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The copyright of Steeltown session records

ThomasMaria

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It is well known that Michael Jackson's earliest records were released by Steeltown Records in 1968, and were re-released as singles on CD in 1995 by Inverted Records. I myself also own this CD.
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In addition, more previously unreleased songs were released by Inverted Records in the same year.
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These CDs were sold in the USA. However, it seems that the very same materials were sold by enormous different music companies in the Europe as well. Some of them marked copyright information of Inverted Records and Steeltown such as the following CD released in the UK.
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But more CDs have claimed to have permission of license from completely different companies, such as
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Released by "Goldies", permission from "Intermusic".
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"Licenced from Merlin Group/ Timeless Recording".
Much more can be found on discogs. They all have very ugly and casual cover designs. I seriously doubt whether they got copyright when releasing these CDs. It becomes more confusing when they even claim to have permission from so many unknown record groups. Does anyone know whether they are official releases? Why Steeltown or Inverted Records never sue them? First Ever Jackson 5 Recording Unearthed + Available for Licensing In a recent report (maybe not that recent) it was confirmed that these records still have copyright, but they got permission from "Secret Stash Records", another mysterious company. I do not know whom I should ask these questions to. It seems that the Inverted Records no long exists.
 
The only official releases from this period were the original 7" singles.
The CD versions started being churned out in the early-mid 90's and are very poor quality. Several of the recordings are actually done on tape recorders seemingly in The Jacksons home.
The best collection is probably The Magic Collection as it contains the undubbed versions.
 
Thatkliqkid said:
The only official releases from this period were the original 7" singles.
The CD versions started being churned out in the early-mid 90's and are very poor quality. Several of the recordings are actually done on tape recorders seemingly in The Jacksons home.
The best collection is probably The Magic Collection as it contains the undubbed versions.
Click to expand...
However it seems to me that the Inverted Records releases are also official.
 
I wouldn't worry about it. They all look like bootlegs anyway. It doesn't really matter what the copyright says, if you want to get them, just get them.
 
There’s a bunch of live recordings among them, I’d want to hear those.
 
GREAT THREAD!!! So refreshing to have a new topic of conversation, reminded me of a lot of other (semi) legitimate CDs that were released in the 90s. Is there a way to download the tracks? It would be so much faster than tracking down the actual CDs (and a CD player I guess?)
 
ThomasMaria said:
However it seems to me that the Inverted Records releases are also official.
Click to expand...
The "Limited edition" CD by inverted still contains the overdubbed release and not the original versions released on the 7" singles.
 
Thatkliqkid said:
The "Limited edition" CD by inverted still contains the overdubbed release and not the original versions released on the 7" singles.
Click to expand...
According to Wikipedia, these CDs released by Inverted got permission from Ben Brown. Ben Brown was a founder of Steeltown, so I think he had rights to release these songs on CDs.
 
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