“There are plenty more gems out there”: How to reissue a record in 8 steps with Mr Bongo

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Step 3

Step Two: Explore the rights situation and pay the artists

Dave: I try and pay the artist directly some royalties over and above what I pay the label just to keep everyone happy. Because the other danger is that you’ve paid the label but you haven’t paid the artist. For Tom Zé’s Grande Liquidacao, the label was part of a label called Rozenblit, and we licensed the whole thing, which was like 30 years of music from the north east of Brazil – psych rock, some funk, some samba stuff. We made a decision to give all the artists 10% royalties over and above what we gave the label. A lot of the time they didn’t have the contract or they’d been eaten by a mouse or flooded, so we’d go to the artist and say “look are you happy with us putting the album out and receiving 10%?” With Tom Zé we did this deal and he still gets royalties and the label’s happy because they’re still getting something. And we tend not to reissue albums unless we’ve got that kind of backing. But you can totally fly with it and you’d probably be alright.

There used to be a thing in the early nineties where people did a lot of these bootleg comps, people would go down CPS and get clearance form the publishers, but that’s just one set of rights, they haven’t cleared the main set of rights as to who actually owns the music.

Step 2

It’s an unethical industry, especially with older contracts. You see a lot of these artists holding 1% contracts or buy out for life contracts, so in that sense although those contracts are still binding to a degree, those contracts wouldn’t exist now as they would be illegal. There’s definitely an ethical thing and you’ve got to protect yourself, because it can go really bad. In certain cases, even if you’ve only done a couple of sales someone will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

Matt: A lot of labels will do this, although I think it’s illegal. They’ll put in the liner notes something like “we’ve not been able to find out who owns this, if you are the rights holder then please get in touch with us,” and they’re claiming what they’re doing is they’re putting the money in a holding account so that if someone does come in, they say “here’s your rights”. But that’s like going into someone’s house and stealing everything and then saying “oh sorry I didn’t realise you were in do you want your stuff back?”