How many copies of a re-issue must you sell for you not to lose $

(I always thought it would have made sense for On-U Sound to reissue the Pop Group stuff back when the label was a bigger deal.)

Really? Is that cuz they don't own the rights to them anymore? Or sometimes do people actually just see if they can get away with it?
(or are these unofficail reissues - bootlegs - like those Neu! ones that were out all those years)

I also think the Feelies should be in print!

There are so many issues, who owns the mechanical rights, the tapes, the publishing, different labels, different band-members, sometimes it's super easy, other times so impossible as to be not possible.

Sometimes it's a question of timing. When the Pop Group CDs came out, maybe nobody wanted to license the music in america. There were a small amount of fans/collectors happy it was out and they(we) bought them at import prices. It just takes that someone to think of doing it. Then they have to deal with Radar's terms. Maybe they can be licensed for US sales but nowhere else because Radar has the rights in the UK or Japan.

As far as money...it depends on how much you invest. If you can convince the artist to let you do it with no royalty advance, you can put out 1,000 copies of a CD for very little money and make your money back eventually. Or you can pay for a lawyer to write up the contracts, maybe have to pay an advance, pay for advertising, pay for PR, deal with the shipping blah blah, you can end up investing a lot of money.

So you can put out a CD for 1,000 dollars to 20,000 dollars, but there's a fine line, some of that investment, in advertising and PR, will pay off big time.

Both.

given that most artists, if they bothered to keep their rights when they signed deals, run out of cash and end up selling their rights, reissues aren't a matter of what the artist wants. The artists often have no say in the matter at this point.

The legal spaghetti that holds up reissues is also often a matter of priority as much as it is a clusterfuck of contracts. People would be surprised how relatively easy it is to secure rights given the right amount of time, gumption, persistence, and money involved. And with lots of these bands who sold less than, say, 100K the only thing holding back reissues is someone who wants to get around to do it. It's not even that relatively an expensive proposition, and the barriers to entry are getting lower by the year. It's perfectly feasible to think that in the next five years we will see a revolution of reissues that cater to the smallest of niches; smart bands recognize this already.

With, say, Pop Group, a vigorous fan could probably underwrite a reissue on credit cards and self distribute or have distro/fulfillment handled independently while marketing exclusively via the web and word of mouth. If you can show one of the major distribution companies that you are selling enough on your own, you could likely get picked up.

Or better yet, you could wait a few years and when DRM gets a better footing downloading will truly eliminate the last moat around the castle.

(and yes, if you go to the TwinTone website, they'll burn anything that's out of print. Paul Stark, founder, will also field your emails. In fact, Stark has been saying for years that Twin/Tone is holding out on reissues until secure downloading is better set up. I've heard a lot of indie labels feel the same way.)

I don't talk much about things I want to reissue or even things I'm working on soley because if the project falls through I'd feel super lame. I'd like to wait untill at least a contract is signed. Also, if the gestation period is too long, someone can come in and bootleg something. Small chance, I know, but it could happen.

The Lines are absolutely in the first camp. I don't want to sound overly ambitious as any number of things can happen in the next few months to ruin all plans. But right now I'm looking at 3 CDs including everything they released and TONS of unreleased stuff. But no promises...I've been working towards this for 2 or 3 years now and it'll still take some more time, and not all of the hold-up can be attributed to my being busy with real work or anything. It's, as mentioned above, another convuluted example of who owns what and where? But I feel good about it.

With regards to the thread's question, it had nothing to do with me thinking about reissuing cds, but rather a introduction to pondering once again why all of this great music out there (somewhere) is just locked away.

Twas the album and the 12" version of Beyond good and evil. But not the b-side as the artist thought it was bad. So, artist sanctioned re-release on Radar records.

As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade (1985), Mark Stewart (1987), Metatron (1990), Control Data (1995?), etc. are all pretty easy used CD finds... The used vinyl finds are usually even easier... except maybe for Mark Stewart.. that's an odd duck to find. Then again, it's also one of the weaker ones, aside from "Anger Is Holy", "Fatal Attraction", and his cover of Sakamoto/Sylvian's "Forbidden Colours".

yes, but I have trouble envisioning something that would be more usefull then what Chuck Warner has already done. The only 2 exceptions are either the repackaging of classic comps (No New York, Fruit of the Original Sin, Wanna Buy a Bridge etc) or more likely, comps that are very specific in their coverage of a certain scene or label, which would be a good way of compiling various singles in a coherent manner. My ideas for this start with an Object Music comp, and if anyone knows who to contact for that...There were 2 or 3 singles comps and a few LPs, I think a great CD can be made from the Spherical Objects, IQ Zero, Steve Miro, the Grow Up, Property Of and all the various other releases. I just like the aesthethic and story of the label, sort of the Manchester underdog. Chuck Warner had his specific interests, there's other things more inline with my taste. I could see doing an Acute CD of a certain type of later jazzy post-punk funk, like the stuff on the Touchdown comp...Dislocation Dance, Higsons, Farmers Boys, Design for Living, Working Week, some Bristol stuff. A lot of those bands have had comps, but haven't had a proper introduction, esp. in america.

One comp idea I was toying with, and was even discussing w/ Sasha Frere-Jones, but I dropped the ball because I couldn't really make sense of it, was a sort of Nunk CD/LP, aka New Wave Funk, as a good way of doing my own version of Disco Not Disco, compiling weird electro new wave stuff from both the "electro" and "new wave" camps. i.e. New Wavey electro like the Fearless Four rapping over a version of Gary Numan's Cars or the very synthesized funk of the Russell Brothers or even some vocoded italo oddity on the former side, and funky new wave on the latter side, anything from Wide Boy Awake's Slang Teacher, David Gamson's Sugar Sugar or even something like Play to Win by Heaven 17. I don't know if it would totally make sense and gel as a good compilation, or would just be yet another comp...

I've never seen the Pigbag CD (Dr Heckel, Mr. Jive, an underated LP, I think)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000050XIW/ref=ase_pigbagcom-21/026-7408483-0475605

and it looks like there was a comp as well.

The Bristol band I'm most interested in, and I've started talking to someone about but can't tell if they're interested yet is the Glaxo Babies.

To be honest, between LTM, Cherry Red and a few others, I do believe most of the essential stuff is being taken care of. I have a few tricks up my sleeve and projects I'm babying, but I can see this being a limited thing, just getting out a few of the releases I've always wanted to see and saying "job done", or moving onto another period/genre alltogether. Like the aforementioned "Nunk" comp, or something closer to post-punk disco and weird disco, I've joked around about doing a co-release with Environ Records along those lines a long time ago. But for other genres, I could find myself doing something along the lines of Brian Eno's Obscure label. Putting out more minimalist/post-classical kind of stuff. Maybe baroque pop, I mean, is there a Merry-Go-Round CD in print?

I've got a copy of the Rip,Rig & Panic CD knee deep in hits from about '90. As was said upthread the motivation behind rereleasing it cooled when nobobdy was interested in Neneh Cherry and now it's probably missed the popstpunk bandwagon so may be some time before it shows again.

I really think the post-punk bandwagon is still strong, and since it arrived, all the people who were exposed to it for the first time will hopefully maintain an interest in stuff as interesting as that. And if promoted to fans of post-punk, of jazz, of Neneh AND Don Cherry, etc, I think it may be worth the trouble.