Do they own music like Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head theme? Or Jim Smith’s Dog Pound Hop for Ren and Stimpy? Or Primus’ South Park theme? because I recalled them being listed as the owner for the Beavis and Butt-Head song on the credits of Beavis and Butt-head Do America.

This is even more underwhelming than when Warner Bros. parted with its music division a couple of years back, however, I hope the Famous songs don’t become impossible to license like the notorious Beatles songs.

If you look closely at the cover of the Herman & Katnip sheet music I believe you’ll see that Hal David was one of the co-authors. It was at Famous Music that he first teamed up with Burt Bacharach.

It’s going to be interesting to see how Sony/ATV markets their new acquisition. Further in the article, the mention is that publishing rights are become more critical as the music industry suffers at the retail end due to piracy. Music licensing is their salvation, at the expense of the consumer’s nostalgic tendencies.

Once again, this will become an issue to those who will bemoan the fact that their favorite vintage movies and television shows will be subject to the following caveat: “Some of the music has been changed in this presentation.”

Well, damn you, Jerry! Now I’ll be humming “Skiddle-Diddle-Dee” til suppertime!!

Since Republic never does anything with its stash of Paramount cartoons, I’m not worried about those, but the Beatles songs under Sony/ATV/M.J. are reportedly notoriously difficult to license, and this could have horrible consequences for the Popeye DVD collections if they adopt similar licensing policies for the Famous library.

The only other place you can read a sentence with the words “Viacom” and “Michael Jackson” is on a MadLibs piece of paper.

As if someone’s gonna ask to get the rights to perform “Little Audrey Says”. :-)

It is highly unlikely that Sony/ATV will make it any more difficult to license music from Paramount cartoons than it already is. The Beatles songs are likely difficult to license because…well…they’re Beatles songs, and everybody and their mama wants to use them.

That same alleged licensing difficulty doesn’t apply to much of the rest of their catalog, and certainly not to the constant influx of new compositions being add to the company’s catalog. The Popeye DVDs will be just fine.

…and I’m sure that Viacom and Michael Jackson are likely to appear in the same sentence more often than never, considering that he was one of the biggest stars MTV ever had.