Where are all the late 80's / 90's LP reissues?

Got back into vinyl two years ago and the used LP "honeymoon" is effectively over now - I've gone though eBay and garage sales and Indie stores and I know what's generally available and what's not.

So what I've observed is that 60'/70's/some 80's artists get a lot of love with reissues. The big ones of course but some of the lesser known artists as well. And some where their LP's are already plentiful - Glen Campbell's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" was a recent one I noticed.

And that's all fine and good, but where the heck are all the reissues for the late 80's / 90's LP's? There are some of course like Jellyfish and The Placemats "Don't Tell a Soul", but there are so many artists that have simply been forgotten and their original LP's, if they even exist, are cost prohibitive. Off the top of my head:

The Sundays. Three LP's + throw in some B-sides and a live album = the perfect opportunity for a boxed set.
The Cardigans (all their output, but including their 90's work)
a-ha. Now before I get blasted for that, these guys were ridiculously popular in Europe for 20 years. One would think an import LP boxed set should be available by now? They had/have a huge fanbase.
Kate Bush. This one just burns me up - one boxed set in 1990, which is now priced into the stratosphere, and then nothing except our host's two remasters which are now OOP. She's still active too so if anyone deserves a new LP boxed set, it's her. And for her this goes back into the late 70's/early 80's.

And there's more one-off's like 120 Minutes artists like Kitchens of Distinction and Blake Babies and Westerberg's "14 Songs" where LP reissues would get my money. It feels like it's a lost time period, in general, for vinyl reissues.

It's trickling in a little - MOV did a reissue of Run DMC's "Raising Hell" and Buffalo Tom's "Let Me Come Over", Sebadoh has a reissue of "Cakesale" and most recently the Public Enemy boxed set and I'm happy with those. I just want to see more reissues. Take my money please!

 

Those who run the major labels today are morons.They still run the labels like they did when they could put anything out at whatever price and fans would buy it.So many don't even have a place on the website where fans can email their suggestions.If I was president of a record label today I'd have reps meeting fans/customers at industry shows 1-2 times a year.There should be a national CES type event just for those who produce albums,manufacture albums,sell album (retail and online),all meeting with the consumers.I can't tell you how many times A label person has said " we'll we put out x and it's just not selling".Meanwhile fans say "we keep wanting x but they won't make it".Marketing at it's worse-kind of like the American Auto industry in the 1970s!

 

I wonder how difficult it would be to start a Sundazed style reissue label that deals in mostly OOP or never on vinyl titles from the 90's. I kind of want to look into it, I've got some money coming my way soon and if it's possible, I'm really considering it.

There's so many Britpop titles that were UK only, it seems like you could do alright with with well made first US pressings of a lot of these titles. I'm talking Blur, Pulp, Suede, Morrissey, Lush, Oasis, etc. Some of these have been reissued, but they're still UK pressings. It's gotta be possible...

 

Great idea

 

A lot of this stuff was first issued when albums were still being released with significant press runs...e.g. the first several A-Ha albums. They are still staples of the budget bins as a result, and the chances of making money on a reissue are small. Most of Kate's greatest work got ample vinyl release. Etc.

 

Hounds of Love is still available on the Audio Fidelity website as the 180g vinyl release that Steve did.

 

It isn't just reissues but first issues of LPs which were CDs from this era. John Prine's The Missing Years is coming out next week and MOV recently did Chris Whitley's Living With The Law. Both were released in 1991.

This would be a perfect niche for a label. I like the demographics. The target market is in their 30s and 40s. The successful ones have money to spend on luxuries like vinyl.

 

If you are really planning on a reissue label that works on 1990s albums, some of the Amy Grant albums that should be issued on vinyl include a reissue of "Heart In Motion" (yes, Heart In Motion" was issued on vinyl back in 1991) plus add "Home For Christmas," "House of Love" and especially "Behind The Eyes." You'd have to work with Amy's team and Universal/Capitol Christian Music Group on the licensing agreement.

Also, Wilson Phillips are active and possibly get a license from Universal for the 2 big selling albums (which were on vinyl to begin with) and/or greatest hits comp.

 

Chris Whitley's Living with the Law was issued on vinyl by Columbia in 1991.

 

I want stuff that either never saw vinyl release or very limited vinyl release between the early '90s and circa 2008.

Case in point: The recent first-ever vinyl release of Evanescence's Fallen. More like that, please.

 

How are they to know that albums that can be bought for a penny used on Amazon will get $30 each on vinyl?

What quantity need to be sold to be worthwhile?

 

If you run a business using the model most of them are familiar with, you need to sell about 500,000 copies of something to be worthwhile. If you use the right business model, there are people making money pressing 1,000 copies of stuff. Not getting rich but turning a profit and having fun.

