Johnny Gioeli suing Sega over Live & Learn

You know, given the fact that SEGA has had several music rights missteps before SA2, perhaps they should have Lived through Learned experience!

It’s too iconic to totally throw it away, my bet is that they’ll use it much more sparingly, since they’ll have to pay up every time they do.

 

Here's the part I don't really get. Wouldn't Crush 40 be a Wavemaster project in general? does he technically count as a part of it and that's somehow seperate from if it was just Jun getting a vocalist for a song that was credited to "Jun Senoue, Johnny Gioelli"? If the rest of his work as part of Crush 40 doesn't count, then why wouldn't those later, assumedly more airtight contracts work retroactively?

If there's anything good to come from this, hopefully it's SEGA/Wavemaster finally figuring out *every* music rights issue they possibly have and fixing it so we can just stop guessing why we can't get our favorite music again.

 

Considering how dire SEGA's situation was during SA2's development I still wouldn't be surprised if there were genuine anxieties that it might be their last chance to ever make a Sonic game at this scale again. I really don't think the future was in their mind at all during SA2's development (it's amazing that Sonic still exists at all nowadays let alone his continuing popularity)

unless they were just being melodramatic for no damn reason lol

 

They were being dramatic because they were trying to create a dramatic video game.

 

There probably just being melodramatic for no reason - it WAS the tenth anniversary game after all.

More on topic, I agree that this whole situation seems bizarre and the specific timing of this is certainly, uh, interesting. Could just be though that the licensing for use of the track in movie (marketing) was much more scrutinised, which lead to previous agreements and uses being reviewed, rather than Johnny seeing an opportunity to stir shit, which I think is an easy conclusion to jump to when you read something like this.

I also really hope this can be resolved amicably and in a way that doesn’t curtail either future use of Live and Learn or Johnny’s involvement in the series. The track in particular means so much to the culture of the franchise, encapsulated in the place it’s been given in Sonic Symphony and its world tour. There’s no experience quite like being in a concert hall and belting out “THERRRRRRE’S A FACE SEARCHING FAR, SO FAR AND WIDE” with hundreds of other Sonic fans, and I don’t want that kind of energy to go away over a licensing dispute.

Granted I know little about this kind of stuff, but in SEGA’s position I’d renumerate Johnny for uses of the track that are in question and then either try to buy the necessary rights wholesale or otherwise negotiate a much more refined contract to prevent this kind of thing from coming up again.

Hell, while they’re at it, maybe they could commission Hideki Naganuma to remaster the Sonic Rush soundtrack with legally compliant samples (ie getting Aaron Webber into the recording booth to mimic the originals - they’re so heavily manipulated anyway that we’d never be able to tell the difference).

 

the fact that this may or may not have come about because Paramount actually did their research and went through proper legal channels instead of just assuming who owned what is so funny to me

 

idk, the article states that this entire situation is separate from Paramount. The whole situation is framed as Johnny not knowing Live and Learn was used in other games in the first place and always knew he had the copyright to the song, and is only now pursuing legal action after being told the song has been reused a bunch. It's just a coincidence that it's happening at the time of Sonic 3's release.

 

I thought someone said the Rush samples were fair game when I asked about it on here in the past.

Granted, Right There Ride On has now been removed in Smash AND the recent SXSG rerelease of a game that once had it, so there's clearly something up. This is like, what, now 8 Sonic soundtracks with some form of rights issues?

 

This makes me sad. I can’t help but feel he just wanted to make a fuss because he technically could. He must have known it was used in other games. At least in Sonic ones. Maybe he is owed royalties but I don’t know...it doesn’t feel sincere. Now I’m gonna think of this when I see the movie.

Sonic and his fans are a big part his success I assume. Didn’t seem all that necessary.

 

Or they were aware that Sega's fate was uncertain around that time (not just as a console maker, but as a company), and probably didn't know if they would get to make more Sonic games after SA2, so they designed it so that it would serve as a decent send-off for the series.

In addition to the "Farewell Sonic forever" thing, that out of place message at the end of the Last story about how a new day will bring a new adventure for the heroes might have been added so that it would invoke an And the Adventure Continues ending for the series if SA2 turned out to be the final game.

