Rod Smear wrote:
>> and don't forget that, with less songs on the LPs, less $$ needs
>> to be paid for royalties. Am I correct on that?
From: Paul Urbahns <[log in to unmask]>
> That's right, but I don't think mechanical royalties was why
> Capitol started cutting up the albums.
Wrong. It WAS the mechanicals.
> Vee Jay started by dropping two tracks from Please Please Me
> to create the Introducing album, because typically American
> albums of the period had 12 songs.
And British albums typically had 14 songs. Do you want to know why? It
was because U.S. mechanicals were paid on a per-song basis and British
mechanicals were paid on a per album basis. The British cost was about
24 cents no matter if it was one song, 12 songs, 14 songs, or 47 songs.
They picked 14 -- in general, not just for The Beatles. If the U.S.
albums were 14 songs the mechanicals would be 28 cents. So they reduced
it to 12 and matched the British. Not just for the Beatles -- for ALL
albums.
Mike Biel [log in to unmask]
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