International Law

I blogged last week about the difficulty real life Glee clubs might have in obtaining the necessary copyright licenses for a lot of the music that is used on the TV show Glee.  Well, according to THR, Esq., even Glee the TV show had difficulty securing the necessary permissions for some of the music on the show:

As Fox's "Glee" became a breakout hit, bands lined up for a chance to have their music performed by the William McKinley High kids. Well, not every artist. Notably, Canadian power ballad master Bryan Adams and British soft-rockers Coldplay said no.     

But writer-producer Ryan Murphy tells THR that not only has Coldplay changed its collective mind, the band's entire catalog has also been made available to the show.  

"At the beginning," Murphy says on this year's Emmy Comedy Showrunners Roundtable, "a lot of people didn?t know what we were and asked to see pages (in advance), but I refused because I didn?t want to set precedent of them having any involvement. My favorite rejection was Bryan Adams. Coldplay and Bryan Adams were really the only rejections. But Coldplay called a week ago and said, 'We?re sorry, you can have our catalog.' "

THR, Esq. also spoke to several other TV executives about similar problems they had experienced in securing rights to music:

Doug Ellin ("Entourage"): Our first season, we tried to get an Usher song and his label actually said, ?Send over a $300,000 Bentley and we can talk.? I?m not even kidding! Now it?s gotten much easier. But ... the first year was very difficult because no one knew what the show was. Now they come to me and want to break artists.