Music Ownership, Tweeting Tree, Video Game Music

How Can a Megastar like Taylor Swift Not Own the Recordings to Her Hits? (0:34) Guest: Erin Jacobson, The Music Industry Lawyer For a bit there it looked like Taylor Swift –one of the most powerful women in music –wouldn’t be allowed to perform some of her biggest hits at the American Music Awards on Sunday night. Swift’s enormous power does not, it turns out, extend to ownership of the songs that made her famous. The master recordings of those and dozens of other hits from the first decade of Taylor Swift’s career are owned by her former music label Big Machine Records, with whom Swift has some bad blood. A week ago, she posted on Twitter that Big Machine was refusing to let her perform a medley of her hits at the AMAs unless she promised not to rerecord all of her earlier music so she can have a copy that she owns. Swift’s legions of fans came to her defense online and Big Machine gave its permission for the performance. (Originally aired August 28, 2019) Tree That Tweets About Climate Change (19:39) Guest: Tim Rademacher, Harvard Forest Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University  Trees don’t speak, but there’s one in Harvard University’s forest that tweets. It’s a 100-year-old Red Oak tree sending regular updates with the handle @AWitnessTree on Twitter about how it’s holding up. A few days ago, the tree had a series of tweets about how much rain was falling. It’ll even answer if you tweet at it. (Originally aired September 23, 2019) Music Composition and Video Game Design (32:09) Guest: Winifred Phillips, Composer of Music for Video Games, Author of A Composer’s Guide to Game Music Composers of movie scores win Oscars for their brilliance. But if you want to know the truth, it’s a lot harder to compose the score to a video game, because it’s like a choose-your-own-soundtrack that responds to what the player does, while still setting the mood and sounding great. We’re hearing the main theme for the video game Assassin’s Creed Liberation, composed by Winifred Phillips. It’s currently being performed around the world by an 80-piece orchestra and choir as part of the Assassin’s Creed Symphony Tour. Winifred Phillips is one of the best in the business. In addition to Assassin’s Creed, she’s composed for Little Big Planet, The Sims, Speed Race, God of War and lots more. (Originally aired July 2, 2019) The Secret Co-Creator of Batman (51:07) Guest: Marc Nobleman, Author, “Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman,” Featured in Hulu’s “Batman and Bill” Batman is getting another reboot –this time starring Twilight vampire Robert Pattinson as the caped crusader. From vampire to bat, that makes some sense, I guess. The movie credits will list Bob Kane, which super fans will recognize as the man who got rich and famous as the creator of Batman. The sole creator, he insisted. But you’ll also see another name listed as co-creator: Bill Finger. The reason he’ll be credited is because of author Marc Nobelman. He spent years trying to get justice for Bill. He wrote a book called, “Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman.” And he starred in a Hulu documentary called “Batman and Bill.” (Originally aired February 20, 2019) World’s First Gene-edited Babies Are Causing an Uproar (1:17:09) Guest: Henry T. Greely (JD) Professor of Law, Director for Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford University A year ago this week, the scientific world was in an uproar at news that a Chinese researcher had edited the genomes of two human embryos that had been born as healthy twin girls. The scientist He Jainkui said he edited the DNA to help make the girls resistant to HIV infection. But he was widely condemned by other geneticists for having done such a risky, unnecessary procedure on human beings. A year later, the experiment is still causing angst in the genetics community. (Originally aired December 10, 2018)