Auntie Beeb's helping hand will reap its rewards.

BBC Worldwide's recent communication with labels over archive material is hopefully just the beginning

When it comes to promoting music in the UK there can hardly be a more important relationship than that between record companies and the BBC.

Although countless new ways of putting artists and their repertoire in front of consumers have emerged in recent years, securing a playlist slot on the likes of Radios One and Two remain prized goals for labels.

But in this new multi-platform world where content can be accessed in innumerable ways, this relationship, if allowed, could become even closer.

The news that BBC Worldwide is in talks with a number of majors and independents about signing deals to release archive material in the Beeb's vaults and, in turn, letting the broadcaster use it for its own purposes is definitely a step in the right direction, but it feels as though matters could go a lot further.

An obvious route forward would be allowing the BBC to offer some kind of "click-to-buy" function to download music, say, as and when it plays recordings on its stations.

Such a development, which has already started to happen among commercial radio groups, would understandably throw the BBC's supposed non-commercial status into question, but were the service set up appropriately this issue could be overcome.