Re: [ARSCLIST] Copyright and Marston Records

[steven c <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Olhsson" <olh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >I hope details will be forthcoming, especially if they can serve as a
> >badly needed licensing model for US companies.
> >
> There are no US companies for the early stuff and little need for a
licensing model because Sony/BMG owns everything EMI doesn't and they both
own a lot of it jointly. Universal kicks in during the '30s.
>
> Independent label ownership only begins in the '40s when the last of the
electrical recording patents expired.
>
As I understand it, there were a number of independent labels, beginning
in 1919, when Victor's vital patent on lateral recording expired. However,
most of the existing record manufacturers were involved in the series of
mergers that formed the American Record Corporation (eventually uniting
Cameo-Pathe with the Plaza Music Company and its nominally-independent
Regal Record Company arm). There are a handful of small "indie" labels
that were never part of ARC...Grey Gull as well as the several clients
of Earl Jones' Standard Record Company, along with a number of even rarer
labels. Edison was also independent and those recordings are owned by
the US Government...

Steven C. Barr