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Sony Music no longer dealing with soundtrack labels [UPDATE: La-La Land is back in]


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Bad news for potential Williams expansions going forward (Sony Music related):

 

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As for the Waxman titles Sony Music has decided to not do deals any more with all the labels so it does throw a monkey wrench into some plans. Hopefully things will change. We'll see

MV

 

And a few posts later:

 

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Yes. We have 2 major projects pending but other than that the other titles we were looking into and/or started some work on were scrapped. The letter went out to all the labels

MV

 

https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?forumID=1&pageID=116&threadID=118900&archive=0

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Shit news but can't expect much less from a shithouse studio. Is there a single thing that awful studio does that isn't complete and utter garbage?

 

In any event, these are the Williams scores Sony own, according to @Jay's studio thread.

 

Sony (Columbia / Tri-Star)
1958 Daddy-O [imperial Productions / American International Pictures]
1960 Because They're Young
1963 Diamond Head (FSM 2006)
1963 Gidget Goes To Rome
1972 Images (Prometheus 2007)
1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (La-La Land 2017)
1991 Hook (La-La Land 2012 release is not complete)
1997 Seven Years In Tibet
1998 Stepmom
2000 The Patriot

 

Awful news if that means Hook and The Patriot are now out of the picture for Mike to expand. I would've guessed both releases were on LLL's radar in the near future, all things considered.

 

Hopefully Williams and his management has more clout than the clueless executive who made this decision (without even understanding what they were doing).

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Shit, just saw the updated post from Mike. Shit! Please, please, PLEASE let a Matessino produced expansion of Hook be one of those two titles. I'll be devo if that admirable but heavily flawed first expansion is all we get from that score, simply due to this nonsensical bureaucratic decision.

 

I mean, as if we didn't need any more reasons to hate Sony after they sat on the Star Wars license for two decades and did nothing?

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Looks like some really premium scores like Titanic, The Thin Red Line and Close Encounters came out just in time to avoid this.

 

Not sure about other composers' scores that could be affected. Some Horner stuff maybe? Zorro, Jumanji?

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Think the money is so minor it's not worth Sony's effort regarding getting all the contractual stuff sorted out (just my uninformed opinion). The market for these things is miniscule after all.

 

This week has been crappy for me soundtrack-wise. First my local importer loses access to the Amazon store, now this.

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1 hour ago, crumbs said:

Sony (Columbia / Tri-Star)
1958 Daddy-O [imperial Productions / American International Pictures]
1960 Because They're Young
1963 Diamond Head (FSM 2006)
1963 Gidget Goes To Rome
1972 Images (Prometheus 2007)
1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (La-La Land 2017)
1991 Hook (La-La Land 2012 release is not complete)
1997 Seven Years In Tibet
1998 Stepmom
2000 The Patriot

 

I don't care about expansions, but a shame if the first three are now out of the question forever. Especially GIDGET GOES TO ROME, which is a delightful score (DADDY and BECAUSE are fun too, but more run-of-the-mill jazz).

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2 hours ago, crumbs said:

Sony (Columbia / Tri-Star)
1958 Daddy-O [imperial Productions / American International Pictures]
1960 Because They're Young
1963 Diamond Head (FSM 2006)
1963 Gidget Goes To Rome
1972 Images (Prometheus 2007)
1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (La-La Land 2017)
1991 Hook (La-La Land 2012 release is not complete)
1997 Seven Years In Tibet
1998 Stepmom
2000 The Patriot

Wasn't 1941 a Sony thing too?

 

Anyway, to put it mildly, what a fucking disappointing news this is. Dah-sney delivering shitty quality SW music, Varèse being scrapped little by little by Concord, and now Sony jumping on the bandwagon of fuck-ups.

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2 hours ago, crumbs said:

In any event, these are the Williams scores Sony own, according to @Jay's studio thread.

 

Sony (Columbia / Tri-Star)

 

MV spoke about Sony Music, not Sony Pictures (it's two different companies).

 

Sony Music controls/has in catalogue thousands of film scores licensed from other film studios as well, not just for Sony Pictures films. Of course it's big with Williams, since a lot of his soundtrack albums since the 1990s were released by Sony Music. So it means Hook, Seven Years In Tibet, Stepmom, Memoirs of a Geisha, Tintin, War Horse, Lincoln, The Book Thief, The Post. Other titles like CE3K, 1941, Home Alone, Rosewood have been already expanded, luckily.

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On 2/7/2019 at 6:57 AM, crumbs said:

Shit news but can't expect much less from a shithouse studio. Is there a single thing that awful studio does that isn't complete and utter garbage?

 

In any event, these are the Williams scores Sony own, according to @Jay's studio thread.

 

 

That's categorized by film studio.  MV is talking about Sony the record label, which is a different company than the film studio.

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1 hour ago, crumbs said:

Just strikes me as some silver-spoon fed, recently promoted executive justifying their position by making pointless decisions they don't understand, like this.

 

Yep.

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16 minutes ago, TownerFan said:

 

MV spoke about Sony Music, not Sony Pictures (it's two different companies).

