The sequined red, white and blue outfit screams AMERICA IN THE EARLY 90S and takes me back to days of bad cafeteria lunches and awkward school dances, where the boys would try to breakdance to this song. Was this re-mastered re-recorded release of “Ice, Ice Baby” really necessary?
That was the first question that came to mind when I saw this album on eMusic and a question that is asked by many.
But all joking aside, there was a very viable reason for Vanilla Ice to re-record this song or for someone to pay him to do so. In fact, if I personally had the opportunity and the money to pay for him to record a master that I could own and then license, I would do it in a heartbeat.
Without speaking to potential sample clearance issues on the publishing side, a popular song re-recorded by the original artist is the equivalent of licensing gold. I am constantly being asked to swap out original masters because they won’t clear or cost too much. If the cues are buried deep in the mix and the original master is for some reason not an option, music supervisors often turn to karaoke catalogs for soundalikes of the song that the director absolutely must have.
And why use Vanilla Ice when there are many rappers in this world who are both good and not Vanilla Ice? Sometimes the script and the setting don’t give you a choice. If the movie is set in the 90s and the script says that the main character is “rocking the mike like a vandal” by lip-synching to “Ice Ice Baby,” you’re probably going to have to clear the rights to that song.
If you can’t get the usage rights for the original master recording or can’t afford the price, you will stumble gratefully across this Vanilla Ice track on eMusic and fully understand why it really was necessary for him to re-record and re-master this song.
If you can’t get the usage rights for the original master recording or can’t afford the price, you will stumble gratefully across this Vanilla Ice track on eMusic and fully understand why it really was necessary for him to re-record and re-master this song.
Unless you are Conan.
that just made my day.
Wait, so the re-recording is cheaper to license than the original? why is that? is it because they are different? or is it because someone else owns the rights for the original? and what makes the original better? i’m a little confused.
The original recording is usually held by a major label that is in need of revenue and generally wants to recoup its investment in the artist/recording. If the price is right (i.e., lower than the cost of licensing the original from a label) and the re-record is of good quality, a licensee who might otherwise license the original master may go for the re-recording.
So in answer to your question, the re-recording isn’t necessarily cheaper to license than the original; it costs as much as the copyright holder wants to charge. However, because of market forces and the fact that it costs much less to get Vanilla Ice to re-record Ice Ice Baby now than it cost the label to get him to record the original, the owner of a re-record usually charges much less than the original copyright holder.