Over the years I’ve been working on lots of tracks that are built around, very early blues recordings.
At first I thought the copyright situation would be fairly straightforward. Many of these recordings are almost a hundred years old, so I assumed it would simply be a matter of checking whether they were in the public domain.
The more I looked into it, the more complicated it became.
There is the copyright in the composition, the rights in the original sound recording, restored or remastered versions, different rules in different countries, archive recordings, record labels, publishers… and sometimes very little reliable information.
A good example is recordings collected by Alan Lomax or other field recordists. The performances themselves may be very old, but that doesn’t automatically answer the question of who owns which rights today.
I’ve also found that different releases of what appears to be the same recording can have different copyright notices. Sometimes the information is clear, sometimes it isn’t. Even after spending hours researching a single track, I’m not always confident that I’ve reached the right conclusion.
As an independent label, I’d rather spend my time making music than trying to untangle legal questions. At the same time, I don’t want to release anything unless I’m reasonably sure that I’ve respected the rights of everyone involved.
So, for now, a lot of finished tracks are simply staying on the shelf.
I’m curious how other people deal with this.
Have you worked with pre-war blues recordings, field recordings or other historical material?
Have you found reliable sources for researching rights? How do you decide when you’ve done enough research to move forward?
I’m not looking for legal advice as much as practical experience. If you’ve been through a similar process, I’d be interested to hear what you’ve learned.
Feel free to leave a comment or send me a message.
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