Motown fantasy album compilers and mock cover makers' dreams come true?

**TomBairdFan** · 11-02-2012, 09:46 AM

While time-travellingin the future, I came across this media release, which might fulfill some Motown fantasies.
Dateline: November 2, 2015

Complete MotownCatalogue Goes Online Nov 31, 2015
Every Motown song available to download at motown@amazon.com
On November 31st, 2015,every Motown song recorded between 1959 and 1988 will be available to download at the new motown@amazon.comwebsite. Motown fans will be able to download individual tracks or complete albums and compile their own collections or tweak previously released albums to their taste. Fans can search by title, artist, producer, writer, arranger or recording date, and every track will be encoded with Amazon's new OneTime^[[TM)technology which ensures that, once downloaded, the file cannot be copied or file-shared, ensuring that the original creators receive a royalty for each download.

Visitors to themotown@amazon.com will be able to make their own compilations of any track recorded and mixed for commercial release and owned by Motown from its early days right through until 1988, when the company changed hands. Tracks will be available for 99 cents each, and downloading 12 tracks at a time will generate a Greatest Hits Motown Volume Discount of 20% for users; downloading 16 tracks at a time earns users a Big Hits Volume Discount of 30% and downloading 20 tracks at a time generates a Golden Greats Volume Discount of 50%, which means that Motown fans can make their own 20 track compilations for less than 10 dollars. While the limit for each compilation is 20 tracks at any one time, there is nothing to stop fans following in the Motown tradition of making subsequent volumes! In a Beta test, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's ''Ain't No Mountain High Enough'' was the inspiration for one fan, Gordon Southall, who compiled his own 'Ashford and Simpson at Motown' album, using tracks recorded by Gaye/Terrell, Diana Ross ,Gladys Knight & The Pips, The Four Tops and other Motown stars to create a showcase of Nicholas Ashford and Valerie Simpson's songwriting and production work for Motown. Said Gordon, ''I was amazed at how cohesive Ashford & Simpson's songs sounded when put together on a 20 track album by different Motown performers. The trick was to create a track list where the songs flow into each other and give the album a good overall vibe. I'm fizzing at the bung to make Volume 2 and I've always wanted to make a 'Motown in Muscle Shoals compilation with those Reuben Howell, Supremes and Temptations tracks and the Bottom & Company ballads.'' Another Motown fan, Noreen Chepstow, downloaded 16 tracks to make a compilation which she called ''Go Girls! Lady Lyricists at Motown'',a collection of songs whose lyrics were written by female writers.''One of the neat features of the search function at motown@amazon.com is that you can isolate the results by gender. The boy and girl groups are obvious, but searching for female songwriters brought up a large number of female lyricists, including English-born Pam Sawyer, Sylvia Moy and Gloria Jones. Listening to my compilation made me realize what a clever lyricist Pam Sawyer is, and I'm going to download a whole album's worth of songs by her next. I'm going to call it Pamela Motown's Greatest Hits,'' said Noreen.

Features of themotown@amazon.com website include a separate Motown Instrumentals Studio, where fans can download versions of Motown songs without vocals and enjoy the high standard of musicianship that went into every Motown recording. In the Motown Archives, fans can read articles about Motown's history and see original Motown Record Corporation video footage of recordings and rehearsals. Also, fans can play a ''Billie JeanBrown Says No'' game, where they can take on the role of Quality Controller and choose which mix of a song should be commercially released [[or not!). At Ric-Tic Relics, fans can download recordings made by Ed Wingate's studio in Detroit, including tracks by Edwin Starr, The Fantastic Four and The San Remo Strings, all of which were acquired by Motown in the 60s. Biographies of Motown artistes will be available to download to Kindle at a special rate and fans can also link to AmazonView^[[TM) on any SmartTVand watch digital quality videos of their favourite Motown stars headlining their own TV specials or guesting on shows from the 60s and 70s.

The downloadability of all the Motown recordings from 1959 to 1988 and the new Motown-Amazon venture is a result of the 2014 legal ruling which confirmed that any digital versions of classic Motown recordings still legally belonged to Berry Gordy, sole owner of the Motown Record Corporation, since he never actually sold the rights to them. When Berry Gordy sold the Motown master tapes in 1988, the terms of the contact clearly stated that the purchaser could ''exploit, market and sell the recordings on compact disc, tape and vinyl''. Digital downloads did not exist at the time. As copyright law states that copyright belongs to the original creator unless sold or transferred by contract to another party, in legal terms, Berry Gordy was still the copyright holder and retained the right to sell the recordings in any other format. This was confirmed by a legal ruling in a California court last year. Universal Music had completed its conversion of the complete Motown catalogue from analogue tapes to digital files in 2012, and they were stored on its server and used to create compact discs and downloadable versions of the songs. The Honorable Judge P.Symes ruled that the original copyright holder never sold the rights to market digital versions of the original analogue Motown recordings, and that the digital conversions, which were made at Universal´s expense, must be transferred back to a server contolled by the Motown Record Corporation. Mr Gordy still owns the Motown Record Corporation [[he never sold the corporate name – the new owners and all subsequent owners operated the company with a different name). The Motown Record Corporation now owns all the digital versions of recordings made from 1959 until the sale of the master tapes in 1988, allowing the company to offer the recordings as downloads at the motown@amazon.comwebsite. Universal Music retains ownership of the analogue tapes sold by Berry Gordy, plus any recordings made under the Motown trademark after the 1988 sale and can continue to sell Motown recordings on CD, tape and vinyl only

The legal loophole was discovered in 2013 by Irving Spellman, a partner at U.K. lawyers, Spellman, Frewin, Allen, when he was checking legal clearance for a digital version of ''These Things Will Keep Me Loving You'', a minor hit for the Velvelettes in the 1960s that his client, a large advertising agency wanted to use for a big-spend marketing campaign by a chain of UK women's fashion stores. ''It was to be a million pound campaign, and everything was riding on that song. When I was checking Universal's ownership contract, I noticed a discrepancy, so I contacted a colleague who knew Berry Gordy's lawyer in Los Angeles,and asked if he could review the original contract of sale when Berry Gordy sold Motown in 1988. Mr Gordy kindly made his copy of the contract available, and it showed that he had indeed sold the Motown master tapes, but the contract granted the new owners only the rights to exploit, market and sell the recordings on Compact Disc, vinyl and tape and, of course, at that time, digital downloading did not exist. The Motown catalogue passed through several hands,including Boston Ventures/MCA and Polygram before being acquired by Universal, and every time the Motown recordings were sold, none of the new owners acquired the rights to market or sell digital versions of any Motown recordings, since they simply bought what the previous owner had the rights to, which was to sell the music on CD, tape or vinyl. It was a serious oversight'', says Spellman. ''Ironically, shortly after the legal ruling, lawyers from Universal tried to sell the analogue Motown tapes back to Berry Gordy, but the response was 'Thanks, but no thanks'. Legal matters aside, as the Motown motto says, 'It's what's in the grooves that counts', and Motown fans can now download all of the best music ever made.''

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Although this is a fantasy, you never know what will come to be!