Saint&Sinner wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 10:57 pm
Another thing i am confused by is how long Alice signed over the masters for. i mean heystoopid is 30 years ago now. I'm just amazed they signed them over for longer than that.
Here's the thing you are missing. They NEVER owned the masters. There was NO deal, to the best of my knowledge, that stated the rights returned to the band/Alice after x-number of years.
As far as I know Warner Brothers did and still do own the masters for the albums up to Dada, and then from then on the respective companies he was with (MCA/EPIC) own those masters (or whoever owns those companies now like Universal).
From 2000 and BP it's even more fractured with several different companies generally owning different albums, and it's only the last two or three recording Alive maybe have more control over (although I think I was told EarMusic owns those as well).
To the best of my knowledge (and I could be wrong) the only way Alice could get back the rights to everything would be to BUY it from all those record companies, and that probably isn't cost effective as the 70s catalogue is worth a bomb. Even just 'School's Out' I would have thought would cost a lot.
This is why Alice re-recorded the hits (Alice Does Alice) about 10 years plus back, so they could use those 'copy' recordings for films and TV and thus make more money from them, bypassing WBs. Several other artists have done similar things for the same reasons.
And when we say WB owns the 70s albums, it means they own EVERYTHING recorded while the band/Alice were signed to the company - including Demos (yes, that C-60 cassette they might have recorded a rough acoustic generation landslide demo on is still WB property) and live recordings. The masters of all of it *should* be in the Warners vaults somewhere if they still exist. Of course occasionally original tapes come up for auction, but technically they shouldn't as they are still owned by the record company who effectively paid to record them.
So no one from Alice's team can go down to a vault and search through all the tapes looking for stuff without the record companies agreeing. And if they agreed they would STILL have to pay Warner Brothers etc if they wanted to use any of it - and that isn't cheap.
Now as to the matter of smaller bands being able to do it, you have the reason right there. Apart from the fact they might have had a better deal (or even had a deal allowing them to keep their masters, which wasn't really an option in the 70s) - their back catalogue isn't worth nearly as much as Alice Coopers and that makes it more viable to license stuff to do reissues.
So what you have is a situation where the huge bands have the power to buy back their masters (like I think Bowie did) or have the selling power to make a profit with the reissues. Smaller bands can do it because of the more limited value of their back catalogue, and Alice is stuck right in the middle with a HUGELY valuable back catalogue but only a limited audience for reissues - especially when so many albums have now been reissued multiple times already via licensing.
Add to that the fact that for the most valuable albums (70s) there is reportedly very little releasable unheard material in the vaults anyway (and much of what's there is has been around on bootlegs for decades, making it less desirable). The best stuff has already come out on the box sets.
The Life and Crimes also contains a lot of the non-album stuff and film soundtrack stuff that was available at the time - and Brian Nelson said just licensing that was a nightmare to arrange.
There's certainly stuff from later albums that could be added as extras, and you can always throw the odd live recording in, although again much of the most interesting is probably already available (ie Glasgow 1982).
So in the end you are left with the packaging as being the main selling point for these releases, and personally I think THAT is possibly the #1 selling point anyway for any of these well done reissue projects. Hardcore fans WILL buy a nice package featuring an album they have, a live recording they probably have and a DVD/BR which is mostly on YouTube *IF* it has a nice booklet, replica singles, inflatable pencil and poster etc included in a nice box!
Look how fast the Old School set sold out!
I think that is the only way this will ever get done. As expensive (to guarantee everyone a profit) premium items made in limited numbers. And they *could* be wonderful items if done properly - but that is a big "if".
Sorry for going on a bit but that's how I see it. Anyone feel free to correct anything I may have wrong.