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Last week at Indie Con we bumped into Simon Gurney, the Licensing & Synchronisation Manager from BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm and subsidiary of the BBC.

If you manage an act who has performed at the BBC – whether that be on stage, in the studio or on film – there are possibilities to relicense this content to create new opportunities in synchronisation or more (b-sides, special editions etc).

BBC Worldwide builds the BBC’s brand across the world, securing new revenues and audiences for their content which spans films, TV shows and most importantly for us, audio.

BBC Worldwide’s Audio & Music side specialises primarily in the huge catalogue of sessions, including the popular Radio 1 Live Lounge sessions, as well as concerts, theme tunes, soundtracks, and TV performances.

Simon Gurney, BBCW

Simon Gurney and Denise Black look after the exploitations of all BBC music copyrights across track licensing (for use on singles, albums, downloads etc.) and synchronisation (films, adverts, computer games etc.).

These primarily consist of recordings of bands and artists in sessions, at concerts, or at festivals throughout the decades, meaning there’s a high chance BBC Worldwide look after the master recordings by many artists that you, our members, represent. The BBC generally owns this master copyright, however BBC Worldwide only has the general right to broadcast such recordings. 

To help make the secondary exploitation of this content more simple, Simon and Denise deal across the board with record labels, publishers, film companies, advertising agencies, music supervisors, and many others, and would like to engage more with music managers.

If your artists are signed, most of the rights and uses that come from these recordings stem from the record label, but there are exceptions to that rule. As managers, whether your artists own their own rights or not,  it could be worth you looking at the catalogue for your artists and considering what possibilities there are to use these to your artists benefit.

To start with, MMF members should contact Simon and Denise from BBC Worldwide who can begin a conversation to see what’s possible.