A few weeks ago, in Rights Without Borders, I made the point that qualifying repertoire can be pulled out of collective management and licensed directly, while BIEM repertoire effectively cannot because in the BIEM world the society owns the mechanical right rather than merely administering it. The obvious follow-up question, and the one I get asked most often by publishers somewhere between independent and major, is: fine- but should we?

US termination rights have been somewhat of an industry secret in times gone by- and understandably so given their creator friendly purpose. For any not familiar, this is the legal right of a songwriter to reclaim US rights they have previously transferred (say under a publishing deal) after 35 years. These sit quietly inside a catalog for years, sometimes decades, looking like a future technicality rather than a present commercial issue.