[HN Gopher] How did Windows 95 get permission to put the Weezer ...
___________________________________________________________________
How did Windows 95 get permission to put the Weezer video Buddy
Holly on the CD?
Author : ingve
Score : 54 points
Date : 2026-02-10 19:25 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (devblogs.microsoft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (devblogs.microsoft.com)
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| Licensing?
| ssl-3 wrote:
| I read the whole thing (all several paragraphs of it) and the
| answer is, indeed: Licensing.
|
| It's approximately the least-interesting article I've read this
| year.
| kyleee wrote:
| Is there any way to make this submission even less
| interesting? Perhaps we can speculate about parts being
| written by AI. Did you see any em dashes?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| It's just a journal style entry, its not bad that its
| boring, but its so bland. It will become LLM fodder I'm
| sure.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| We all will. Ashes to ashes.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I found it somewhat interesting that they had to track down
| all the actors from Happy Days. You would think that there
| would be one single point of contact with whomever made the
| video, cause it's not like they were using the footage of the
| actors in a new way.
|
| But honestly, I'm ok with it being only somewhat interesting.
| When you write as many posts as Mr. Chen does, they aren't
| all going to be bangers.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > You would think that there would be one single point of
| contact with whomever made the video, cause it's not like
| they were using the footage of the actors in a new way.
|
| That depends. Licensing is a weird nuanced beast. The
| original video could have received a license to broadcast
| on something like MTV. MS didn't want to broadcast it, but
| distribute it. That's an entirely different thing in the
| licensing world. The fees also change depending on
| broadcast/distribute. The number of units would be
| considered and fees based accordingly.
| netsharc wrote:
| Decades later Apple put U2 on everyone's iPhone and people got
| mad... (/s, yeah the album was a gift on people's account, ready
| to download to the phone but not taking space otherwise, but I
| would've found it obnoxious too).
|
| This video was also on the CD:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc .. holy smokes, let's
| rewind time 30 years, where the presidential sex scandal was
| singular, consensual, and was actually a scandal!
| llm_nerd wrote:
| It was much worse than just adding it to your library as a
| gift. The cover art for the album[1] would appear in seemingly
| random places on your phone. And there was literally zero way
| to remove it, until there was such an uproar that Apple had to
| make a special tool.
|
| Apple spent money on this and they really, really wanted to
| force feed it to every Apple user (not unlike their F1 movie
| venture). It was incredibly obnoxious.
|
| 1 - And it isn't homophobic to note that the Songs of Innocence
| cover art looked a bit like you were browsing Grindr or
| something. People have the right to have the opinion that
| having that image suddenly being featured on their phone might
| be misinterpreted by others.
| kej wrote:
| ... It's a father trying to protect his son from the world's
| dangers. Not every picture of two men is sexual.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| ... It's a shirtless man hugging the waist of another
| shirtless man. The cover art doesn't even have any text on
| it, but instead is just a picture of a couple of shirtless
| dudes in an incredibly weird pose. Yeah, I'm sure lots of
| fathers find themselves in scenes just like this. Totes
| normal.
|
| "Not every picture of two men is sexual."
|
| Yes, no shit. Of course on HN someone would try this
| morally righteous horseshit, especially hilarious when it's
| served with a side of "Duh, of course!"
|
| But you know what the picture represents because you were
| quite literally told how to interpret it. I don't want some
| picture I didn't ask for suddenly appearing on my lock
| screen (because most of us actually had empty libraries, so
| when this "gift" was added and the device did its fun
| "autoplay" nonsense, it would suddenly be active media),
| walking around saying to anyone who might catch site "Oh
| don't worry, it's an artistic image of a father protecting
| his son or something"
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| In this vastly unlikely passive aggressive hypothetical
| scenario, you're imagining that a random person who might
| see your screen would be as triggered by the image as you
| were. Most people had figured out by then that two men
| together are no more offensive or evil than a man and a
| woman.
| JCattheATM wrote:
| > Apple spent money on this and they really, really wanted to
| force feed it to every Apple user (not unlike their F1 movie
| venture). It was incredibly obnoxious.
|
| Apple is an incredibly obnoxious company, obnoxious behavior
| should be expected.
|
| Also, 'llm_nerd' for a username, really?
| whizzter wrote:
| Because it auto-played when you didn't want to.
|
| If you had Spotify running and then pressed the quick-play on
| your phones it would continue where it was, but after a reboot
| the iPhone would auto-play from Apple Music instead if Spotify
| hadn't been started.
|
| So tapping play on your headphones would start those damn U2
| songs "by accident" because it's the only thing that was on the
| Apple Music accounts we aren't using.. yeah no thanks.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Sony wasted several gigs of the very small (32g to 120g) and
| very expensive ssds of the time with _2_ copies of a Spider Man
| 3 movie pre-loaded onto several different laptops. One copy in
| the normal installed fs, another copy in the recovery
| partition.
