With the Leader catalogue, essentially we are talking about a set of recordings of traditional musicians and singers which have little commercial value, but are of great interest culturally to researchers, academics, other folk singers and musicians – and of course to the small number of fans of these sorts of recordings. On a must basic level, it would be relatively easy to ensure copies of the vinyl are available in various sound archives and in libraries such as the RVW library – it probably wouldn't be illegal for these libraries to store such material as digital files or on CD for research and archival purposes. However, if the plan was to make them more widely available – either as free or paid for downloads or for on-line streaming, discussions would need to be had with the current rights holder – presumably Mrs Bulmer or another family member. It's up to the right holder whether they want to hold onto those rights, sell them, license them or give them away. What is clear is that the antagonistic approach taken by some in the folk world in the past to Mr Bulmer (however justified some people think it might have been) is not going to help to resolve the issue – all it can do is to lead to the situation becoming even more deeply entrenched.

In my mind there are several areas to consider.

1)Is there an organisation which would take custody of the recordings (if they are available/salvageable) and take responsibility for ownership/management of the rights to them, if the currents rights holder would be prepared to sell, licence or donate the rights/recordings?

2)Is there an individual or group of individuals (preferably with no axe to grind or history of conflict with Mr Bulmer) who could negotiate the terms on which the current rights holder would be prepared to make the rights available?

3)Is there an individual/group of individuals/organisation who would be prepared to raise funds to pay
a) for the rights (and the recordings if still available);
b) for the digital transfer and remastering;
c) for the admin time to upload the collection onto a suitable site for streaming and downloads (a platform like Bandcamp would probably be the cheapest and easiest way to do this);
d) for the writing of accompanying texts to go online to contextualise and annotate the recordings; and
e) for the promotional and publicity around the launch of the archive?

4)Is it possible to get on board sound engineers, studios, web designers and writers/researchers who would donate some of their time to the project free or at a reduced rate to keep costs down?

I'm sure there are plenty of other issues to consider. First and foremost this is about being able to put in the time and commitment, good planning and project management, getting the right people on board, fundraising and above all retaining focus and a level head…

The commercial releases on Trailer are a separate issue altogether.