Walmart Music

[Eric]

Well, the discs were being lent for the specific purpose of being copied. This friend and I often lend one another materials for copying. It's called "being thrifty."

Boy do I feel better now.

Can someone help me out here? This is a generational thing, right? I was raised on the concept of home taping. This was something my friends and I did all through high school and college. Want to share some good music with a friend? Make 'em a tape. I don't think there was *any* music that I was exposed to in high school and college (including jazz) that I didn't have *first* on a homemade tape. So then CD burning comes into play. I burn discs for friends, they burn discs for me in exchange. Is this a foreign concept? The idea was always to trade music for music. No one ever profits. If I like something a whole bunch, I'll usually pick it up in a commerical copy.

It seems to me that the "ethics" of copying only came in once CD burning became a factor. No one was complaining when we were making dubs onto tape. Why is that? Is it a sound quality thing?

Not sure exactly which generation I fall in, but it seems there is a difference between making a burn (copy) of something for a friend to turn them on to something vs making them a burn so they don't have to spend the $$$. I was introduced to jazz by a high school buddy who went to a different college than I did. When he was a freshman, he discovered this wonderful thing called jazz and sent me a couple of cassettes (one was McCoy Tyner and another was Wes Montgomery). In my situation, what could once be viewed as denying McCoy Tyner a royalty lead to a new consumer of his music (and today I own about 30 of his CDs, all paid for by me). I agree that from a hard core perspective, what my buddy did was illegal, but in that context, I have a hard time believing it was wrong. On the other hand, if he and I regularly made copies for each other of new material that came out, I clearly think that is ripping off the artist and the record company.

[Jazzmoose]

I agree with you, Eric, in a sense. Turning people on to new music is great. We used to do that with tape all the time. What we DIDN'T do is copy entire albums and pass them around. Maybe others did and we were naive morons. I don't know. What we did was make "samplers" of various artists in order to introduce friends to artists we had discovered, not providing a copy an individual album in it's entirety.

I have burns of a few OOP discs on my shelf. I have burns of concerts on my shelf that weren't authorized by the artist. That's two strikes right there; I'll be damned if I'm going to take a third strike by lying to myself and others and pretending that it isn't illegal or unethical. Jeez, fess up, guys...

[WD45]

Hey, I just bought Hank Mobley's Workout. (legally, of course) I have a sneaking suspision that Hank Mobley is not getting the money that I payed for the cd. Boy that's odd.....

Do you know if his mama is? Do you know anything about this?

What about the players that have deals that paid them only for the session? Does it change the dialogue when the benficiary is a shrewd & opportunistic producer? [Not you, Mr. Nessa. I am talking about Lomax-level deals.]

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Hey, I just bought Hank Mobley's Workout. (legally, of course) I have a sneaking suspision that Hank Mobley is not getting the money that I payed for the cd. Boy that's odd.....

Do you know if his mama is? Do you know anything about this?

What about the players that have deals that paid them only for the session? Does it change the dialogue when the benficiary is a shrewd & opportunistic producer? [Not you, Mr. Nessa. I am talking about Lomax-level deals.]

Not only Lomax. Francis Wolff visited Europe in the summer of 1970, to produce Hank Mobley’s “The Flip” in Paris, and was interviewed on the BBC’s jazz programme one Sunday night. He explained what happened at Blue Note in the '60s.

Blue Note was a company with high standards. (Normal first year sales of their albums were about 7,000. The breakeven point was about 2,500. But only about half the albums the company recorded came out at the time. Clearly, the company was profitable, since the records would sell for years, or decades, but not spectacularly so.) Alfred and Francis wanted to record the musicians they thought were best. To manage that, they needed to offer the musicians something they couldn’t get from other companies; and to do so within very tight budgets. They came up with the idea of a cash payment that would be greater than the standard Musicians Union scale. The kick was that there were to be no royalties.

