example of your ongoing menschdom (menschiosity? menschitude?) by telling Rolling Stone that suing is the furthest thing from your mind:
[Read more…] about Tom, Thanks For Not Suing The Chili Peppers!!
Way back in the early eighties, a revolution happened. Giddy with the power of new technology, motion picture studios rushed to release their back catalogs on the new-fangled videocassettes (and some on laser discs, but that’s a story for another day). They knew full well that this was a foolhardy decision, but with dollar signs in their eyes, how could they resist this new revenue stream?
Why foolhardy? Because the existing agreements with talent, from a participations and residuals perspective, didn’t cover this new distribution channel. With residuals, somehow the studios won and were allowed to continue to calculate payments as a percentage of a 20% royalty calculation. As I noted earlier this week, the guilds aren’t likely to take this forever.