Trio Anuri’s cover single Mullan alle (originally Leon Payne’s Lost Highway, maybe better known by Hank Williams’ version) is finally live. Originally the song was supposed to be included on the Siperian Sheikki ep published earlier this year, but we had to leave it out since we couldn’t get a license from the current right holders, Sony/ATV Music Publishing Scandinavia.
Or to be precise, the negotations hit a wall after the lead vocalist of Trio Anuri, Petri Ronimus received a completely incomprehensible mail from the corporation lawyers. And the guy is an English teacher by profession.
The taste of our bitter disappointment had somewhat diminished, when I stumbled upon a discussion thread at the February Album Writing Month site. There, SounDrop was mentioned as a service especially focused on licensing and distributing cover songs to the popular digital music services.
Just for the hell of it, we tried once more. I uploaded the track to SounDrop, paid nine euros – and then we waited how it would turn out. Less than a week later, the rights were cleared (to use the correct jargon speak), and Mullan alle was published. No coughing, no lawyer mumbo-jumbo, no problems. Maybe their lawyers wanted to speak only with other lawyers, and not with some bearded bohemians from a never-heard Western-Russian small town.
Whatever the reason, the main thing is of course that the song is now published.
This is also good news to Rane & Co, who’ve been recording several cover songs to their upcoming ep, in addition to their own material.
Here are the links to all the digital music services SounDrop supports:
In addition to these, the single is also distributed to Pandora, but it doesn’t seem to be live yet. Also, Pandora is not easily usable in Finland.
