Pirated/unauthorized Sergio Mendes

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Rudy

¡Que siga la fiesta!
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Take a look at what comes up on Tidal. I think it's an alarming trend lately. Many bands or artists I follow are experiencing a flood of poor quality, unauthorized releases. I like to think of them as pirated, but if copyright has lapsed in the source country, the worst I could classify these would be as unauthorized releases. (The term "bootleg" does not apply; that is for an unauthorized recording, like non-officially-released demos, unauthorized live recordings, etc.)

Anyway, this is part of the Sergio Mendes assortment on Tidal. These same titles show up at the other streaming services, as well as for sale on Amazon. Take a look, and try to guess which ones are unauthorized:

upload_2016-2-25_16-56-37.png
 
Part of the problem now with artwork is that most of these services offer individual songs, and someone, somewhere is charged with providing artwork for an individual song. Many times, the album from which it comes has artwork, and they'll use that, but other times they seem to generate some really tacky pictures, like those first four in the picture above. Those are individual songs.

Harry
 
Diagonal is an album:

upload_2016-2-25_20-43-49.png

Nica's Dream is also an album:

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As are the others. These covers are from the album listing for Sergio at Tidal. These two albums alone are ripoffs (repackagings) of Dance Moderno, Diagonal being released by some entity called Travelscape Records, and Nica's Dream by All About Jazz Records. Dance Moderno is also an album listed above, and per Amazon, claims to be "remastered" (showing new cover art with a recent Sergio photo, and Which in these thieves' lingo, is just a marketing phrase (aka carrot on a stick). They are likely just digital clones of the existing CD or worse, a poor needle drop (as many seem to be).

The real release of Dance Moderno was released on Philips. And as such, the authentic cover art is this:

upload_2016-2-25_20-54-50.png

It's a shame that there is no way to crack down on these garbage repackagings, short of posting negative reviews on Amazon for each and every one of them. It's also shameful the streaming services and itunes do not do their due diligence in checking to make certain these pirated versions are not made available through their services.

And my Dance Moderno examples only cover a small number of the phony albums shown above. Some may be the same (like Outra Vez).

P.S. Those heels might kill someone...!
 
First they Bootleg Herb Alpert and NOW they are Bootlegging Sergio. "Have They No Sense whatsoever????" ( i ask rhetorically.) My answer ( in Belushi style.)" But NOOOOO!!!!!." Enough said.
 
My mistake. I thought those were individual songs.

I guess those albums are over 50 years old and ripe for public domain overseas. Since this is 2016, we can look forward to a bunch of "MAIS" QUE NADA public domain issues, too.

Harry
 
My mistake. I thought those were individual songs.

I guess those albums are over 50 years old and ripe for public domain overseas. Since this is 2016, we can look forward to a bunch of "MAIS" QUE NADA public domain issues, too.

Harry
and With Very Poor Quality too. "Let the Buyer Beware"! And Get the Original Authorized versions.
 
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My mistake. I thought those were individual songs.

I guess those albums are over 50 years old and ripe for public domain overseas. Since this is 2016, we can look forward to a bunch of "MAIS" QUE NADA public domain issues, too.

Harry

Yeah, I wasn't too clear on that. Those were indeed albums.

There are other Sergio albums that are 50+ years old that haven't been touched. Yet those two TJB unauthorized releases are not 50 years old. Beat Of The Brass has a couple of years to go.

What worries me more is that there is literally a flood of unauthorized releases by so many artists these days, I can't even begin to keep count. When I was checking Tidal to see what I didn't yet have in Vince Guaraldi titles, there were many unauthorized titles there also.

Even more so, it is happening in vinyl! I went looking for a new 180 gram vinyl pressing of Bill Evans Waltz For Debby and came upon maybe half a dozen on these off-brand labels, with altered cover art. I've seen labels like Wax Time, who operate in a grey area in terms of legality, release questionable titles on vinyl also. Check out Miles Davis, Kind Of Blue, especially on Amazon's EU sites. You'll see all different covers out there. The only official releases are those from Sony Legacy, or licensed remasters by the likes of Mobile Fidelity.

What worries me the most is that there are innocent consumers out there buying these up, all of questionable quality, and they don't know any better. If the quality is bad, that gives buyers the wrong impression, and it reflects poorly on the artist (in addition to stealing from the artist).
 
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