then im sure you can post further comments on such items in the future.

anthonynputson, January 19, 2006; 8:32 PM

I believe that the SELLING and profiting of promotional film music is ILLEGAL but the official making of promotional film music by record labels and composers in itself to exactly do what a promo suggests... to promote to a limited few, is not at all illegal. Please correct me if I have it all wrong.

serifiot, January 19, 2006; 8:53 PM

Also the law says "clean jails" , but where??

Some promo are to only source for scores, so its in the mind of the purchaser to pay for it (since no one force him to buy it, neither is cheat by think its original) so they only that lose money are the right owners, that didnt want to spend some money to make the silver-pressed release, because they couldnt estimate how much they will sell.

The problems are when bastar users like "re-animate" on Ebay, list items as "original from his 4000 collection" and send you cd-r

I dont think that its wrong to sell those cd, since there could be the only chance to get some scores (think about Vangelis, that more than HALF of his scores are not official)


nicolas28, January 20, 2006; 6:34 AM

Once again, my two cents:

The difference between "promotional copies (promos)" of regularily released titles and "composer promos" as I understand it:

A "promo" stamped copy of an existing album (meaning that is is available in stores etc.) is NOT the same as what is generally referred to a "score promo" in the soundtrack world.

A score promo - at least as it was explained to me many moons ago - is a usually very limited release of the score financed by the composer himself, for the sole purpose to "promote him/herself" to studios, directors, producers etc. in the film industry. As we all know, tons of scores are never released by the rights owners for various reasons.

When a composer is particulary proud of a score he did that never saw the light of day on the common market, he can sometimes make a "gentleman's agreement" to put out a promo at his own expense.

These are usually released in very small quantities (500 - 1000 ex. or so) and only distributed by the composer himself. It is common practice that the composer is allowed to sell about half or so of the edition via specialized soundtrack retailers to cover at least some of the production costs.

So these composer promos are legitimate and it is also leigitimate for previous owners to sell these as it is also legitimate to sell other legitimate out-of-print titles. The "promotional only" print that most of these titles have only means that these were not produced to be sold to the public as they are not released by the "proper" channels / rights holders.

That's what I've been told by people working closely with composers. I have also read this some time ago in an article in the web (I *think* it was on the FSM site, but could be wrong).

Legitimately yours,
Burnie


blinddoc, January 20, 2006; 1:18 PM

blinddoc: Thanks, pefect description! Now we have the only difficulty to teach some reluctant
sellers how to tell a composer promo, from an official one and a promo-named-bootleg...

coma, January 20, 2006; 8:18 PM

Coma:

That's the real trick, isn't it...?:-))


blinddoc, January 21, 2006; 4:18 AM