The Voice Season 8

[mercfan3]

I don't really care about Kim and her fans. She's immensely talented, and I wish her all the success in the world, but I won't follow her past the show. (Far more interested in Sawyer and Mia Z. ) Other than I didn't think she should have been the target of fans vitriol.

I do care about Haley. And I'm glad you understand where I'm coming from. It's not your one voice that concerns me. It's the mob effect. And I don't want Haley's fans to have a bad reputation.

This permission stuff is all about legal ability. Christina needed to personally ask Linda Perry to use "What's Up" because Linda Perry doesn't clear her songs for Idol or The Voice. PMJ has no legal right to "Creep." They don't have to ask permission to use that.

Now, if this really bothers Scott, then he should get some legal protections, whatever they may be. Does he copyright his arrangement? Does he ask for credit anywhere on his site? If he doesn't want the status quo (which is, television shows can use arrangements off of youtube without asking permission) to be true for his arrangements, than he should protect his music. Television shows will respect that.

But I think Scott knows better. I think he knows that even without getting credit his version of "Creep" was found by many people after being on The Voice, some of them bought his song, some of them might have gone to the tour. So making it even a little hard for a network show to play his music means his music isn't as exposed as it could be.

The music world is in a lot of gray areas right now, IMO. Youtube has opened up a lot of doors for people, and the music industry and music law hasn't caught up. Sampling has been the new way to create music. To be honest, the Sam Smith and Pharrell Williams court decisions have bothered a lot of musicians. Most say that Iggy Azalea's music steals far more than Sam Smith's and Pharrell's.

How much rights does a person have to an arrangement of a song they covered? At the end of the day, these aren't Scott's, lyrics or melodies. What about sampling? What about songs that just coincidently sound the same..pop music has a format too it, eventually it'll run out of new patterns.

These are all questions that the law hasn't caught up with. And network televisions don't care about "the little guy"..that's true..but it's not even really that. They only care about what they can and can't do legally. Will it cost them money? Will it cost them time? It's why we hear the same songs over and over again on these shows.