OK NWO community, I've stated before my desire to start a reissue label and I may finally be making some steps towards it. The biggest headache of the process is licensing, as there are 2 licenses required for each release. There is the master license, which is when the label agrees to license the material, and then there's the mechanical license, which is more to do with the publishers approval. The master license can be the most expensive part of the process. For the types of music I would like to reissue, meaning albums from 25+ years ago, a license could be $5000, possibly less or considerably more. But making contact with labels to even start the process has been a no go because they just do not respond, or finding a proper contact is just not clear. So I signed up with a company yesterday that specializes in licensing and have years of experience. For my initial release idea, they will be providing me all the necessary contact info needed for both master and mechanical licensing, and the process of how to go about it. If the cost of my first license is doable, I will release other projects. And that's where you will come in. If I can establish any sort of relationship with any major record labels, I would like to take a poll at that time to see what albums people would most like to see reissued. This would be something that has never been released on CD, or poorly done. I was also thinking of making it a community effort for those titles, like doing a kickstarter campaign to raise the funds for licensing. The cost of manufacturing isn't terrible. For 1000 copies of a CD with an 8 page full color book and clear tray with color backing, the cost is around $1500+. So we will see what comes of this first attempt at licensing before I can really get enthusiastic. For anyone wanting vinyl reissues, the cost of manufacture is painful. A standard black vinyl LP at the 150 grams with a color inner sleeve comes to over $3000 for just a few hundred copies.
Scott (Rubellan Remasters)