|
| And you couldn't even watch the movie unless you also paid to
| unlock it.
|
| You could delete the normal copy if you even knew it was there
| and then also used a disk usage util to FIND the actual file.
| But you couldn't do anything about the copy in the recovery
| image except delete the recovery partition and basically wipe &
| repartition the drive and do your own fresh install.
| pstuart wrote:
| And somebody probably got a fat bonus for that shovelware.
| wk_end wrote:
| The perception was: my iTunes library is _mine_ , and it's
| invasive for Apple to put something in there without my
| permission.
|
| Whereas: the Windows 95 CD is Microsoft's, Microsoft is free to
| put what they want on there. I bet most people who weren't
| nerds or curious kids never even found it!
| chungy wrote:
| Music videos on the Windows 95 CD didn't occupy space on your
| hard disk, either. As long as the operating system still fit
| on the CD-ROM, it didn't matter what other extras were on it.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Totally. Windows CD was a gift box to explore, nothing in it
| was intrusive.
| Hatrix wrote:
| There was something about iTunes at that time where every time
| I started my car it would connect to my phone and start playing
| that U2 album regardless of what I had been listening to
| earlier. It just would not go away.
| spatulon wrote:
| Apple also put the music video for The Old Apartment by
| Barenaked Ladies on the Mac OS 8 CD.
| digiown wrote:
| Imagine that's the worst that happens to "your" library. Good
| times. We really need to bring the idea of ownership back.
|
| https://www.howtogeek.com/playstation-is-deleting-tv-shows-f...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2009/07/24/106989048/amazons-1984-deleti...
| wil421 wrote:
| I don't remember U2 being a gift being ready to download. It
| was automatically put on all my devices in iTunes. I think it's
| still there but I use Spotify instead of iPods and iTunes.
| wojciii wrote:
| I must confess that these kind of corporate storie make me throw
| up in my mouth. (Yes, I have karma to burn, hit me)
| boca_honey wrote:
| I liked this one because that video on that CD was a big part
| of my childhood.
|
| But yeah, same here. The worse ones are the ones from Apple /
| Steve Jobs that are meant to be cute and quirky but are
| actually just examples of sociopathy.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Always enjoy Raymond Chen's musings.
|
| My sister and I were so excited to discover this on the CD as we
| were clicking through every folder. Awesome song that kicked off
| a love of the blue album, Pinkerton and the green album. (I had
| off-campus lunch privileges, so was sent to Borders to pick up
| copies of the green album on release day.)
|
| We'd heard of Happy Days, but we didn't know if the show was like
| it was portrayed in the video. We may have thought the band was
| from Wisconsin. I don't think either of us ever became Happy Days
| fans.
| JCattheATM wrote:
| > I had off-campus lunch privileges, so was sent to Borders to
| pick up copies of the green album on release day.
|
| What kind of college doesn't allow students to leave for lunch?
| Lord.
| ploxiln wrote:
| High school ... 20+ years ago probably
| JCattheATM wrote:
| That's fine...never heard high school grounds referred to
| as a campus before so assumed college.
| panzagl wrote:
| Probably a US high school, where off-campus lunch is usually
| reserved for older students.
| JCattheATM wrote:
| That's fine...never heard high school grounds referred to
| as a campus before so assumed college.
| bananaflag wrote:
| > My sister and I were so excited to discover this on the CD as
| we were clicking through every folder.
|
| This was a common experience back then, you got ahold of some
| new "piece of software" and you started discovering new stuff
| in it.
|
| My fondest memory ever is one day in February 2001 browsing
| through the Windows 98 Add/Remove Windows Components dialog and
| realizing I could install the same Desktop Themes I remembered
| from like 1996 from my friend who had been lucky enough to have
| Plus! for Windows 95 (which had, years before, disappeared from
| his computer in that endless virus/reinstall cycle that
| characterized those times). Next day I showed the themes to
| said friend and we were speechless.
|
| It was this promise of endless discovery that made me want to
| study CS.
| Philadelphia wrote:
| Apple put Barenaked Ladies' The Old Apartment video on the Mac OS
| 8 CD as a QuickTime demo
| nicholashead wrote:
| This music video was the reason we decided to upgrade the CD-ROM
| drive on our family computer, since it could not play without
| stuttering on our existing one.
| sequin wrote:
| The Weezer video was quirky, funny, creative, catchy and
| appealing to multiple generations. A stroke of genius by
| Microsoft.
| abtinf wrote:
| IIRC, I was able to watch the videos on my 486. It was quite
| something being able to do that l, while in Windows 95 and
| switching between apps. Prior to that, I'd only seen FMV in a few
| video games.
| bluedino wrote:
| We used to see who had the most powerful PC by seeing how many
| videos we could play at once. Long with Robroy and whatever
| other video was on there.
| zdw wrote:
| It's well known that Bill Gates's favorite band is Weezer, so
| this feels unsurprising.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-02-10 23:00 UTC)