Cut In (music industry)
Cut In is in the music industry the term for the illegal practice, one or more persons as a composer or songwriter copyright to register or permit who have made no intellectual contributions to the emergence of a certain musical work.
Emergence
Cut-in originated from the fact that the music publishers registering an author with the collecting society cannot check whether the registered authors are really the intellectual authors of a musical work. This is especially not possible for collecting societies. Therefore, people can also be registered who were not creatively involved in the creation of a composition. This is the actual process of the cut in. It is illegal for someone to be registered as a composer who has no intellectual property.
Practice in the USA
The star magazine Variety first mentioned the term Payola as any form of bribery in the music industry in October 1938 . As a special form of Payola, it was not uncommon for performers , producers , managers or disc jockeys to be more or less voluntarily approved by the regular authors as beneficiaries of a cut-in. Arnold Shaw names Al Jolson's famous hit Sonny Boy (October 1928), to whose creation Jolson - apart from a sensational presentation - contributed nothing. Al Jolson is known as the king of this practice because he has not written a line or note in his entire career. The music publisher Chappell & Co. Ltd. in London, Body and Soul registered for copyright in February 1930 on the condition that their employee Frank Eyton is mentioned as a co-author - alongside the three regular authors; Co-composer Robert Sour was amazed: "He hasn't even changed a comma". The co-authorship of disc jockey Alan Freed on Chuck Berry's Maybelline (August 1955) was also not real, according to Shaw. This also applies to the owners of small record labels such as Peacock Records ( Don Robey ) or Modern Records (Bihari brothers). Music publisher Max Dreyfus had not registered himself as an author, but instead demanded kick-backs from the royalties collected from the authors . Otherwise, the cut-in means that the unauthorized authors can also collect royalties, which reduces the royalties of the authorized authors.
The most prominent example was Elvis Presley when he moved from Sun Records to RCA Records . At RCA, he was contractually allowed to choose music publishers other than Hill & Range if the selected pieces of music were not registered with Hill & Range . According to Clause 19 of the record contract of November 21, 1955, this did not apply if he wrote the song himself or if his name appeared as the author by way of cut-in. This was widely used, because Elvis Presley did not write Don't Be Cruel (August 1956) or Love Me Tender (October 1956). It should be explained that a total of 51 music tracks for Elvis Presley as a composer are registered with BMI by copyright. According to the American Music Preservation , Elvis only exerted little artistic influence on the arrangements of the third-party compositions, which was too small to exceed the copyright threshold as a co-author.
Music producer Phil Spector is also considered to benefit from this practice. The compositions he selected came from well-known authors such as Jeff Barry , Ellie Greenwich , Carole King and Gerry Goffin . Mark Ribowsky writes about Be My Baby for the Ronettes that the song was by Barry-Greenwich, "... (and, officially, Spector) ..." Spector's contribution consisted of the compact production of the music, the Wall of Sound , which is known in the art .
Individual evidence
- ^ Arnold Shaw, Dictionary of American Pop / Rock , 1982, p. 100 f.
- ^ David A. Jasen, Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song , 2003, p. 215.
- ↑ Will Friedwald, Stardust Melodies , 2002, p. 150.
- ↑ Bob Bernotas, A Jazz Masterpiece: "Body And Soul" by Coleman Hawkins , 2010.
- ↑ of which Jules Bihari often registered as a co-author under the pseudonym J. Taub
- ↑ Bar Biszick-Lockwood, Restless Giant: The Life and Times of Jean Aberbach & Hill and Range Songs , 2010 S. 29th
- ↑ Bar Biszick-Lockwood, Restless Giant: The Life and Times of Jean Aberbach & Hill and Range Songs , 2010 S. 187th
- ↑ American Music Preservation, Roger Lee Hall on Love Me Tender
- ↑ BMI entry for Elvis Presley ( Memento of the original from December 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Mark Ribowsky, He's A Rebel , 1989, pp 147th
