licensing peel sessions....

[Martin Wheatley]

 >> Also, some bands have put out Peel session tracks as
 >> B-sides for singles, which has reinforced my idea that the
 >> bands own the rights. Have you contacted the bands in
 >> question and asked them?

Rob Fleay wrote
 >I vaguely remember when I did the Mark Radcliffe session
 >- the engineer told us that a lot of bands bought the tapes
 >for a nominal fee for use as b-sides etc. If this doesn't
 >happen then the BBC must own the recordings - as they
 >paid for them.


I think a key factor is whether the band was signed to a label
at the time.  If they are then the label controls whether the
tracks can come out or not - the BBC of course have to be
compensated for the production costs.  Most US bands who
did Peel sessions were probably sufficiently established to
have a record contract of some sort

If the band is not signed at the time then the rights are with
the band - but not the band as an entity but each person who
played on the session.  Many prospective Strange Fruit reissues
fell through because there were missing band members they could
not find to get permission from.  In many cases permission was
no doubt a euphemism for being paid as well - making the whole
thing uneconomic

This is just the tip of the iceberg - the whole thing is a
contractual can of worms as Clive Selwood discovered when he did
the Strange Fruit reissues

A problem Matt has is that the BBC probably wouldn't be interested
in talking to anyone except the owner of the tracks. Anything else
would probably be a breach of contract and leave them open to
legal action.  After all bands do these tracks in the expectation
that they will only be for radio broadcast and the BBC can't just
give away something that isn't their property.

martinw