This is an interesting one.
One thing no-one has mentioned in the replies so far is that, since the mellotron recordings were made, a new legal right called the "performing right" in a recording has come in to being.
This entitles performers on a recording to get paid a royalty when a recording them play on is publically broadcast on radio/TV/streaming digital media etc.
This was to redress the situation whereby a hit record could keep on earning the record label and the songwriters royalties for decades, but the original session musicians would never see a penny more than their original session fee.
When a country has this legal approach, there'll be a collection society performers can register with, and get paid by. In the UK it's called PPL.
So, in principle, the performers on the mellotron tapes could earn remuneration when, for example, Strawberry Fields Forever is played on the radio. (Note - it's actually the BROADCASTER who pays the money - the record label/artist don't have to worry their little heads about it).
However, in practice, when labels register track details with PPL for this purpose, they would just put down the name of the guy playing the mellotron on the performer list. Nobody knows the name of the people on the tapes and so PPL don't have this info so they ain't getting paid at present.
--- In newmellotrongroup@yahoogroups.com, "Dieter" <dieter_vanmarcke@...> wrote:
>
> Hello
>
> I started recording some tracks featuring Mellotron, Optigan and Orchestron. Now, I was wondering, in fact, all these sounds are just samples - who owns the copyright on these recordings? In fact, can you just use this free?
> I know that with the usual tron sounds nobody bothers and just puts them on their records, but it was in fact when I was using the optigan, where you have loops of recorded big band and such, at that point this question came up to me...
>
>
> thanks
>
> Dieter
>