EMI/Polydor

[manofmystery]

I have been wondering for a few years now as to how when The Shadows and Hank moved from EMI to Polydor, EMI retained the rights to releases in certain countries such as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. Was it still a lease tape deal with EMI? and if so how could they do it for those countries but not others?

Regards

Paul

[JimN]

I have been wondering for a few years now as to how when The Shadows and Hank moved from EMI to Polydor, EMI retained the rights to releases in certain countries such as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. Was it still a lease tape deal with EMI? and if so how could they do it for those countries but not others?
Regards
Paul

International rights leasing label-to-label has always been much more common than artist tape-lease deals were in 1980.

For instance, EMI used, at one time or another, to have the UK rights for Tamla-Motown, RCA, Liberty, MGM, Verve, Columbia (ie, what in the UK was called CBS) and a host of smaller labels (from all of which they would select material to be released in the UK). It used to work the other way round too: if Capitol didn't want to release a UK recording, EMI were free to seek a different partner (and in the case of Apache, that smaller partner was ABC-Paramount).

The Rollover/EMI deal wasn't an arrangement between the Shadows and their recording company. It was made between the Shadows' recording company and EMI in those overseas territories, made possible by the fact that Polydor did not insist on the rights for those places.