The Doors and Neil Young are back.
In news that is unlikely to trouble the DJs at Radio 1 very much, but which may cheer their counterparts at Radio 2 and 6Music, the BBC has reached an agreement with their publisher which will enable them to return to the BBC airwaves.
Earlier this month, the Guardian reported that the BBC had told DJs and programme makers to stop using music by four acts — the Doors, Young, Journey and Bonnie Raitt — because all four had withdrawn from the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS), meaning the BBC could not pay them for plays under its collective agreement with MCPS and therefore could not play their music without breaching copyright. The ban extended to covers of those artists’s songs and tracks that sampled them.
Wixen Music, which published Young, the Doors and Journey, said at the time: “The BBC can use Neil Young and the Doors any time they negotiate a license with us to do so in a given programme. All we are saying is that we won’t pre-approve uses or fees if the clients have not had an opportunity to review and approve the uses and fees.”
Now, the BBC says, it has negotiated a license to return the artists to the airwaves.
“The BBC has been able to find a licensing solution by working together with the music publisher Wixen Music UK and with the MCPS,” the corporation said in a statement. “Works composed by the Doors, Journey and Neil Young are now mechanically licensed under an arrangement via MCPS and are available for use on BBC Radio and for the consequent download on BBC Radio iPlayer. The licensing solution enables us to include the works on both BBC radio and the BBC’s radio catch-up services, however the rights are not available for television or other audio visual use via the BBC’s collective licensing arrangements with MCPS.”
All of which means you might now hear Break on Through on the radio, but you won’t be getting a BBC4 documentary about Jim Morrison anytime soon.
