Copyright and video... in drum corps

Copyright and video synchronization a key to performing music in drum corps


         At the Whitewater show, Steve Vickers (you know, the guy who publishes this here Drum Corps World) and I were talking about the playlists from the different corps. I edit on the Wikipedia and for DCX: The Drum Corps Xperience (if you haven't checked out DCX already, the website is http://www.dcxmuseum.org/ ). In doing so, I list each year's repertoires as a part of the articles on each corps. Steve publishes them here, researched by staff member Dave Scott, in Drum Corps World for you, the adoring drum corps public, to see them all in one location.

         We had to agree that the reason it seems like the lists get announced later and later every year is because they really do get announced later and later every year. Not so many years ago, Steve would print the playlists in the March issue of DCW. Then it got to be April before they were all announced. Then May. For 2018, he couldn't publish them until the June 15 issue, less than a week before the season opened. Even then, among the junior corps, Blue Devils had only announced their theme and some composers, while Spirit of Atlanta had merely announced a list of composers.

         We can moan and groan all we want, but there really is a very good reason for the delays. It all has to do with licensing and royalties.

         Back in the day, music publishers and their licensing organizations couldn't care less if an amateur musical organization, like fer instance a drum and bugle corps, played their artist/composers musical selections. On one hand, it gave more exposure to the tunes, encouraging record sales. On another hand, licensing fees for live performances were so low that agents for ASCAP and BMI (the composers' organizations) seldom bothered to try to collect from "local" professional musicians such as your favorite bar band. And they probably were even less likely to try to collect from the local high school band or from a drum corps (if they were even aware of a corps' existance).

         Then in the 1990s and again in the current century, along came new International Copyright Conventions and International Copyright Treaties... Among other things, these conventions and treaties greatly increased the royalties payable to musical composers and publishers for record sales, for radio airplay, for use on television and in movies, for use on video media, for live performances, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth... They also greatly increased the penalties for copyright violations.

         Under the new rules, we have seen DCI issuing videos with some corps having a song excluded, because the corps failed to get prior consent and licensing to perform a song only to have the synchronization license to record the tune denied by the composer and/or publisher.

         Another result is the delay we have seen in announcing the playlists, as the corps (and DCI and DCA) request permission and licenses to perform the tunes in their shows and to have them recorded. I suppose some licensing agencies are quite timely in responding. Others are very busy and need time to respond. Some others are just sllooowwww... At any rate, show announcements once made in March are now coming as late as June.

         Then comes the situation of the announced tunes not being listed by their actual composers. The reason for this is very simple. The corps figure that you, their fans, are more likely to recognize a tune like, "What a Wonderful World" as a hit by Louis Armstrong rather than as a composition by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss or "The Great Gig in the Sky" as a song by Pink Floyd rather than one written by Richard Wright and Clare Torry or... Well, I hope you get the idea.

         Therefore, the first time I read a drum corps article on the Wikipedia, I looked at something in the "Show summary" section, and I said to myself, "No, that's not who composed that song. That's just someone who had a hit recording of it." The more I read, the more I saw the same thing. That's how I got started editing on the Wikipedia--- by correcting the composers listed in the drum corps articles. Thirty thousand edits later, I'm still at it.

         In making corrections, I tried using the same source as the article editors had used to get the playlists, corpsreps.com. The problem was that corpsreps creator Chris Maher had used the lists put out by the corps, with many songs listed by performers rather than by composers. Thus, the Wikipedia entry and the cited reference were in agreement, even if they were both wrong.

         A couple of years ago, I started sending Chris emails with the correct composers for tunes. He would pass them on to his editor (who just happened to be his daughter), and (Lo and behold!) the corpsreps entry would be corrected. The Wikipedia article and the reference cited then would not only be in agreement, but both would be correct.

         Recently, Steve and Chris got together with a number of other expert drum corps aficionados. They refer to themselves as, "...a small group of enthusiastic drum corps fans, collectors and historians who want to preserve the activity by way of making information we've collected over the years available online for current and former participants, fans, historians, and others to access." Together, the group expanded and converted Chis' corpsreps.com into DCX: The Drum Corps Xperience.

         Since editing is what I do, I offered to add my services to the endeavor, and Chris added me to the DCX suport staff. Now, I make composer corrections whenever I find the need. (Yeah, I'm still finding more, especially for obscure compositions in the repertoires of defunct corps.) I also wrote new and up-to-date histories on all of the active junior corps in time for the start of the 2018 season, and I try to keep them up-to-date.

         So that's the story for now. As I said before, if you haven't checked out DCX already, the website is http://www.dcxmuseum.org/. Go there, but don't get lost while checking out the abundance of drum corps info to be found there.