Docteur Qui

I'm only going by what's been said over the years and what seems logical to me. But isn't what you describe here just what I've been saying? Allowing the musicians to have a cut if the music is released in many different forms to make more money, while allowing the "contractors" to save money if they're not going to do that.
 
It's also a question of balance, of course, but if A earns them more money because it is well paid and B earns them less because nobody is going to bother with extra releases due to reuse fees, they may still end up better paid than if A earned them less and B earned them a bit more and everything they've done could just be exploited endlessly.
 
Ultimately, it's similar to the concept of copyright: Allow the creators of a work to make money from it beyond the original point of creation rather than forcing artists to charge a huge amount upfront (and risk getting nothing, especially if they're not already big) and having the distributors get rich from it without them getting anything else (or having any say in how their work is exploited) from that point on. Of course, that also should be limited, especially the expiration time (looking it Disney), and how (or if at all) children/heirs of an artist should benefit from their work (which they themselves had nothing to do with at all).

But if the reuse fees are so prohibitively expensive that nobody pays them, they are getting paid less than if they were feasible.

But aren't the fees, at least by original intent, supposed to serve exactly the opposite goal? I.e. to allow for more competitive pricing, because not every contract has to cover all uses - if you want to record something with an orchestra just to put it in a film, you get a better deal, but if you want to also sell a soundtrack, you pay more - and logically, if you only decide to release a soundtrack *later*, or release *more* music later, you'll have to pay extra, because the original deal covered less to allow for it to be cheaper.
 
It's an ugly situation for art, but essentially, what most of us would wish is for contracts to be cheap (so that every score gets a high quality performance) with at the same time no limitations on how and what the music may be used for - which unfortunately translates to: We want the musicians to be paid less, even if what they do will make the studios tons of money.

Almost nothing in King Mark's initial post is accurate or relevant to the issue at all.
 
Re-use fees only apply when talking about scores recorded in the USA or Canada through the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), so scores recorded in London like Solo or How To Train Your Dragon, or video game scores recorded in Japan, immediately have nothing to do with this conversation.
 
Furthermore, it's only scores recorded with AFM musicians after July 2005 that have re-use fees so high the specialty labels can't afford to pay them; the specialty labels have built their entire business around expanding scores from the start of Hollywood through July 2005, and the proper inclusion of the AFM has always been a part of that process.
 
Stuff like The Mandalorian, Ready Player One, Avengers End Game, Dune, The Batman, etc are NOT complete releases produced by a specialist in archival restorations, so again have nothing to do with this conversation.  What you're really talking about there is simply really long OST albums, and from the way we understand things, re-use fees DO NOT have to be paid for OST albums, as they are under an expected use of the music being recorded.  As for why a different composer might get a long OST album and a Williams score might not?  That is due to exactly one person, John Towner Williams, who crafts the OST album he wants and that's that.  If he wanted his scores to get 2-disc OST albums off the jump, believe me it would happen.
 
Back to AFM fees for catalog releases (expansions of scores that had an OST album or premiere release of scores that didn't), the composer of the score has zero correlation to the re-use fees conversation.  Williams' AFM scores pre-July 2005 are on the table to expand by the specialty labels, while scores recorded post-July 2005 are not, exactly the same as it is for any other composer.
 
Out of the hundreds (thousands?) of scores recorded with the AFM since July 2005, only 4 that I know of have received an expanded release: Giacchino's 3 Star Trek scores, and Rogue One.  His Trek trilogy happened because Paramount and Varese negotiated a special rate for the AFM for those 3 Deluxe Editions only.  Rogue One we know nothing about the behind the scenes process, but presumably Disney Records either made a special deal with the AFM, or just paid their asking price without negotiation.  We don't know.
 
Regardless, there's zero reason to think that whatever process Disney Records went through to make Rogue One happen, couldn't also happen for Williams' Star Wars sequel trilogy scores.  Why hasn't it happened yet?  We have no idea.  The best thing we can all do to make it happen is to petition Disney Records.  We already know Mike Matessino would love to do them.  And of course, the original trilogy and prequel trilogy scores were all recorded in London, so re-use fees have nothing to do with them at all.
 
As for Williams' non-Star Wars scores that were recorded with the AFM after July 2005?  The best thing we can do to help those happen is to petition the AFM to change their re-use fee structure for older scores.
 
As for Williams non-Star Wars scores recorded with the AFM before July 2005?  I am pretty sure Mike has stated it's a goal of his to work on every single one.  So as long as the studio properly stored the elements, we'll get an expanded release eventually.
 
I hope that all makes sense.

The Game Boy games had excellent graphics for Game Boy. The problem is when it went to DS it did this really bad half 3D/ half 2D thing, and then when they went fully 3D on 3DS it looked awful and ran like crap. 
 