 

If he does indeed own the master recording and composition he's well within his right to demand compensation. In any case we'll see how it gets settled. Hopefully this doesn't mean we never see the song again.

 

Absolutely nothing about law is sincere, and it's kind of the point; he's not trying to shit on Sonic fans out of spite or anything. He's just claiming rights he thinks he's entitled to. If SEGA -- a company that spends tens, maybe hundreds of thousand every year on their legal talent -- did blunder a silly thing like that for decades, it's extremely on them.

 

Just give him 2 minutes of gameawards money, it's fine.

 

i think i've been a sonic fan for so long that i've become desensitized to sega buffoonery, but sometimes i have to zoom out a little and view things from a layman's perspective. sega's mismanagement of this franchise is world historically bad - at least for a company of its size that's managed to last this long. it is insane how fundamentally baked-in their corporate dysfunction is on every single level. i simply do not understand how this keeps happening

 

And I wholeheartedly support him in this endeavor. The games industry seems to have a problem with stiffing people in general, look no further than what Mick Gordon was put through during and after Doom Eternal's development.

Simple. Human nature sucks and our interdependence sets bad habits into place for generations.

 

Can’t be world historically bad when generally it’s doing better than ever despite everything, and other franchises like Crash exists, or should i say don’t even really exist nowadays , how do you fumble a big franchise like that will always be a mystery -we know why tho-

 

Welp, it was fun having Crush 40 apart of the franchise. One of the quickest ways to end business partnerships are lawsuits. I'll be blown away if SEGA continues to work with him after this.

 

I understand that and maybe like Starduster mentioned it just came up after the movie stuff.

I still feel it’s a little weird. I find it hard to believe with how widespread the song is online he didn’t know it was in other Sonic games. Besides that he’s performed the song live for events. You’d think he was fine with it being used OUTSIDE of Sonic Adventure 2...Dreamcast release. (That’s part of the claim right? He wasn’t aware it was in the ports?)

Ya maybe he is owed some royalties but I don’t like the idea of bringing up it years and years later.

 

Johnny, as best I can tell, doesn't seem like a greedy man either. Every interview I've seen of him suggests he's very passionate about his work on Sonic and is very dedicated to the fanbase. Whether or not he actually didn't know Live and Learn was used elsewhere over the past 20 years is up to debate, but certainly he probably didn't realize that he should be compensated for all those uses. If he does indeed own rights to the master, which I have no reason to doubt him on given Sega's track record (especially pre-Sammy merger), then he has every right to sue and be upset by this.

All of this is to say, I think it's far more likely that Paramount did their homework, and in the process of getting licensing rights from Gioleli, tipped him off to this situation with Sega. They likely went to Sega's legal department to request the license. When Sega Legal discovered that they didn't have the correct licenses themselves, they told Paramount to speak to Johnny who could easily have been surprised by this situation. Suddenly, Johnny's looking into the situation himself, there was some sort of discussion between him and Sega, and the only recourse left was to file this suit. I would not put it past Sega to not want to pay music royalties on this and to try to obfuscate after this was all discovered.

Johnny doing this out of greed though? I don't particularly buy it. It doesn't track with his character as best as I can determine.

 

I think this is a case of having your nose too close to the source material. This kind of stuff happens frequently in all sorts of media. Did you forget that Metal Gear Solid can never use it's famous theme song again because it was stolen, or Dragon Ball Kai had it's entire soundtrack replaced for similar reasons? Or stuff like Beavis & Butthead still having a limited lifespan on episodes because they are only licensing music videos to this day for set periods of time? Valve straight up gave away all their VR tech to facebook with no contract. Sony can't re-release the classic wipeout games with their original soundtracks anymore. Same with stuff like the Grand Theft Auto games. Nintendo has had various trouble with Earthbound for years.

This kind of stuff is common, and not just in video games. Sega is no more "historically bad" than any other company if you pay close attention to their history.

Lawsuits over unpaid royalties are ridiculously common and do not generally result in the end of business partnerships. They are exceedingly common because lawsuits are the mechanism by which you enforce royalty payments. This is rote.

Like, just off the top of my head, the lawsuit between Accolade and Sega resulted in their business partnership beginning in the first place.