Licensing songs for commercials/promos

[cursereversed]

I was watching The Amazing Race the other day and saw a promo for the return of CBS' scripted shows with "Come Together" as the music. It was the Aerosmith version, which got be to wondering something that someone in the business may be able to answer. Would the licensing fee be less for Aerosmith then it would be for the Beatles either because a) the Beatles being the original vs. Aerosmith being a remake and/or b) the Beatles having the bigger hit?

[jlthorpe]

I don't think there's really a formula for determining licensing fees. I think it's based on a combination of who owns the rights to the music, how popular the artist's catalog is, and whether the music is available to be licensed or not, as opposed to basing it on remake/original and chart position. Using the Beatles as an example, their music is incredibly expensive to license, even for songs that weren't hits. I remember a "Mad Men" episode featured one of their songs from "Revolver" ("Tomorrow Never Knows"), which wasn't a pop hit at all, and even that song cost tens of thousands of dollars to include. I'm sure other artists are very stingy about licensing their music, while others' music appears in commercials/TV shows frequently. The Rolling Stones, for example, used to have their music appear in quite a few ads despite their being a huge act, while I'm not sure I've heard Pink Floyd's music used in ads at all.