JUNE, 2019 - The so-called vinyl resurgence has resulted in the appearance of a bunch of new re-issue record labels based in the European Union (EU) that are re-issuing long out-of-print or obscure LPs, mostly jazz recordings and many on 180-gram vinyl.

Because everybody knows that if it's pressed on 180-gram vinyl it has to be an audiophile pressing, right? After all, labels such as Mobile Fidelity, Analogue Productions, Music Matters, Mosaic, Reference Recordings, Pure Pleasure and Speakers Corner have been pressing records on heavy vinyl for years and have garnered a reputation for quality. So all these new labels must be putting out high quality records too. Right?

Wrong.

Heavy vinyl is just heavy vinyl. It's not in any way an indicator of sound quality. Much more important, but still not the sole consideration, is the source used for the pressing. Were the original analogue master tapes used? Was it a high-res digital file, a regular digital file or - worse - a CD? Who mastered it and where was it pressed?

The first thing to understand about most of these new re-issue labels is they were created expressly to take advantage of EU copyright laws which until 2010 stated that sound recordings entered the public domain 50 years after the end of the calendar year in which the recordings were originally released.

These copyright labels, as I call them, started appearing around 2010 because a lot of great jazz was recorded in the late 1950s and by 2010 had entered the EU public domain. European entrepreneurs legally seized the opportunity to release new pressings of these recordings without having to pay a licensing fee or gett permission from anybody, meaning they could sell their pressings cheaper than many of their competitors - not that they did. And they almost never used a decent source, and sometimes just a CD. Or an mp3.

However, following some intense lobbying from the US recording industry, labels, artists, and various other rights holders the EU, in 2011, voted to amend the law to increase copyright protection to 70 years instead of 50. But the damage was already done and the decision was not retroactive and only applied to sound recordings originally released after January 1, 1963. The Beatles narrowly escaped getting carelessly re-pressed by these labels, which is certainly a good thing.

BUT ...

… as often happens the politicians didn't know when to stop and now the pendulum has swung too far over to the other side. The EU parliament has of late been trying to strengthen copyright protection further by issuing a directive that would mandate, among other things, censorship filters to monitor copyright violations.

Ulrich Kaiser, a German music professor, has written about a disturbing experiment he ran using YouTube, whereby he posted public domain music such as Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 - intended as learning tools for his students - only to have it taken down by ContentID copyright claims. Beethoven's music has been around way more than 70 years, so something's not right here and it might just be that the copyright record labels' greed irritated the composer's descendants. But that's just my theory.

And now the legality of memes is in question because permission would be required to use any associated images, etc. But I digress …

So how do these copyright records sound? I've had (past tense, notice) several of these recordings in my collection before I twigged to what was going on and found them to be overall very lacking. Not terrible sounding (sometimes), but they're certainly not using the analogue masters as the source and for me, these days, it's all about the sound. My equipment is good enough to tell the difference and I can assure you that any Tone Poet or anything Music Matters Jazz puts out will easily crush any recordings issued by any of these copyright labels.

But if somebody is buying vinyl for the first time they may not think these records sound less than great because they probably don't know better. They've more-than-likely only heard streaming music playing in the background so this stuff probably does sound - at least compared to that - OK. But it really annoys me that people are being taken advantage of in this manner. If only they could hear what really great records sounded like …

These copyright labels really are a pet peeve of mine. They're just not honest. I remember the record that clued me in. I love Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue, so when I saw a 2-LP version featuring both stereo and mono versions I snapped it up. I had to have it and it never occurred to me to check what label was putting it out. I assumed it was Columbia, the recording's original issuing label.

I took the record home, ripped off the cellophane and plopped it onto the turntable. Now, I do not claim to have the ultimate set of audiophile ears … I'm almost 60 as I write this, after all … but what was coming out of my speakers that day sounded compressed and muddy and I don't think age had anything to do with it. At first I thought something was wrong with the speakers, but it turns out it was just the lousy quality of the record. It was released by a label called Not Now Music, which is one of those copyright re-issue labels. I don't know what the source for this pressing of Kind Of Blue was, but I'm almost certain it was a CD - or worse. Because that's what it sounds like. Did it sound horrible? Not quite. Did it sound good? Nowhere near.

Here's a list of labels I recommend you avoid, mostly because in most cases it's impossible (or very difficult) to tell what source is being used:

・Not Now Music
・DOL
・4 Men With Beards
・WaxTime
・Jazz Time
・Doxy
・Vinyl Lovers
・Pan Am
・Jazz Wax

Remember … just because something's been pressed on 180 gram vinyl doesn't mean it's going to sound good or that it was sourced from analog or even high-res digital files. And here's another clue: sometimes you'll come across EU copyright records that display alternate cover art. That's because in many cases the cover art, unlike the sound recordings themselves, are not yet in the public domain.

I wish these copyright labels would make public the sources they are using and also acknowledge the expired copyright. As I see it, these re-issues might not be bootlegs but they're pretty close morally. They are nothing more than money-grab exploitations and will add nothing to your record collection that's worth having.

And in a lot of cases, nothing beats an original pressing (and some of them can still be had on the cheap). So start digging through those used record bins!