[total-madness] Madness

[Neil Greggor]

Actually Chaps, I was thinking about why the Mads hadn't had so much publicity and/or a real marketing campaign. I had a look on the Wonderful CD and it said that the Copyright is owned by Stirling Holdings and not by Virgin/EMI. It final slotted into place. Virgin really won't make all that much money on the New Madness album and so aren't putting much money behind , which of course they can't recoup. They can't recoup the money , because they can't exploit the recordings like Stiff did with say the British Beef Adverts and the Colgate , as they simply don't own the copyright. If you think about other great acts such as Paul McCartney , George Harrison, David Bowie , The Rolling Stones, they all own or partly own their own songs, but when did you see a great publicity drive on their behalf, you occasionaly see the adverts ,but how many of you knew Paul McCartney had a new record out, he hasn't made any appearances and the adverts have few and far between, that is because his record company can't be arsed to sell or market something they won't make any money on. They real reason that they keep these artists is because of their back catalouge ( in Pauls case the Beatles catalouge) and Virgin still owns the Madness Phonographic copyright and still administers the Madness song or literary copyright, they want these , they have to keep the artists somehow.Its complicated but something like the above.   Neil.