It’s a term you hear on many a podcast that features music - that of being “podsafe.” So I thought I’d take a few minutes and let you know what I mean when I say that the music on TPN Rock is podsafe.

It all comes down to copyright and who owns a song. The traditional view is that there are two parts to this, the copyright on the actual song (the lyrics, the order of the notes, etc), and the copyright to the performance. Now the large record companies (remember them?) will generally get all the copyrights to a bands performancs and compositions when they sign the artist. In those circumstances, if I wanted to play Chris De Burgh’s “Lady In Red” on TPN Rock, apart from getting shot by you guys, I’d need to approach the copyright holders, probably by going through the umbrella organisations such as the BMI, to play the song on the show.

Ah but hold on, I hear you ask, most of the bands on TPN Rock are all unsigned. That’s right, so who holds the copyright? That’s right, the bands. So all that is needed is for the brands to grant TPN Rock permission to play the song on TPN Rock. Which every single band has done since TPN Rock started podcasting in mid March 2005. And that’s a policy that will continue. The bands that are signed I usually have to ask “their Manager” rather than the bands directly - and international coverage of their client’s music usually has them very eager to give permission.

Now this does lead to some problems - I’ve a folder on my PC marked “Uncleared Music” that has 41 tracks that I would love to put on the TPN Rock podcast, but the artists have never responded to any emails. So they’ll stay in limbo (although I will point you all towards Jon Maddux, who I approached for the second show, chased for three weeks, and still never seen a reply - check out Envy if you can), even though I could get seven Rock Shows out of all the material.

TPN Rock is as much about respecting the bands and giving them an international platform as well as giving all of you the best 30 minutes I possibly can every week. Everyone supports everyone else. It’s the Circle of Rock, and as long as we can keep it spinning, Rock will never die.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005 at 12:19 am and is filed under News And Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.