Traditional gameplay isn't even the problem with Pokemon. The problem has always been them taking out features, spending less money in general making the game any good. The animations were crap, there was no excuse to deleting Pokemon from the games, the music quality gets worse and worse with each entry. 
 
If you had a game in Sword and Shield's gameplay style that actually put effort into looking good, good Pokemon designs, decent graphics, an interesting world to explore, etc etc etc it would be no problem.
 
...with that said, now that we've had Arceus's style of gameplay, there's no double that that's what should be the standard now. 

Rogue One getting an expansion, and the amount of music released for Mando Season 1 I would assume in pretty strong evidence that the fees were never actually the issue here. It's glaringly obvious that Williams was the primary factor holding these expansions back. And as I've said a couple times before, it's entirely possible that he has come around, it's just going to take probably half a decade to expand *9* films. For all we know they could have been in the works already for the past year or two. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Besides Arceus looking worse than an N64 game, I had a lot of fun with the game. 
 
So now seeing Gen 9....I'm kinda interested, even though Sword and Shield was the worst trash I played on Switch.

"ghostwriter" is a term ONLY used for people who write music for another composer and then are NOT credited for doing so
 
Giacchino has used additional composers - Andrea Datzman, Griffith Giacchino, Curtis Green, etc - but they are credited.  And I mean credited in the films, and ALSO on the OST albums (if any of their cues are used on the OST album).  Additionally, they get full cue sheet credit, as the correct composer turns up when searching GEMA/SABAM/BMI/ASCAP/etc.
 
Now, He may ALSO used ghost writers at other times - who knows?
 
But in the case of Spider-man: No Way Home, Griffith Giacchino and Curtis Green are credited very clearly
 

 
That's not ghost-writing.  That's fully credited additional composing.

Haha. Quite. I like JW’s Han theme but Powell could quite well have written a great theme himself. As I’ve said before, Powell so effectively weaves it into his own style and material that if I didn’t know it was a JW theme I’d never have guessed (outside of the concert arrangement which has far more JW stylistic touches and orchestral thumbprints). Powell may not have quite the string of pubic consciousness themes but he’s a fine tunesmith in his own right. 

What @Not Mr. Big says is not really that subjective, in my humble opinion.

Powell has a much greater grasp of orchestrations, harmony and counterpoint.

It's orchestral for sure, but that doesn't make it idiomatic.

Just because he didn't use electronics doesn't make his work closer to the idiom of Star Wars. His Rogue One score to my ears is badly written and orchestrated, it just sounds like a poor man's Williams through and through.
 
I'll rather have Powell being mostly himself and not trying to mimic JW.

Last time I checked Powell got near universal praise for Solo.

Man, after season 2 of Mando and the tepid Boba Fett I was *this* close to being done with anything to do with Star Wars, but this show will drag me back… for now.
 
I can’t wait to hear what he does with it. 

The best thing is, even if it’s another desert Western pastiche (like Mando and Boba), hearing Williams’ take on that will be incredible. And if it’s not a Western, even better.

The best thing is, even if it’s another desert Western pastiche (like Mando and Boba), hearing Williams’ take on that will be incredible. And if it’s not a Western, even better.

The best thing is, even if it’s another desert Western pastiche (like Mando and Boba), hearing Williams’ take on that will be incredible. And if it’s not a Western, even better.

With such a meaningful “legacy character” at the center of this series, I’m glad they appear to be approaching this music in the classic Star Wars tradition. Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE Goransson/Shirley’s work for the other SW shows. But this (musically) has the potentially to be something special. Especially with the Maestro guiding the tone and style of the score:)

The best thing is, even if it’s another desert Western pastiche (like Mando and Boba), hearing Williams’ take on that will be incredible. And if it’s not a Western, even better.

The best thing is, even if it’s another desert Western pastiche (like Mando and Boba), hearing Williams’ take on that will be incredible. And if it’s not a Western, even better.

Man, after season 2 of Mando and the tepid Boba Fett I was *this* close to being done with anything to do with Star Wars, but this show will drag me back… for now.
 
I can’t wait to hear what he does with it. 

Man, after season 2 of Mando and the tepid Boba Fett I was *this* close to being done with anything to do with Star Wars, but this show will drag me back… for now.
 
I can’t wait to hear what he does with it. 

Imagine he drops this lol
 
 

I don’t hate Giacchino, I think he’s a talented guy and enjoy many of his scores. But whenever he tries to directly emulate Williams, like in Rogue One or Jurassic World I can’t stand it. Hearing his style side-by-side with Williams’ just highlights how limited his palette is when it comes to melody, harmony and orchestral texture.
 
What I’ve heard of Brittel so far is very unlike Williams, which is ideal in this circumstance.