Remember those PD jazz boxes?

[bogdan101]

They came out on labels like Avid, Enlightenment, etc. Looking at some of these sets on amazon.ca I noticed something strange: they have in the "Manufacturer" and "Label" fields Universal Music, or Universal Music Canada:

https://www.amazon.ca/Classic-Albums-1954-1960-Clifford-Brown/dp/B00PCWGAFU

https://www.amazon.ca/Complete-Albums-Collection-1956-64-5CD/dp/B0124KY5RC/

https://www.amazon.ca/Twelve-Classic-Albums-Eric-Dolphy/dp/B00NW6KONW/

Is this a case of if you can't beat them join them?

 

[Guy Berger]

Smart.

[mjzee]

Wow.

[Chuck Nessa]

Yes, everything is free/cheep and no creators are rewarded.

[Teasing the Korean]

12 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Yes, everything is free/cheep and no creators are rewarded.

The creators are mostly dead, and the sessions were paid for a long time ago. 

Edited June 5, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[JSngry]

Well, then, it should be truly free. Are they giving it away? Can I just go back my car up and load it into the trunk, like Goodwill in reverse?

[Teasing the Korean]

2 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Well, then, it should be truly free. Are they giving it away? Can I just go back my car up and load it into the trunk, like Goodwill in reverse?

It's already free.  It's all on the interwebz.  You may need to learn how and where to search, but it's all there.  

[JSngry]

Search? Nobody told me there would be work, much less a test.

[Teasing the Korean]

1 minute ago, JSngry said:

Search? Nobody told me there would be work, much less a test.

In many cases, it's just a little wear and tear on your fingers when you type.

[JSngry]

We got rid of the Yellow Pages for precisely that reason.

[Brad]

When I look at the Clifford Brown box on Discogs, it says that Enlightenment is the manufacturer, which is owned by some label called Chrome Dreams, for which not much info is available. Perhaps Universal Canada is just the distributor. On Amazon US it shows Enlightenment as the manufacturer so perhaps the reference to Universal is just an error. 

[Teasing the Korean]

If there is suddenly a marriage of convenience between the conglomerates and the grey-market labels, it is long overdue.  It would have been to everyone's advantage for them to work together and cut deals. 

[JSngry]

If that happened, they wouldn't really be grey-market labels, would they...

[Teasing the Korean]

8 minutes ago, JSngry said:

If that happened, they wouldn't really be grey-market labels, would they...

Correct.  And those labels would much rather have released albums from the master tapes instead of vinyl.  

[JSngry]

But then they would have to pay something.

[Teasing the Korean]

10 minutes ago, JSngry said:

But then they would have to pay something.

Correct.  And at least some of those labels tried to work with the majors, and the majors decided that it wasn't worth their time.  Hence, the vinyl rips.  

Edited June 5, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[JSngry]

Example?

[Rooster_Ties]

Even if the packaging is bare bones (with virtually zero liner notes), I still think these — if they have to exist — are at least moderately preferable to the PD reissues by totally unrelated third parties.

I’m not longing for reissues like this or anything, but I could see taking the plunge on an “early” artist I was curious about with one or two of these, just occasionally.

But I’ve never bought the PD crap I’ve seen in stores (especially Half Price Books). Never say never I guess, but so far at least, I’ve always resisted the urge to buy the nonsense those PD purveyors purvey (or more accurately, what those PD purloiners purloin — to call it what it is).

But I’d at least consider getting something similar from the actual label that had some rights to the material, or at least in theory they do.

Edited June 5, 2021 by Rooster_Ties

[Teasing the Korean]

11 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Example?

It involves confidential information and conversations that I would rather not place on a public forum.  I can't speak for all the labels.  I can tell you there have been many instances in which the majors would not license recordings, not feeling it was worth their time and effort to look for masters of obscure albums.  These were albums that the majors were not reissuing themselves.  

I do think that the majors - the two or three that are left - have loosened up quite a bit in this regard.  But in the early 2000s, when LPs from the 1950s began turning 50 years old, the situation was different.

[mikeweil]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

Example?

Remember the story about an unissued Atlantic album and the board member with a copy of the tapes willing to do an issue, but the label wasn't interested?

I know from the children of some musician that they never received any royalties from the CD resissues on one label their father recorded for, and were told they weren't interested in reissuing the remaining titles. The majors now owning much classic jazz simply don't care.

[Teasing the Korean]

23 minutes ago, mikeweil said:

Remember the story about an unissued Atlantic album and the board member with a copy of the tapes willing to do an issue, but the label wasn't interested?

I know from the children of some musician that they never received any royalties from the CD resissues on one label their father recorded for, and were told they weren't interested in reissuing the remaining titles. The majors now owning much classic jazz simply don't care.

I was a consultant on a few releases for a Euro label.  

The proprietor told me that in the late 1990s, as the earliest LPs were beginning to slip into the public domain, he reached out to the majors.  His interest was not in doing PD releases, but rather working with the majors to do high-quality reissues before they fell into the public domain, to prevent PD releases.  He went to each label with.a list of albums, many of which were esoteric and slipped through the cracks between genres, but had gained interest via DJ culture.  His idea was that if the majors did not want to release the albums, his label would license them and do high-quality releases from the masters.

The labels basically shrugged him off, and had no interest in doing any of them, either with him or without him.  

All of this began to change when the catalogs of rock-era artists such as the Beatles and Dylan were at risk.  From that point on, it seems like the majors are more willing to work with reissue labels such as Real Gone Music.  But for the albums released between 1948 and 1962 or 1963, there was zero interest.  And of course, a lot of great jazz albums were released during that timeframe.

[JSngry]

And these current, lower than lowest quality PDPornBox sets are related to these earlier, higher motivated purveyors how, exactly?

If the argument is that the majors could have remained profitable and relevant "if only"...I ain't buying it. Too many other factors at play. They might have been able to delay their "demise", not prevent it. Digital had only one logical conclusion, and continuing a viable chokehold on the supply chain wasn't it. 

No matter, the crap that is out there now, people who buy it are the solution to their own problem. And if they don't see the problem...screw 'em. 

 

1 hour ago, mikeweil said:

The majors now owning much classic jazz simply don't care.

Obviously. So give it to people in the best available quality. Literally, give it to them. Use the resources at hand to do your good deeds for mankind. If you need to make money at this, fuck you, that's just looking for an excuse.

But don't sell them bullshit. 

Fucking dope dealers...

[JSngry]

1 hour ago, mikeweil said:

Remember the story about an unissued Atlantic album and the board member with a copy of the tapes willing to do an issue, but the label wasn't interested?

Sure I do. And said board member has not gone seeking refuge in offshore crap labels, or through file-sharing, or any other post-modern outlet for whining about oh, I HAVE to put this out there for you...because no, you don't.

And no, we don't "need" to hear it. I heard it once, in my house, with him as a guest, and it was a welcome surprise. But that was it, and that's how it should be. Anything else would just be...underdeveloped.

[Teasing the Korean]

54 minutes ago, JSngry said:

And these current, lower than lowest quality PDPornBox sets are related to these earlier, higher motivated purveyors how, exactly?

If that is directed at me, I never said they were. I was discussing grey market releases more broadly.

But if the majors are too stupid to exploit their back catalogs, I fully support the PD labels.  

[JSngry]

"the PD labels" is a very broad brush. Not all are equal. Some are/were great, some are vile, and the fact of digital is that once it's done, it's generally a race to the bottom and you end up with these MusiPornBox sets, x lpdudes on y cdchicks and it's all totally devolutionary, but that's what some people are into.

Nobody's punishing the corporations, people are only punishing themselves with this crap.