"Original Artists" ripoff

Cafe Society
1

I swear, I almost had to put this in the Pit, cuz it ticked me off so much!

OK, so I’m in Wal-Mart, looking at the CDs, and I see one, Jukebox Hits Of 1969. This is a prime year for me, this is the music I love. I’m smart enough to look for a sign that says “Original Artists”, which this CD has. It’s only eight bucks, so I pony up the cash, and am pretty pleased with myself. Until I pop it into my van’s CD player. They may be original artists, but are all remixes. Some so bad, I can’t stand to listen to them!
My first question is, why is this done? Does it save money somehow? My second question (maybe my third, if you’re gonna be nit-picky about it) is, how can I avoid this in the future?

I swear this is the kind of experience that drives people to burn their own CDs from downloaded files!

2

This has happened to me. The thing to look for is “Original RECORDINGS by the Original Artists.” Price is also a good guideline - if you can’t believe you’re getting all those good oldies that cheap, that’s a sure sign they’re re-recordings. What they do, it seems, is get the lead singer of a defunct band, put him in with a bunch of session musicians and have him re-record the song.

As to the why, I haven’t a clue.

3

In many cases, bands begin their careers with small record labels, with which they score their first hits. Once they’re more popular, they move to bigger labels that pay them more money.

However, the smaller labels still hold the rights to the older recordings, and they’re not eager to share those recordings. That’s why, for instance, a “Best of Styx” CD won’t have the original, hit version of “Lady”- the label that Styx first recorded that song for either

  1. wasn’t willing to give another label the rights to the original recording, or

  2. demanded a LOT of money for those rights, more than the new label was willing to pay.

In such situations, the band elects either to leave that track off the collection or to record a new version of the same song.

4

Yeah, like when Frank Sinatra went from Capitol to Reprise, he re-recorded a lot of his old Songs, giving us drastically different versions of tunes like “Night and Day.”