All went well until Jimmy Smith, Donald Byrd and Lou Donaldson got LPs onto the pop album charts. Not having read their contracts, they went to Blue Note and asked for their royalties and were told, and I quote, “fuck off, you don’t get no royalties; you were paid cash!”

MG

[Jazz Kat]

Hey, I just bought Hank Mobley's Workout. (legally, of course) I have a sneaking suspision that Hank Mobley is not getting the money that I payed for the cd. Boy that's odd.....

Do you know if his mama is? Do you know anything about this?

All i know, she's giving some white kid saxophone lessons.

[Chuck Nessa]

What about the players that have deals that paid them only for the session? Does it change the dialogue when the benficiary is a shrewd & opportunistic producer? [Not you, Mr. Nessa. I am talking about Lomax-level deals.]

Many musicians did/do take cash now as opposed to a royalty deal. I don't have a big problem with this. Maybe the "opportunistic" person was the musician. The "Lomax-level deals" as you put it are a whole 'nuther situation. I do know of a situation where a well musician offered to do a cd date for $5000 and the label owner offered $20,000 without royalties and the guy turned it down. Believe me when I say the "star" messed up big time on this deal.

Do you know who designed and built your house? Do you pay them royalties? People are hired to "make something" and sometimes the contract includes royalties and sometimes not. These are business propositions for all involved.

Since the post connected to my response involved a BN recording, it is fair to note Bruce Lundvall offered/granted an artist royalty (about 20 years ago) to all "past" BN artists and the label has been paying them.

I am in now way a defender of corporations but................

[RDK]

Since the post connected to my response involved a BN recording, it is fair to note Bruce Lundvall offered/granted an artist royalty (about 20 years ago) to all "past" BN artists and the label has been paying them.

I am in now way a defender of corporations but................

Best news I've heard all day.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Since the post connected to my response involved a BN recording, it is fair to note Bruce Lundvall offered/granted an artist royalty (about 20 years ago) to all "past" BN artists and the label has been paying them.

I am in now way a defender of corporations but................

Best news I've heard all day.

Me too - thanks for that very welcome piece of info, Chuck.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Since the post connected to my response involved a BN recording, it is fair to note Bruce Lundvall offered/granted an artist royalty (about 20 years ago) to all "past" BN artists and the label has been paying them.

I am in now way a defender of corporations but................

Best news I've heard all day.

Me too - thanks for that very welcome piece of info, Chuck.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

See how impressed I was?

MG

[Indestructible!]

All went well until Jimmy Smith, Donald Byrd and Lou Donaldson got LPs onto the pop album charts. Not having read their contracts, they went to Blue Note and asked for their royalties and were told, and I quote, “fuck off, you don’t get no royalties; you were paid cash!”

MG

Hi MG,

I've seen you relate this story here a couple of different times, but would you be willing to let us specifically know who that quote should be attributed to?

Cheers,

Shane

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

All went well until Jimmy Smith, Donald Byrd and Lou Donaldson got LPs onto the pop album charts. Not having read their contracts, they went to Blue Note and asked for their royalties and were told, and I quote, “fuck off, you don’t get no royalties; you were paid cash!”

MG

Hi MG,

I've seen you relate this story here a couple of different times, but would you be willing to let us specifically know who that quote should be attributed to?

Cheers,

Shane

Francis Wolff told the story when he was interviewed on the BBC's Sunday night jazz programme in the summer of 1970 (he was over in Europe to produce Hank Mobley's "The flip"). He didn't say "I told them" or "Alfred told them"; he said "they were told". So I don't know who the hatchet man was; it might have been an accountant, for all I know.

Francis didn't specifically point the fingers at Smith, Byrd & Donaldson as the victims but they were the most likely. They all switched labels pretty quickly; Smith with great speed - "Bashin'" was recorded five weeks after "Midnight special" hit the pop album charts! I've often thought that was what made Donald Byrd start studying law.

MG