Think the best answer to that qestion has been already written at SH forum regarding the release of Grand Funk "American band" (
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showpost.php?p=5449351&postcount=2 ):
The Adventures of a License
Over the years, many of you have asked about the process and the time it takes to license titles from the major record companies. We just had an unusual experience with the licensing of Grand Funk Railroad "We're an American Band"- a lot of ups and downs (and more ups!) so I thought I'd share this adventure with you.
About a year and a half ago, we sat down with EMI/Capitol Records and licensed five titles for our 24K series. These titles were The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds", The Band "The Band", Linda Ronstadt "Heart Like a Wheel", Grand Funk Railroad "We're an American Band" and Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell". We released The Beach Boys and The Band in April of last year. In May, we released Linda Ronstadt. In the meantime, we were licensing other titles from other companies and decided to release the Grand Funk and Billy Idol later in the year, or early 2010.
In January of this year, we prepared to release the Grand Funk Railroad and Billy Idol. We planned to release Grand Funk in April and Billy Idol in June. We contacted EMI and made our request for the tapes on both titles. By this time, there was a new regime and a whole new group of people at EMI Licensing. The people we had originally made our deal with were gone and the new people felt we had to request the titles again. Lucky for us, the two new people in licensing, Brent and Rex, were passionate about music and were real pros to work with. It took two months to get the new approvals and in March we requested the tapes for Grand Funk Railroad. We're back in action with Grand Funk: we had the approvals from EMI and we ordered the tapes. I contacted Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray to see what their schedules were so we could get Steve over to RTI to work with Kevin. Both Kevin and Steve are very busy so getting them together is always a challenge. We'd ordered the tapes from the tape vault. We sat down and discussed the art and we decided we were going to duplicate the original foil album from the original Grand Funk Railroad release from 1973. We contacted our printer, set up a meeting with them and showed them the original album cover and asked them if they could duplicate the foil. Days later they responded saying they could match the original foil, so our art director went to work to put all the elements together.
A week later, we heard from the Capitol vaults that they'd found the masters and they'd be getting them ready. We contacted Steve Hoffman who coordinated a date to go into the studio at RTI and remaster "We're an American Band". A couple days later we received a call from the Capitol vaults saying that the master they found was in fact the original four channel QUAD master, not the original stereo album masters we were looking for. I contacted Steve and shared our situation with him. Fortunately, Steve does quite a bit of work at Capitol and had recently worked on the Nat King Cole titles for Acoustic Sounds. When I shared our dilemma with Steve, he said he'd seen this happen before. Steve contacted Capitol directly and had them look in different marked boxes. His previous experience had been that some of the older master tapes had been reboxed with new labels. Sure enough, the original master tapes were found just as Steve thought they'd be, in great shape.
We rescheduled Kevin and Steve to go to the studio and master Grand Funk. I thought we were on a roll.
I received a call from EMI saying that there may be a problem with the original art work, specifically the photo of the group sitting nude on the haystacks- a famous photo from inside the original album. The photo belonged to an independent photographer and EMI didn't know if they had the rights to license the package using that photograph without the permission of the photographer. We debated back and forth about the photo and whether or not we wanted to go forward if we couldn't acquire the entire package as it was originally released. We even thought about doing the inside of the package and leaving a gaping white blank with the words "Artist wouldn't give us permission to use the photograph. Use your imagination!" Luckily, just a few days later we received word from business affairs at Capitol saying the photo and all the art work were a "go". Again, Brent and Rex were relentless on our behalf.
We were back in business!
Before long, the project was on hold again as Capitol's business affairs department wasn't sure whether using our see through O-card was compliant with the spirit of their contract with the group. It seems their contract states that the album cover can never be altered or changed. Business affairs at Capitol thought using our see through O-card, which always shows our 24k disc with the 'mini' of the album on the right hand corner, might be a breach of their agreement. We were back on hold again.
I had to contact Steve and Kevin and have them, yet again, cancel studio time while we waited for Capitol business affairs to decide on our use of the O-card. We threw all the arguments at them- we've been using the same see through O-card with the same type of 'mini' for almost 20 years. We showed them how the Beach Boys, The Band and the Linda Ronstadt all had the same O-card. We even reached back to pull Nat King Cole, Bob Seger, and Paul McCartney from the DCC days to show them we used the O-card even back then and never altered the album. We went through every possible argument you could make. After about five days of going back and forth, canceling mastering sessions, holding up the art work, we finally received word everything was okay. When I say 'we', I really mean Brent and Rex who went to bat for us with their business affairs department. This was no longer a job for them; it was a mission that turned into a quest to get the Grand Funk approved for Audio Fidelity.
We're back with a green light!
We contacted Steve and Kevin who accommodated us and quickly set up studio time. We contacted our printer and asked them if they could move us up on the production schedule. We even contacted the pressing plant ODS, that usually only manufactures 24K titles twice a month and had them schedule a special pressing for the Grand Funk and Asia's "Asia". Everyone was cooperating and the wind was finally at our backs.
Now, dammit, I hope you enjoy Grand Funk Railroad's "We're an American Band" and Asia's "Asia". No, I take that back... I know you'll enjoy them! This was such an up and down journey, I thought I'd share it with you.