A few days ago we published an article about the trial case between Tjeerd van Zanen and Alan Michael versus SONY about the rights to One good reason, the Dutch Eurovision entry of 1999. Tjeerd van Zanen told us about it.
“SONY released One good reason on single without an agreement with us. Negotiations took place, but we never agreed with their offer. One of the good reasons being that SONY wouldn't garantuee us any further co-operation. SONY claims to have the rights of the hitversion of One good reason and that's what the trial is all about. According to the law a signed contract is needed to give them persmission, but we haven't signed anything, (…) which means they simply released the song we created on single without our permission. We wrote it, composed it, payed the musicians, mixed it etcetera, so we should own the rights”, Van Zanen says.
One good reason was very successfull in the Dutch charts and can still be heard on the Dutch radio. “Besides the single, One good reason has been released on Marlayne's first and only solo album too. But that was NOT the hitversion, but an exact re-recording of the song! The song on the album is not the original version, simply a cheap rip-off from our song copied to the second. With doing this SONY admits to being wrong otherwise they would have put the original version on Marlayne's debute album. We have no idea why SONY created this situation. This case already lasts for four years now!. Alan and I have never wanted this! Alan and I would like to have the rights back so we can exploit the song again. We missed a huge amount of money due to SONY's way of working”.
Esctoday.com contacted the Dutch department of SONY Music: “Sorry, we have no comment on this“.
