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The rip-off labels


chris

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So far on my list of rip-off labels I have:

JSP (excluding Davies and Kendall produced sets)

Definitive

And potentially:

Proper

(though I do love the Fats Navarro Proper box I got a while back and they seem to have great booklets)

Are there others to avoid? Do you avoid the ones mentioned above?

Edited by chris
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Excuse me for coming late to this conversation, but I just want to get this right. By "rip-off" you guys mean labels that steal masterings, rather than labels that issue stuff still under copyright in the U.S? Correct? Thus John R.T. Davies JSPs are kosher, while recent ones aren't? Even though it's the same company getting the money? I really like Davies' work, but have been holding off from buying ANY JSPs.

I assume that Chronogical (sic) Classics does its own mastering.

Definitive just reeks of rip-off, as does Lonehill. Proper, too, though I did buy the Woody Herman box used for $15. Hard to resist, as I had none of it.

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Classics does its mastering from "unlisted sources", as the Penguin Guide authors put it; copyright on LPs pressed since the start of 1955 still applies in Europe. The point is that Davies and Kendall used original 78s.

The Italian Giants of Jazz label (still available in the UK) should be included in the rip-off list.

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So far on my list of rip-off labels I have:

...

Definitive

On the Definitive/Disconforme/Absolute Distribution empire, there´s a lot to say. They issue discs under many different labels:

-Definitive Records

-Lonehill Jazz

-Blue Moon

-Jazz Factory

-Fresh Sound Records

... to name a few.

Where´s the limit and the difference between them? I don´t know with accuracy.

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Strange list that Monk's list.

And some obvious mistake:

- MEDIA 7 is distributing records. It's not a label.

- PATHE-MARCONI is the property of EMI since the seventies.

If the definition of a "bootleg" is printing records from other labels without have purchase the right from the owner of the copyright, FRANCE'S CONCERT doesn't belongs to this list: the records of MONK (and others: COLTRANE, MINGUS, EVANS, etc.) that they manufacture was coming from radio and TV sources and was unpublished.

What they didn't do was to pay to the artist or their heirs the right to publish this music. Not very correct but not exactly the same thing.

But, when this label has stop his activities, all the music that he has published has disappear with it. Not sure that we have win something here, really.

It's on this label that was first publish the live version of A LOVE SUPREME who is feature on the COLTRANE'S DELUXE edition of the record. So, this proove that something can always be arrange, I suppose.

All the material on this label who doesn't exist anymore (due to copyright problem, I suppose) came from France TV and radio archive who's name is INA (INSTITUT NATIONAL DE L'AUDIOVISUEL).

There are lot visual and sonic treasures who are sleeping there.

Edited by P.L.M
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strange that using 78s is considered ok when it's NOT ok to copy from LPs or CD issues - the truth is that a 78 was also mastered by someone else, and the transcriber of a 78 IS using someone else's work. To me the ethical issue is when you reproduce someone else's reissue program, ie, copy their project song for song. There's nothing wrong, IMHO, with taking things off of CDs and LPs to issue in different types of projects. I've had songs that I mastered or remastered used on other projects, and I don't have a problem with it - and I've borrowed the work of others. As long as the label is observing all local laws than I don't think it's wrong. The bigger problem with labels like Proper is that they fu*k up the remastering so much - their selections are cluttered with digital distortion of one kind or another -

Edited by AllenLowe
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Besides the holier-than-thou attitude that especially Americans display whenever talk turns to European "rip-off" labels, which irritates me majorly most of the time (despite a few valid arguments), the one thing that bothers me most in the discussion is that those who have the cash are the ones demanding for those labels to be ignored.

I think one shouldn't forget that you exclude a very big group of jazz fans from listening to music if you price a product above any reasonable amount. No matter how good Mosaic boxes are, they remain unaffordable for very many people. If a Europaen label offers any of these recordings in a somewhat legal way (notice that I'm being careful here, because some of the reissues I have must clearly have been ripped off from Mosaic or other excellent reissue labels) at much less than half the price, one shouldn't be surprised if they are successful.

Here's what I think we need:

a) We need people to stop trying to impose their own country's copyright law on other countries. If the whining could stop as well, it would also be beneficial.

b) We need a law that clearly states that transferring someone else's mastering 1:1 is illegal (if slight changes should be allowed, I don't know, but I would be more strict here). Unless we have a law like that, complaints will be waved off into thin air. But I believe that a law like that, as difficult as it might be to pass and impose across borders, is essential to keeping many companies active in the reissue market.

As long as legal loopholes remain in our globalized world, this discussion will be continued fruitlessly.

Last but not least, in a world in which the digital medium rules, we get to see quite a lot of the by now typical hypocritical behavior: people rage against assumed rip-off companies while amassing 200 gigabyte of downloaded music on their hard disks, doing their own remastering (just because technology makes it relatively easy), passing tons of this and other stuff around to "friends", photocoyping booklets, books and press material as they please, recording films on harddisk and burning a sh*tload of DVDs with the material, etc. etc. Either you stick to the rules across the board, or you shut up (instead of throwing stones through the greenhouse glass).

