It’s old news that Michael Jackson owned half of the copyrights to a large portion of Beatles songs, and that Sony/ATV Music Publishing owned the rest. But apparently, according to the US Copyright Act of 1976, songwriters are able to regain control of publishing rights on pre-1978 compositions after 56 years. This is all music to Paul McCartney’s ears. Pun intended, dudes! Behind said Act, McCartney will be able to regain control over Beatles compositions from 1962 in 2018 and songs from 1970 in 2026. So at the tender age of 76, just nine years from now, Paul McCartney (who already is worth about $737 million) will be raking in the dough.

Poor YouTube. Everyone’s trying to cash in on your idea and they don’t even have the decency to keep you in the loop.
First it was Vevo, now the video sharing site might be getting some hardy competition from Hulu, who is in talks right now with major record labels to host music videos.
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Completely free, legal, high-quality downloads. It’s a pipe dream for American music fans. And until this week, it was for the rest of the world, too. Google, Inc., launched free downloads of licensed songs in China Monday, sharing their ad revenue with the labels and giving users access to the catalogs of Sony, Warner, EMI and Universal.
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A while back, we told you about a plan from some of the major labels to launch a Hulu-like music video web site as an alternative to the unthinkable pennance they were apparently earning for letting their artists’ videos air on YouTube. Now, as some of the majors renegotiate liscensing deals with YouTube (and others just flip out), Universal has partnered with the Google-owned operation to create its own UMG-artists-only online home for music videos.
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