Roots Archives Forum

I understand that there is only one record pressing plant left in Kingston now. I guess the youth in jamaica are a digital generation not a vinyl one. I blame telecommunications companies for pushing mobile phones and downloads on us and effectively killing any competing format, to the extent that even cds are on the way out(or so it seems). having said that I do buy cds because sometimes is the only way to obtain these rare tunes. Maybe Roots Archives could set up its own pressing plant and reissue some stuff , we must have the expertise?

you wouldn't want to reinvent the wheel - there are already pressing plants in existence elsewhere, and the people with the expertise to run them. to start a pressing plant from scratch would be an expensive proposition, there's no need for it and just getting a record pressed with proper mastering, plating, artwork, liscensing, etc would be enough effort.

money and dedication is required to reissue something that hasn't been reissued yet. part of the problem is that the master tapes for a lot of desirable tunes no longer exist, and then there is the issue of who really owns the recording, etc... there's a reason some tunes stay unreleased.

Who owns reggae?I thought there was no copyright on JA material which accounts for versions of tunes. If there is no copyright then material could be re-pressed and money given to surviving members of bands instead of paying a fee to studios?Reissues could then be made from the original vinyl.Is this how it works or am I barking up the wrong mango tree?

Dubbaddikt wrote:Who owns reggae?I thought there was no copyright on JA material which accounts for versions of tunes. If there is no copyright then material could be re-pressed and money given to surviving members of bands instead of paying a fee to studios?Reissues could then be made from the original vinyl.Is this how it works or am I barking up the wrong mango tree?

There are two types of ownership involved in a recorded piece of music, the publishing, usually owned by the composer, song writer and a publishing company and the copyright on that specific recording, in the case of Reggae this is usually owned by the producer. Most vintage Jamaican recordings were done as "works for hire", this means the artist received a fee at the time and isn't entitled to any further monies. In Europe most artists would have done a deal where they received a percentage of any sales on their releases, though in reality many advances were greater than these sales. Nowadays many artists retain all rights to their recordings and will license them to labels for a fixed period after which control reverts back to the artist.

Although different countries had and still have different copyright laws many tracks were issued in different countries from where they were recorded, therefore other comapnies may own overseas rights.

In Europe copyright on the actual recordings currently lasts for 50 years, after that the recordings are classed as public domain and anyone can put them out, hence all the cheap copies of classsic Jazz albums now appearing. The copyright on publishing lasts longer, the author's life plus 70 years, (I believe), the copyrights may also have been sold so there's little chance the original author or their heirs are the ones benefitting. So even if the recording is PD you still have to pay the publishing.

So the short answer is if you put out a reissue of recordings that are fifty years or more old and contain songs that are also public domain you won't have to pay anyone for the rights, otherwise you do, regardless of where it was recorded. Just to show how complicated all this is, some songs that were public domain in the US will become copyrighted to bring the US into line with other nations, likewise the 50 year cut-off in Europe may well increase to bring us in line with the States, where copyright terms are continually extended to protect big corporations like Disney.

Fifty years or shorter is a more than fair period for companies to see a return on their investment and allows labels to reissue forgotten music.

Dubbaddikt wrote:Who owns reggae?I thought there was no copyright on JA material which accounts for versions of tunes. If there is no copyright then material could be re-pressed and money given to surviving members of bands instead of paying a fee to studios?Reissues could then be made from the original vinyl.Is this how it works or am I barking up the wrong mango tree?

just because there *was* no copyright law in JA for years is no obstacle for litigation - witness the tangled saga of Treasure Isle, which was only resolved a year or two ago since Duke Reid's death in September 1974. no doubt Studio One will be the same way.

the studios get no money from any record sales, that is 99.9% of the time the producer or whomever is the money man. the money man pays the session musicians and studio time their fee. that's the way it is elsewhere in the world, a "for hire" musician is not entitled to any mechanical residuals in the way that members of a band (i.e., The Rolling Stones, etc.) are.

even if it were feasible to give anything to deserving musicians, the amount of profit on a small run (let's say 1000 records, or even 2000) is woefully small after you add up all the nickel and dime costs.

so, if you could find the owner of the recording, you may or may not be able to negotiate an appropriate fee for licensing the song - the owner may hold out for a fee that makes it impossible to make money on the pressing.

your cost for pressing a good 7" record with good mastering, plating, artwork, quality vinyl, etc is going to be somewhere +/- around $1.50 a record once you factor in ALL your costs - unless you sell them all yourself, which is a ball ache, you have to be able to deliver the record to a distributor that is at least half the cost of retail. considering that most 7" represses seem to go for about $3.50 or so, you can see that a per unit profit is quite small.

now, if it's a record that can retail for $5-10, you might be OK but it's still not a huge money making venture. you really have to tip your hat to people like Tommy Rock-A-Shacka who is so dedicated.... it's got to be a pain in the ass sometimes.

back in the day, the record pressing game was all about volume - a big Jamaican hit tune would be on the order of 50-100k records, and all those nickel and dimes would add up. a great many of those records would have been for the jukebox industry, which was HUGE through the early-mid 80's. in many cases, jukebox orders would have outstripped consumer demand. that was really probably the engine that kept the JA record industry humming along in Jamaica for so long because there were jukeboxes everywhere in every little corner bar in every part of the island. it was a very lucrative industry at one point in time, one jukebox operator might have hundred or two of them in different places..... so, one jukebox man alone would be good for at least a couple hundred copies of a tune, maybe more.

re reissues - i think only one person has mentioned quality. If the quality of both the tune and the pressing is good, then there must be a future for repressing reggae as demand is certainly there. Also increasingly people are concerned about the provenance of the tune - who is getting it repressed adn do they have the producer's blessing?

Im interested in the history and survival of the music for future generations and would like to see some sort of reggae museum where you could do a virtual tour and listen to classic reggae recordings and learn about the history of the genre as well.
On the documentary by Bruno Natal called Dub Echoes, there is section where Bunny Lee is in his studio and the shelves behind him are stacked high with sealed tapes of songs/sessions. It made me wonder if any of these recordings will ever be available to fans like us?
If companies like Makasound and Blood & Fire close down and record shops like Dub vendor in London have to close all but one of their outlets , then it would seem downloads ARE affecting the way people buy and view music.In this instance what will happen to all the songs stacked up on Bunny lee's shelves, with no-one to reissue them?
there must be a solution...