My 2 cents.

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well said, and I would repeat my point that there IS something wrong with reproducing a project song for song and/or artist for artist. This is unfair to the original label. And we really should not whine about ripoffs as long as some Mosaic sets are getting $900 on the used market - prices like these are begging for some sort of response -

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.... This is unfair to the original label. ....

This is legally correct, but despite my mixed feelings towards rip-offs of any kind, I also feel it is unfair that the labels who own the rights do not keep them in print. They should rather develop a production mode allowing them to break even at a much lower point than they expect from a pop hit. Ownership includes the duty to maintain the stuff you own, and in the case of cultural goods this means they have to be kept in circulation.

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.... This is unfair to the original label. ....

This is legally correct, but despite my mixed feelings towards rip-offs of any kind, I also feel it is unfair that the labels who own the rights do not keep them in print. They should rather develop a production mode allowing them to break even at a much lower point than they expect from a pop hit. Ownership includes the duty to maintain the stuff you own, and in the case of cultural goods this means they have to be kept in circulation.

Although instinctively I would of course agree with you, common sense tells me that what you/we are demanding is just impossible. If you look at the Verve vault you must realize that it is virtually impossible to fulfill that wish.

Additionally, once the word "duty" enters into business, the issue becomes more of a wishful-thinking kind of thing. You can't seriously expect a company to keep thousands of sessions in print, just because a few people would like to hear them (that's excluding the many major sessions, like a lot of the Basie material, which ... yes ... they damn well have a duty to put out in a decent format). Just think of the book market where most books have a half-life of four weeks and less, plus the fact that some publishers don't even allow writers into their fold anymore who don't have a guaranteed following.

Again, I agree with you, but realistically viewed, that's a utopian demand.

I think that Verve (yes, the ones with the crummy packaging and design department) are doing it right by offering OOP material online. That might be the one and only way to actually do what most fans demand ... keeping stuff in print.

That labels like Vanguard have an absolutely despicable reissue policy is another discussion altogether ...

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I think that Verve (yes, the ones with the crummy packaging and design department) are doing it right by offering OOP material online. That might be the one and only way to actually do what most fans demand ... keeping stuff in print.

That was one of the options I was thinking about when I wrote "They should rather develop a production mode allowing them to break even at a much lower point than they expect from a pop hit."

Labels nowadays have almost everything done at some place other than their business building - lean production - Re-recording, mastering, printing, pressing, packing, storage, all is at some other place. This causes transportation costs and every plant invloved wants to make a profit. This sums up. And why do they have to become that big? A smaller catalogue causes lesser storage costs ..... and so on. Smaller would be easier to handle, methinks.

CD on demand would be an option I prefer, even if only with inaccurate original liner notes - but their databases should have it right.

I think the problem is less the technical, but the will and the feeling of moral responsibility being on a very low level.

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Look-- I don't "have the cash." Not by any stretch of the imagination. Practically all of my CD purchases are bargain priced CDs from this board, from BMG/YourMusic, or ebay snipes. I have two Mosaics which I saved for because I have two kids that come first, but even those are what-- 18 per disc, which my daughter wants me to pay for the latest Nelly CD from Sam Goody.. Sometimes I pop for some full-price CDs, such as the order I will be putting in with Nessa soon, or something that's high on my wish list.

That being said, I'm just looking to do the right thing. I don't really know all the ins and outs of the legal issues. My understanding was that-- with JSP-- JRT Davies actually made the selections and did the remastering from as close to the source as possible, while other JSP material is simply copying wholesale.

The issue for me comes down to a couple of things:

First-- and perhaps most important-- is the musician or their family properly receiving any monies they should. The Monks and Sue Mingus might go a little overboard in declaring labels to be thieves, but certainly they have some reason to be angry.

Second-- is there a reasonable chance that I can find the music on something else that is more legitimate. If I can find all or most of the music from a Proper box at $15-$20 per CD instead of $5 then I'd probably rather wait. Just because it's cheap and easy doesn't mean it's best to take it. If it's something I'm never going to find, then I'm not too worried. If it's something that I will only find for some completely exorbitant price, then it becomes a real quandary.

We live in a global economy, granted, but that doesn't make taking advantage of the copyright laws of other countries when it suits us is necessarily morally in tune with where I want to be. On the other hand, I find the US copyright law to be completely draconian, based on legislation supported by special interests like Disney (and their cronies) who have made their own money based on the work of others and now seek to bar anyone else from doing the same. I am a real proponent of the Creative Commons and Lawrence Lessig's ideas in Free Culture about how this needs to be fixed. But seeing as how I don't LIVE in one of these countries and the artists generally didn't either, I feel a little ambigous about obtaining that work unless the first two conditions aren't met.

I'm glad for this discussion-- I knew nothing of these issues when I started purchasing jazz and the prices on some of these are oh-so-tempting. I just want to learn a bit more to exercise some discrimination in what my buying supports and implies for ME. It's not my place to judge anyone else!

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Sorry to make such a long post, but two other points.