 

Sony Music controls/has in catalogue thousands of film scores licensed from other film studios as well, not just for Sony Pictures films. Of course it's big with Williams, since a lot of his soundtrack albums since the 1990s were released by Sony Music. So it means Hook, Seven Years In Tibet, Stepmom, Memoirs of a Geisha, Tintin, War Horse, Lincoln, The Book Thief, The Post. Other titles like CE3K, 1941, Home Alone, Rosewood have been already expanded, luckily.

This situation is truly and utterly absurd.

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38 minutes ago, TownerFan said:

 

The Patriot soundtrack was released on Hollywood Records (owned by Disney Music Group). So, you'd have to license cues from the OST album from them and the unreleased cues from Sony/Columbia Pictures and Centropolis  Entertainment.

 

Of course, I completely forgot that The Patriot OST was released by Hollywood Records. For some reason I thought it was Sony Classical. That's a relief. Still gutted about Hook though. 

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Thank you for that explanation, Jay. So, assuming that Matessino hasn't redone Hook for LLL and just needs to be approved, does that mean that Hook can't be expanded at all anymore, by no one, until things change? Or can Sony Music work something out with all the rights holders?

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2 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

does that mean that Hook can't be expanded at all anymore, by no one, until things change?

 

That's what I understand.

 

2 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

Or can Sony Music work something out with all the rights holders?

 

I suppose they could, but everything we've always been told is that a third party needs to come in to make it happen.  Maybe someone with more industry expertise will post more information somewhere.

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3 hours ago, crumbs said:

Looks like some really premium scores like Titanic, The Thin Red Line and Close Encounters came out just in time to avoid this.

 

Not sure about other composers' scores that could be affected. Some Horner stuff maybe? Zorro, Jumanji?


For Horner scores it means no chances of expansion for the following: 
 

1992 - Sneakers (leaked version missing some material and has poor audio at times)
1994 - Legends Of The Fall (one of the DVDs had an isolated score)
1995 - Jumanji (one of the DVDs had an isolated score)
1996 - The Spitfire Grill 
1998 - Deep Impact
1998 - The Mask Of Zorro
1999 - Bicentennial Man (UK DVD had an isolated score)
1999 - Freedom Song
2000 - The Perfect Storm (leaked version missing a cue)
2001 - Enemy At The Gates
2001 - Iris
2002 - Windtalkers
2002 - The Four Feathers
2003 - The Missing
2005 - The Legend Of Zorro

and these which are post 2006 or whatever year the whole AFM / royalty issue makes them impossible anyway: 

2010 - The Karate Kid (complete score leaked anyway)
2012 - The Amazing Spider-Man (complete score leaked anyway)
2015 - Southpaw (this score is synth and might not have been restricted by the AFM fees)
2016 - The Magnificent Seven

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33 minutes ago, NL197 said:

or Horner scores it means no chances of expansion for the following: 

 

Here's hoping Sneakers and Jumanji were already in the works before this letter was sent out

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Sad to read, though it doesnt mean that expanded releases of these films will never seen the light of day. It just means they probably won't for the forseeable future.

 

The biggest potential problem is that it means a lot of masters won't be transferred digitally and might become unusable and therefore the music will be lost. Unless Sony plans to do the work themselves.

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12 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

The biggest potential problem is that it means a lot of masters won't be transferred digitally and might become unusable and therefore the music will be lost. Unless Sony plans to do the work themselves.

 

No, that has nothing to do with this whatsoever.  You're thinking of Sony the film studio ,this is Sony Records the music label.

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22 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

I know, but doesnt Sony Music also own the rights to scores from Sony the film studio?

 

Absolutely not.

 

22 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

I may my wrong, but doesnt a expanded score release require a license from both the label who own the OST and the film studio?

 

Yes, it does.

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As I understand it, OST rights (if applicable) reside with a music label (possibly in perpetuity, possibly not), film score music not released on the OST resides with the studio and music publishing rights belong to the entities that deal with those. I believe all three parties need to be on board to facilitate a complete score release (usually handled by a 3rd Party such as LLL, or in the case of Varese, as they often hold perpetual rights, they would be the 3rd Party and the OST rights holder).

 

Obviously this is a generalisation and each title is unique. There are other complicated issues such as mechanical rights (physical media) which I do not pretend to understand.

 

Not sure if that's what you were asking? Please forgive any errors in this crude explanation, I'm by no means an expert.

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In the case of Titanic, all of the OST cues included on LLL's release were licensed for use by Sony Music. All of the added material not on the OST - most of the LLL album - had to be licensed for use by Paramount. 

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1 hour ago, Jay said:

 

No, that has nothing to do with this whatsoever.  You're thinking of Sony the film studio ,this is Sony Records the music label.

 

Don't music labels also "lose" or "misplace" album masters though? Wasn't that the case with LLL's ET and Intrada's Jaws (they had to use masters from the UK or something)?

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Yes, it seems that the most likely reason the original 1st generation tapes from the recording sessions for the Jaws LP re-recording and the ET final day recording session cannot be found is because they burned up in the Universal Records fire

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This is sad news that other scores held by Sony won't get expanded releases in the foreseeable future.  That means Spider-Man 1 and 2 (even though MV said most likely not gonna happen) that have been listed here.

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4 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

The third-party thing is something I've never really understood. If I own an OST and you own the unreleased music, why couldn't I license the unreleased music to you, or vice versa?

 

I'm sure Sony (the record label) COULD license unreleased music from a film studio and release an expansion on their own. It's just not part of their regular business model.

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