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Photo agencies to boycott Oasis tour over rights restrictions
Posting this here because it's a weird story, and it's relevant to the tour and I've posted other threads about the tour here.
July 10 story from the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jul/10/photo-agencies-to-boycott-oasis-tour-rights-restrictions
Photo agencies are to boycott the rest of the Oasis reunion tour, including the first “homecoming” gig in Manchester on Friday, over restrictions imposed on how newspapers, magazines, TV broadcasters and digital publishers can use pictures from the gigs.
The band’s management has told photo agencies and publishers that they own the rights to shots taken at the concerts for just a year, and then they will lose ownership of the images for any future use.
The industry norm is that such deals for independent photographers from agencies are struck in perpetuity so that publishers can continue to use the shots for pieces such as band retrospectives and tributes, and to illustrate future concerts.
The News Media Coalition (NMC) – which represents national newspaper groups including Guardian News & Media; the Telegraph; the Sun and Times publisher, News UK; and the Mirror and Express owner, Reach – lodged a complaint before the first gig in Cardiff after negotiations failed to sufficiently improve the terms.
-snip-
The band’s management has told photo agencies and publishers that they own the rights to shots taken at the concerts for just a year, and then they will lose ownership of the images for any future use.
The industry norm is that such deals for independent photographers from agencies are struck in perpetuity so that publishers can continue to use the shots for pieces such as band retrospectives and tributes, and to illustrate future concerts.
The News Media Coalition (NMC) – which represents national newspaper groups including Guardian News & Media; the Telegraph; the Sun and Times publisher, News UK; and the Mirror and Express owner, Reach – lodged a complaint before the first gig in Cardiff after negotiations failed to sufficiently improve the terms.
-snip-
This is a really asinine move by the band. It was originally going to be even more asinine, since they wanted the media to have rights to all those photos for just one month.
My best guess is that they're planning a book of photos about this tour, and also thinking about photos that will be used for the album and DVD they'll inevitably market, and they're trying to ensure that they alone will own high-quality professional photos of the tour. Someone in the band or their management thought this would be smart.
Instead, they're alienating the media.
The NMC's chief execitive is quoted later in the article reminding the band how much free publicity the media gave them from the first rumors of the reunion, and added, "This is not a time for the band to tell news organisations they want to be invisible."
He also pointed out that their concerts are opening with screens showing a lot of media stories about them over the years.