Another quick question about contracts - please help.

[Stickman0_3]

is it possible to sign away the masters rights of a recording in a non-exclusive deal that only lasts for 3 years?

[James Perrett]

Almost certainly yes - if the other party agrees to it.

[ManFromGlass]

I’m not a lawyer and it would depend on the exact wording but if the deal is non-exclusive then you could sign over the rights to 100 people if you wanted. What are you trying to end up with? Someone other than you who has permission to use the Master?

[Stickman0_3]

I'm still trying to understand this.

I signed a deal with a company over in America in 2012 to have six of my tracks licensed to a record label over in the USA, for 3 years.

I told them that the six tracks had already been released. (The tracks were from my first three albums.)

In 2014, a year before the deal ended, they were sub-licensed to six other companies.

My six tracks ended up on 30 online album compilations. The person I was in contact with regarding the project told me to the tracks had to be taken down from all platforms that I release on - ie; Spotify, Amazon, iTunes etc. otherwise I was infringing on copyright. How can this be when the deal was only for 3 years and that it was a non-exclusive deal, meaning that I could do anything I liked with the tracks when they were also being used by the company in question?

[BJG145]

...well, no, that's nonsense. As you say, a non-exclusive deal means that other people can use it but you can still do whatever you like with it. You can't infringe your own copyright.

Are there some crossed wires on a technical level...? Are they being prevented from releasing on streaming services because of your own releases...?

[Stickman0_3]

Thanks BJG145 for your reply. I thought I was right.

I shall contact the record label involved and see what they say. They did offer to sign a new contract with me but I said I'd like to know what the situation is before I make a move.

[James Perrett]

Are there some crossed wires on a technical level...? Are they being prevented from releasing on streaming services because of your own releases...?

The streaming services can't handle multiple instances of the same recording. If the recordings have the same ISRC (as they should have if they are identical) then they can't be uploaded twice. The only way around this is to license out versions that are different enough to have their own ISRC.

[Stickman0_3]

Surely if it's a different record company, then shouldn't they have their own ISRC codes? Or if the ISRC codes should be the same, then maybe some other code?

[James Perrett]

As far as I know the digital services all use ISRC's as their identifier and the original ISRC stays with the recording. When I master anything that a label has licensed, the ISRC is always the code for the original label that owns the recordings.

So your songs can only be active with one label at a time for download/streaming. If the new label is good at publicity then it may be worth allowing them to upload the songs but, if you are likely to earn more money with the songs under your control then keep things as they are.

[Drew Stephenson]

At the risk of teaching anyone to suck eggs, it's worth checking exactly what you've licensed. There are two copyrights on a piece of recorded music, one on the composition and one on the recording, and they're entirely separate.

But James' point about the simple practicalities of how the streaming services work is probably the key thing here.

[Stickman0_3]

Thank you to everyone who has commented on this.

[ManFromGlass]

It’s also possible the sub-license deal was offering things to which they shouldn’t have - maybe that license to them was for exclusive use.
I’ve seen a lot of cut and paste contracts assembled by people (and lawyers) who don’t understand about ownership.
But you raise an interesting question - what happens when your track is on multiple streaming services these days? In the past I assume a sub-license deal covered it.