1) I'm not "throwing stones" at the labels as much as I am recognizing that there are other issues involved and that I'm not an inhabitant of the country in question. It's similar to the moral question of moving one's assets to offshore tax havens... may be legal, may not be right. To/for ME.

2) In today's day and age we do have the technology to fix this distribution problem (it's the classic "long tail" problem which is all the rage in geek circles nowadays), but the only service I will deal with right now is Emusic. Until they come up with a notion of digital rights that meets my criteria (no "leasing", not troublesome for me to listen to on my own four household computers, not to mention work computers and multiple portable devices) I won't use these other services. Three devices? Leasing? Can't put a copy on CD for the car? I don't think so. I'll just rely on buying and ripping my own CDs.

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Here we go again...

I feel pretty comfortable with most of THOSE labels. They provide valuable items that the major companies are not willing to - or cannot - make available at affordable prices.

One example is Lonehill. These CDs may have awkward programming, inadequate identifications but at least they make rare albums available to listeners.

Most of THOSE labels are Europeans and their business is legal as long as the material they reissue is more than 50 years old.

I'm European and buy from them without any guilt feeling.

A company like Chronogical Classics has been releasing this type of material for years. They have run the full gamut of available material, very often going back to original 78s and also using material that came to light in Mosaic boxes (the Capitol Cootie Williams sides, for instance). Hope they will get back to business soon...

And look at JazzFactory, they issued a four CD box of various sessions by Tony Fruscella. Great stuff, most of it pretty hard to get. I had most of the material on various LPs. I purchased the box because it was so nice to have this material in an organized way.

When I started getting interested in jazz, the major labels were very slow reissuing recordings by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith. The pirate labels in the USA (the well named Jolly Roger or Jazz Panorama among others) did reissue these and showed the majors there was an interest in them.

The situation has not changed much. So much valuable material sits unaccounted for in the vaults at RCA, Columbia, Decca, MGM!

RCA at least did the Ellington archives justice but how about Columbia which failed miserably in issuing full anthologies of what they have of Count Basie. Their 'complete' Billie Holiday box even left out several alternates!

Some reissues from THOSE labels are ripoffs and I stay away from those. Two that come to mind are the JazzFactory Mildred Bailey boxes that came out several months after the release of the Mosaic set. Another is the outstanding Uptown release of the Charles Mingus West Coast 1945-49 material. At least two ripoff labels were issusing material from the Uptown CP shortly after it came out.

I'm sure the Dizzy-Bird 1945 concert material that is due out on Uptown soon will be duplicated by similar companies in the weeks after its release. The Uptown CD will be superior in every way to the ripoffs and I doubt that the ripoffs will seriously damage the sale of the Uptowns. As long as the Uptowns are well distributed around these parts, which has not been the case for a long, long time.

OK now you can start throwing the bricks! I have a thick head :huh:

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I see what you are saying, but doesn't the argument of "if it's too expensive to get the legal stuff then I'll take the illegal distributions" feel a little uncomfortable? I know it does for me.

OOP stuff is a different story, but just because it's only available at $17 per disc (mosaic prices) feels different. Fred Meyers and Sam Goody routinely charge 17.99 and 18.99 for current pop music, why are people casting Mosaic as impossibly expensive? Again, OOP being a different story, because if something isn't available at ALL elsewhere, then what can you do?

That's why I don't think twice about someone offering a CDR of a CD that is OOP and someone might have to wait years to find (though if I do, I would want to upgrade to the real thing when I could), but I find it harder to understand when the sole issue is that something routinely available is too expensive.

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I think we can all agree that the issue is complicated and colored shades of gray.

We also need to clarify just what we mean by "rip-off" as there are two different definitions going here: rip-off masterings (the Uptown Mingus, for example) and "bootleg" releases that fail to pay the rights holders - which can be different from country to country.

Alan's point about ripping off a project "song by song" is valid - essentially the Uptown Mingus case - and that truly sucks. But what variations in packaging/sequencing can you have when a label reissues a "complete" set by a particular artist? I've noticed that some of the Definitive reissues differ from the "more legit" Mosaic or otherwise sets by following the same chronological sequence but omitting any alternate takes - which is preferable to some listeners.

And what do you do when a "rip-off" label actually improves the sound of what they're ripping off, as some believe is the case with the (Definitive?) Benny Goodman set, that some feel is better than the "official" Columbia release?

It's pretty safe to say that no label will ever release another 18-disc Nat Cole set, like the Mosaic box. So is it that wrong for a Euro label - respecting their own copyright laws - to reissue six 3-disc sets of NKC? Sure sounds preferable to me than spending $600+ to an Ebay seller; none of that money will go to the artist either.

Lots of questions and moral/ethical/legal concerns, but no easy answers. And the digital age has only complicated things.

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The Uptown CD will be superior in every way to the ripoffs and I doubt that the ripoffs will seriously damage the sale of the Uptowns. As long as the Uptowns are well distributed around these parts, which has not been the case for a long, long time.

OK now you can start throwing the bricks! I have a thick head :huh:

So why would a French distributor have a business relationship with Uptown if budget versions of the same material will be available shortly?

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