----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, May 15, 2006 5:11 PM
Probably because a lot of your 78s are very obscure or of no commercial
value and/or little academic
value? Or because the ones of commercial value have already been re-issued
in a new format with good
transfers made from metal parts? Have you approached any record companies
with offers to share from
your collection, with the interest being to get the disks of interest
transferred and preserved (and
maybe even make a little money)? Have you sought any grant money? Have you
offered to donate the
collection to a library or national archive in exchange for seed money to
start transferring it? Do
you publish and speak widely? I don't know of very many people for whom
the world beats a path to
their door over an obscure thing like a giant pile of 78's (there are
exceptions but note that those
guys have a ton of rare/non-available-elsewhere content vs a large pile of
stuff that's elsewhere --
and those guys tend to be pretty good self-promoters, with no negative
connotation on my part
because I think it's very good business sense). No offense, but marketing
attracts attention and
otherwise, talk is cheap.
Okeh...
Problem #1. Virtually all of this material is under eternal copyright
in the USA...and can thus only be reissued by, or with the (expensive)
permission, of the copyright owners (mostly the newly-merged BMG-Sony).
Multinational corporations think in terms of VERY large figures...which
is why they have reissued only a tiny fraction of their huge historic
catalog(ues). Their attitude is "Dog In the Manger"..."We won't reissue
it, because we can't make millions by doing so...but you CAN'T reissue
it, because we hold the copyrights!"
Problem #2: Since I'm trying to survive on an Ontario disability pension,
which barely (or less) allows me to live indoors and feed Ecru the cat
(and occasionally eat as well), the world for the most part is blissfully
unaware of my existence. To make things worse, interest in these old
recordings is pretty well limited to two groups, insofar as they exist...
those for whom the recordings have nostalgic interest (the human lifespan
pretty well limits this to recordings from about 1935 onward)...and those
like myself who enjoy the music of eras long past (and we aren't exactly
widely spread!).
So...my longer-term intent (insofar as one can have long-term
anything when one is looking senior-citizenhood in the eye...)
is to take advantage of the shorter sound recording copyright
term in Canada as long as it exist, and my lack of visibilty
thereafter...and convert the more saleable recordings to
digital form, from whence they can be pressed onto CD-R's
and sold to interested parties (insofar as the latter exist?).
Finally, I don't "publish and speak widely" (wish I did) and
the sad reality is that I doubt if much institutional interest
exists in my half-vast shellac archive! Now, were it only films...
Steven C. Barr