The new American music channel The Coda Collection, from streaming service Amazon Prime Video, has approached the music show ‘2 Meter Sessions’ to broadcast several recordings from its archive. Last Wednesday, the 1997 session with popular American rock band Counting Crows premiered on the channel. The Coda Collection wrote a warm recommendation about the session: “Originally filmed for the Dutch program “2 Meter Sessies” — it’s like Holland’s answer to “Austin City Limits” — the show’s careful and intimate staging is ideal for this introspective and nuanced ensemble.”
The Coda Collection is a multimedia company founded by a team of legendary musicians, music industry veterans, and entrepreneurs that enables fans to see the most iconic moments and artists in music with a new perspective. Major music and media companies are involved, such as Sony Music Entertainment, Yoko Ono & the Estate of John Lennon, Warner Music’s Rhino Entertainment, Concord Music, and Mercury Studios (Universal Music Group). This way The Coda Collection can offer the exclusive video content of musicians like Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul Simon, and Jimi Hendrix. Recently, the channel premiered a film on John Lennon (“24 Hours: The World Of John & Yoko”) and the Dave Grohl documentary “What Drives Us”. The Coda Collection was launched on February 18 in the U.S.A. and will be expanded into additional territories shortly.
After seeing some footage from the archive, The Coda Collection approached 2 Meter Sessions to cooperate. With the show’s intimate way of filming and exclusive footage of well-known bands from all over the world, the archive proved to be an added value to the channel. To be more recognizable outside of The Netherlands, The Coda Collection created the name “Amsterdam Sessions”.
2 Meter Sessions was founded in 1987 by Dutch radio presenter Jan Douwe Kroeske when, on his popular national radio show, he persuaded New-Zealand band Crowded House to play a short set of their popular songs. In 1993, the show made a successful transition from radio to television, quickly becoming a nationwide phenomenon. Nearly one million CDs were sold in the Netherlands.
The archive holds over 1800 sessions. Various well-known acts have visited the show: James Taylor, Elliott Smith, David Crosby, Damien Jurado, Ben Howard, Josh Ritter, Radiohead, Nirvana, Coldplay, and Foo Fighters. Archive footage can regularly be seen in (theatrical) documentary movies, like “Mystify: Michael Hutchence” (with footage of the INXS session, filmed in 1997), “Heaven Adores You” (Elliott Smith, 998), and “All I Can Say” (Blind Melon, 1993). 2 Meter Sessions is still active, filming sessions with artists from all over the world.
2 Meter Sessions is represented in the United States by David Peck of Reelin’ In The Years Productions, the world’s largest archive of music footage. Peck is enthusiastic about The Coda Collection: “Since DVD is, for all intents and purposes, now a dead market, this platform allows us to share our unique content with the music-loving public in a fair and equitable way—a way which not only benefits my company and clients but which will revolutionize the way music video is consumed.”