Andorran (label) Census

[BeBop]

I’m not looking to re-open the Andorra/copyright/royalty debate here. I don’t personally feel comfortable buying recordings from labels that, shall we say, ‘stretch’ the bounds of traditional music retailing ethics.

So, I’ve been trying to put together a “Definitive” list. Most of this is just based on a visual inspection of the product. Someone issuing the “Complete Blue Note Recordings of…” (other than Mosaic or one of the new high-quality LP producers) looks suspect to me. I do want to make informed choices, so I’m requesting your input – especially you industry-insiders – to help me correct this list.

A lot of the current offerings are designed to look legit, and may be sold through traditional channels, like Tower or Amazon. Some of the material is damn tempting.

The Doubtful List:

Quadromania

Delta (UK)

Shout

Gambit

Lone Hill

Definitive

Flapper

ASV

Membran

Giants of Jazz

Prism

Prestige (not THAT Prestige, I think this one claims to be from the UK)

JSP

Jazz Factory

Musical Memories

Am I unfairly maligning anyone here? Who am I missing? Nessa? Big-O?

-----------------------------------------------

The Really-Don’t-Know List:

Hanssler

Tim (Germany)

Drive Archive

1201 (I know they ended up with something from the former Black Lion)

Music Masters

[BeBop]

One other question: is there a gray area? how big? and what makes it gray?

[BeBop]

One other question: is there a gray area? how big? and what makes it gray?

BeBop, you moron, that's three questions.

[RDK]

All I'll say is that, illegit, gray market or otherwise, and irregardless of their motives, I wish companies like Definitive had put out more of the obscure Decca recordings that now look like they were lost in the Universal fire. At least they seem to care.

[John L]

I am not sure what criterion we can use to distinguish between "legit," "gray," and "illegit" European labels of that sort. Myself, I don't distinguish between labels, but between reissues. If something is available that I want from a label that pays copyright, I will generally try to buy it from that source. If something that I want is only available on a label like Gambit, I will usually go ahead and buy it.

[king ubu]

1201 is the US license label of DA Music (Deutsche-Austrophon or something), which is the owner of the Black Lion catalogue, as far as I know. I guess those reissues are as legit as original Black Lion releases were. (Not implying anything here, I just don't know anything about Black Lion.)

[king ubu]

Quadromania is one of the reissue series put out by Membran (www.membran.net).

I think there's a connection to TIM, but I'm not sure. They have some Candid material available, in repacked ugly blue covers and fitting cardboard boxes around the jewel cases. As far as the covers go, they seem to actually license the Candid material.

Other than that their releases (as well as Membran's, including "Original Longplay" and "Quadromania" releases) are compliant with the 50 year copyright period in Europe and hence are to be considered "legit" (if not necessarily legitimate...)

[king ubu]

And just in case: labels no one ever questions, such as Classics (Chronological) or the sadly gone Masters of Jazz make/made use of the very same difference in copyrights. In its heyday, with monthly releases, Classics was often running just behind the 50 years line.

[Claude]

There is not much of a grey area here.

Some labels from the "doubtful" list only reissue 50 year old material, and therefore are legit in Europe (but not in the US). I think Definitive, Quadromania and Membran limit themselves to public domain material.

Other labels like Gambit or Lonehill (probably the same company) mainly release recordings which are not yet 50 years old, and they do it in all likelyhoof without authorization. These CDs are illegal also in Europe.

Edit: post written before king ubu sent his

Edited September 28, 2008 by Claude

[robviti]

ASV Records is a record label in the UK that was owned by The Sanctuary Group. I think the label might have been sacked when Universal bought Sanctuary in 2007. JSP Records is another UK label started up in 1978. Most of their releases have been jazz and blues recordings in the public domain. FWIW, I don't consider either of these labels to be illegitimate or, at the very least, in the same category as the Andorrans. Their releases typically feature new (and often quite good) remasters of very old material. JSP's box set of Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives & Sevens is a good example. The Andorrans, on the other hand, tend to steal other people's remasters and sell their reissues in the U.S., violating that country's copyright laws.

IMO, the only gray area is in our conscience. Do I buy something that violates existing laws in my country, or not? It's up to the individual to decide. Some of us choose to disregard this consideration and instead base our decision solely on our own personal needs.

Edited September 28, 2008 by jazzshrink

[Claude]

Giants of Jazz seems to be an italian company. It was the very first label to release unofficial jazz reissues at budget price in Europe, in the early 90's.

Those CDs were usually samplers of popular artists and did not include rare material. The source material was LP dubs or worn tapes, and the sound quality was terrible. From a collector's point of view, these CDs were totally uninteresting. Fortunately, they included detailed recording info, so it was possible to identify the sessions.

I think Giants of Jazz have stopped releasing these CDs years ago.

Edited September 28, 2008 by Claude

[Swinging Swede]

Fresh Sound has a staggering number of "distribution labels" on which recordings less than 50 years old are put out (also older ones). They include these:

Definitive

Lone Hill Jazz

Gambit

Jazz Factory

Swing Factory

Soundtrack Factory

Free Factory

Essential Jazz Classics

Fine And Mellow

Swing Hat

Groove Hut

Jazz Beat

Jazz Track

Jazz Collectors

Jazz Connections

Jazz Lips

Jazz Row

RLR

[BillF]

Where do Disconforme and Ocium fit in?

