Franz Ferdinand Slam Label Over McDonald’s Licensing

Record labels may think they own the artists they have on their books, but they don’t. And they also can’t license the artists’ music out to companies and campaigns without approval from the artist themselves. Franz Ferdinand have had to remind Epic of this.

According to NME, Franz Ferdinand’s U.S. label Epic, part of Sony Music, allowed one of the band’s tracks to appear on a Web site for fast food chain McDonald’s. Lead singer Alex Kapranos wasn’t too happy when he found out and called Epic and Sony all the names he could think of.

Kapranos took to his Twitter account to vent his anger over one of the band’s songs being used on LateNightMcDonalds, a site that has since disappeared.

His tweets described his thought process about the whole thing:

This: http://www.latenightmcdonalds.com/ is an example of how a band falls out with their US label. Did they think we’d approve this shit?

Dirty bastards. Stupid arrogant motherfucking pig-brained arseholes. I’d rather eat a cow-pat on a bun than a bloody McDonalds.

Not all labels are bastards. Domino aren’t. Just spoke to L Bell on the phone who knew nothing of it. He’s on phone to USA now…

I’m not really pissed off with McDonalds. They’re just the same as any other psychopathic corporation – no more evil, no less.

The psychopathic corporation I am pissed off with is Sony who owns Epic who release our records in America. But not really surprised.

I’m just pissed off because I had a sponsorship deal with White Castle on the cards which is now totally scuppered.

I was going to get a lifetime supply of those cute (much tastier than McD) burgers and they were going to open a Dennistoun franchise.

Wow. Remind me never to get on the wrong side of Kapranos. However, it’s nice to see an artist not afraid to stand up to a record label when they clearly do something outside of their jurisdiction.

I’m guessing the later quips about White Castle are a way of deflecting some of the attention off the earlier tweets that were clearly sent in anger. Although, it’d be brilliant it Franz Ferdinand actually did now do a deal with a rival fast food chain. But I can’t see it, somehow.

[Photo Source: Newscom]