Brown's Around: Copyright or Wrong

How would this affect record buyers? Well, it probably wouldn’t if you buy only chart music, but if you enjoy, say, dance bands, singers, jazz, light orchestral, brass, military and pipe bands, folk, music from film and stage and classical music, you would find it difficult to purchase recordings of your favourites because the major labels are mainly not interested in marketing their non-Rock back catalogue. If the current copyright period is retained, it will mean that Cliff’s big hit “Move It” will lose its copyright in 2008, followed by the first official recordings of The Beatles in 2013, leaving the way open for smaller companies to re-release them. From the point of view of the majors, this is bad business.

For example, The Beatles’ back catalogue on EMI represents pretty poor value for money. Each full-price CD contains one LP where two would fit. A specialist reissue label could offer a better product if it was free to do so. Obviously, sales of this sort of music at a budget price would never compare with current pop star figures but the fact that there are so many small UK companies producing CDs consisting of out of copyright material clearly indicates that there must be some interest which the majors are clearly ignoring.

The music which the majors are trying to protect is almost all pop material, recorded by the likes of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Cliff, Elvis etc. Their protectiveness is understandable each time the recordings are repackaged and sold at full price. But they appear to have little interest in re-releasing the rest of their catalogue more than 50 years old, a vast collection of music spanning a period from the 1920s to the 1950s which hasn’t been heard other than on scratchy 78s.

There is now a healthy number of UK companies restoring and remastering large amounts of this material onto CDs - and, remember, this is being done legally, with the independent companies paying royalties to the composers, arrangers and music publishers.

Perhaps you believe that if the copyright term is increased to 95 years the record vaults will be flung open and re-releases will follow; if so, you’ll probably believe in fairies, too. The majors are entitled to re-release what they want, of course, but should they be allowed to obstruct those who, quite legally, wish to make this music available to the public?

The BPI has suggested that the artists “will suffer loss of income ... if nothing is done”. This is dangerous ground because, historically, record companies are the usual cause of income loss among artists. The existing law could be very beneficial to performers by giving them the chance to reclaim and reissue their back catalogues as they wish. Artists don’t receive royalties on out-of-copyright releases, but releasing material on their own label is likely to bring far greater profits than royalties offered by even the most generous record contract. Also, the real money in music comes from songwriting, and even on CDs of non-copyright recordings, the composers have to be paid.

To extend the copyright in sound recordings past the current 50-year period would be to grant major record companies a licence to carry on doing nothing whilst at the same time putting smaller labels out of business and reducing the amount of choice available to music lovers.

PS At time of press, it looks likely that the independent review on this subject which was conducted for Chancellor Gordon Brown by Andrew Gowers, a former editor of the Financial Times, will recommend that the terms are not extended. We cross our fingers and hope this is so.