[king ubu]

I remember having read somewhere about a "purge" of the italian boot market - there used to be many labels before... don't know what prompted that purge, but I guess some change of law?

[Dan Gould]

Speaking of Jazz Row, I was browsing the Worlds Records site and saw one of those "not even close to the fifty years to PD law" releases:

This oddly titled reissue is the complete True Blue and Silver Blue Xanadu recordings, yet strangely enough the Worlds' listing doesn't actually mention that (I presume they take the descriptions from their suppliers). And why call it "The Comeback" when Dexter recorded steadily for Steeplechase throughout the '70s?

Still, I know that its tough to find these recordings and they are very good indeed (love Dex and Al Cohn unaccompanied "On The Trail"). And yet its complete bullshit that they are taking these recordings they have no right to anywhere on the planet and are making money off of them.

[Claude]

I remember having read somewhere about a "purge" of the italian boot market - there used to be many labels before... don't know what prompted that purge, but I guess some change of law?

Maybe it was the implementation of Council Directive 93/98/EEC of 29 October 1993 harmonizing the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights

http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyri...otection_en.htm

Before that directive, many reissues/releases of more recent material were legit in some EU countries.

In Luxembourg, there were a couple of labels which released 1960's rock bootlegs ("Swingin' Pig" was the best known). As it took very long to transpose the directive into national law, those labels were active until the late 90's.

Maybe it was the same situation in Italy, or it was a general crackdown on their huge bootleg industry.

[Swinging Swede]

And why call it "The Comeback" when Dexter recorded steadily for Steeplechase throughout the '70s?

I guess the rationale is that it was his first recording after he had returned to the US after his many years in Europe.

"This is the first time that any of this material appears on CD" is a lie though. True Blue was on a Xanadu CD (I have it). I'm not aware of any CD reissue of Silver Blue, but it is "available" in the blogosphere. Perhaps they took it from there. Some of the blog transfers are very good.

[RDK]

And yet its complete bullshit that they are taking these recordings they have no right to anywhere on the planet and are making money off of them.

Not that I really doubt it in this case, but how do we actually know this? Not sure where the old Xanadu catalog stands now, but there have been legit reissues in the past, a number of albums have been abvailable legitimately on emusic for years (though many as needle drops from the original LPs), and who knows (perhaps Chuck?) if these Dex dates are/were actually owned or just licensed by Xanadu in the first place? We all acknowledge that facts about many of these "gray" labels are scarce, so why can't some of the business decisions behind them be obscure to us as well? Not saying that they are, just that they could be...

[Dan Gould]

Well Ray, one clue for me is the lack of any acknowledgment of the original label. Its how the recordings are known but they don't bother to mention it. Other Andorran labels have done the same thing (though not in all cases).

Fwiw, I notice that this label doesn't come up on the Absolute Distribution site, so I guess it is not connected to Gambit/Definitive/FreshSounds et. al.

[dprfish]

If the Shout label you're talking about is the British one that mostly reissues soul music, you needn't worry.

I have quite a few and they're all licensed from legitimate sources.

[Fer Urbina]

Quadromania is one of the reissue series put out by Membran (www.membran.net).

I think there's a connection to TIM, but I'm not sure. They have some Candid material available, in repacked ugly blue covers and fitting cardboard boxes around the jewel cases. As far as the covers go, they seem to actually license the Candid material.

Other than that their releases (as well as Membran's, including "Original Longplay" and "Quadromania" releases) are compliant with the 50 year copyright period in Europe and hence are to be considered "legit" (if not necessarily legitimate...)

Black Lion was founded by Alan Bates, current owner of the Candid label. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lion_Records

As far as I know their reissues were licensed.

F

[Fer Urbina]

ASV Records is a record label in the UK that was owned by The Sanctuary Group. I think the label might have been sacked when Universal bought Sanctuary in 2007.

Correct. No more unlicensed reissues while owned by Universal. Some of their stuff was pretty good.

F

[Fer Urbina]

Where do Disconforme and Ocium fit in?

Completely unrelated, as far as I know.

Disconforme is a group based in Andorra allegedly. Definitive and Jazz Factory are part of it. Their reissues not always comply with the 50-year rule (or are straight rip-offs, like what they did with the Early Mingus CD on Uptown).

Ocium shut down one or two years ago. They were based in Barcelona (Spain) and did comply with the 50-year rule.

F

[BeBop]

Thanks for all the information. Lots of gray out there. For me, jazzshrink hit it:

IMO, the only gray area is in our conscience. Do I buy something that violates existing laws in my country, or not? It's up to the individual to decide. Some of us choose to disregard this consideration and instead base our decision solely on our own personal needs.

I'm going to think about what I buy, how it stacks up against copyright laws in its locale, the the locale where it's licensed... Of course, I'm going to be buying the clearly legit issue, when I can, and will pass on anything that offends my sensibilities.

[B. Clugston]

Lonehill is bad. The company often pirates releases with misleading (as in the far from "Complete" Ayler Slugs CD) or erroneous info (claims that Lalo Schifrin is playing on a Eric Dolphy live date actually recorded halfway across the globe from where it was claimed to be).

JSP has released some great John Davies remasterings of Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, among others. But did I once read about a shady side to the label on this board once?