— The National Assn. of Recording Merchandisers and the Country Music Assn. will produce an Entertainment Law Conference in Nashville on Nov. 9. The keynote will be an interview with U.S. Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters, who will discuss some of the policy changes that she has witnesses and influenced during her 45-year career in the Copyright Office, and her ideas about the future of copyright law. For more information, click here.
— Heavy Rotation Records, a Berklee College of Music student-run record label will produce a cover song tribute to some of rock’s biggest names and seminal bands.
Rightsflow, through its Limelight service, will provide licensing for the record. Limelight is designed to be a simple way for any artist, band, choir or other musical group to clear any cover song for release.
The album is expected to cover songs by Gang of Four, My Bloody Valentine, Nirvana, Pixies, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Green Day, U2, R.E.M., Husker Du, Joy Division and Mission of Burma.
Berklee College of Music students are being encouraged to record and submit cover songs for consideration. The Heavy Rotation Records staff will oversee all aspects of the release including A&R, marketing, sales, touring, Web development, media and accounting. In addition to licensing, RightsFlow will provide marketing expertise to help build a plan, according to RightsFlow’s director of licensing (and 2003 Berklee graduate) Kim Gerlach.
— Alliance Entertainment has landed exclusive distribution for the soundtrack for the “Social Network,” composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Records, and on Rezner’s Null Record label. The album is available in CD in a digipak, which comes out Oct. 15, and in 180-gram vinyl with a triple gatefold packaging, which comes out Oct. 29.
— The Pink Floyd post-“Dark Side Of The Moon” titles are now once again available in the digital format, after being “out of print,” so to speak, for nearly three months. The EMI contract covering those albums: “Wish You Were Here,” “Animals,” “The Wall” and “The Final Cut,” expired on June 30. In early July, those titles were removed from digital sites around the world. While all those albums initially came out on Columbia, EMI has been distributing them since 2000. A couple of weeks ago, Pink Floyd had apparently agreed to let EMI continue to distribute the album digitally while contract negotiations continue.