 

A lot of the vinyl reissues are coming from third party labels, not from the majors themselves. To get a license, you need to guarantee a print run, and pay the fees the label stipulates. Typically, those are going to mean that--to break even--you're going to have to be able to sell at least 1000-2000 copies of the album. That's just to cover your costs. And your guarantees are up front. Issue the album and it stiffs? You still pay the fees and you own the unsaleable stock you already paid full licensing on. This is why you have so many third party labels re-re-re-releasing the same short list of albums: Those are considered safe and recoupable (and, usually, the master tapes are already located and tagged--no vault research costs...and for the crummier labels, the digital duplication master that will serve as the master for their vinyl reissue is already set to go as well, which reduces mastering costs).

What if you get lucky and pick something no one else has reissued and have a vinyl reissue hit? The money starts to roll in, then, right...? Well, not so fast. Usually that license you have with the major also stipulates a maximum run...Your break even point might be 1000 and your maximum run might well be only 4 or 5000. So in the best case you might well sop up some gravy at the upper side, but if things get really good, your upside will be capped.

Bottom line: You take all the risk and you don't have "infinite" upside.

 

a-ha drops off after "Stay on These Roads" (which is itself a bit rare in the US) - everything after that is either not on LP at all or very expensive. The Sundays are also expensive / near impossible to find past their first album, The Cardigans are ridiculously expensive and Kate Bush has never had reissues for her first few albums, nor The Red Shoes. And Steve's HOL / Sensual World are not easy to come by - I missed the boat on those (had a B&N order some months back but they couldn't fulfill it).

Try finding "The Dreaming" on vinyl at a local Indie -- I have yet to see it and I've been looking. HOL and The Whole Story are the most common, but that's about it. That's why, for many of these titles, I don't understand why small runs couldn't be handled - I'm sure a lot of them would sell.

I have a solution to that. A company like MOV could do a pre-order situation where they plan to reissue "The Dreaming", for example. They take pre-orders and assuming they get enough people, it at least covers their costs and then anything above that it just the icing on the cake. I'd rather wait 6 months for a reissue then never seeing it released at all.

 

Well, I've got all the Kate stuff on vinyl, but then I was around back when it came out.

None of it was hard to find, and she always had a respectable cult audience in the US good for some decent catalog sales.

You are correct that Stay on These Roads was the last US vinyl issue (not too hard to find at the time, with lots of promos). They faded away in the US, and after the next two, didn't even get CD issues here...

The Sundays and The Cardigans are really CD era bands and it's true that there's not much vinyl to be found...

 

Thanks. It was OOS about 1 or 2 months ago. hmmmm.....

Most of my Kate Bush purchases were on cassette then CD later on - so I missed them on vinyl. a-ha's SOTR I couldn't find locally but I managed a copy on eBay that wasn't too expensive. And agree on the other two, basically anyone starting out ~1990 or later would have been a CD-era band.

 

I've been asking the same question. Lot of 90s stuff that's too expensive to get (Oasis, Pearl Jam, NIN, basically a lot of things pressed between 1991 and 1999.

 

I see potential here... I'm just wondering why it hasn't been done yet. Perhaps the majors are a bigger hurdle than you might think. They probably want waaaaay too much in licensing to make it work. Still, it's worth a shot.

 

Is finding full size versions of the artwork a problem? I've seen cd scans that they tried to blow up or vinyl covers that were sourced from a colour xerox of an original.

Do major like 3rd parties having access to the master tapes or even have anything better than 16 bit handy?

I didn't see many here going nuts over the US vinyl reissues of Coldplay/Radiohead/Pearl Jam compared to UK originals.

 

Still waiting fgor Modest Mouse to rerelease their 90s albums on vinyl.

 

Hmmmm.... I wonder what my US vinyl AND US CD copies of "East of the Sun.. and "Memorial Beach would have to say about that!

 

Reissuing CD-era 90's Pop on Vinyl for sound quality advantages is a total waste of time and money as most finished masters from that era are digital. Any label that wanted to stay in business from a logistics and P&L standpoint would have almost no choice to source them from digital EQ masters used for the original CD releases. Any vinyl issued at their original time of release were almost certainly done that way.

 

For CD's, I believe the first import-only was either Minor Earth Major Sky or Lifelines, I'd have to check.

Not necessarily. The original LP's could have been sourced from CD, but the masters themselves could have been analog or 24/44 (or better) digital. I'm not sure of the cutoff but I know that 16/44 would have been pretty prevalent in the 1980's, but by the early 90's it could have been 24/44. For example, I believe that Achtung Baby from 1991 was 24/44 digital.

This is another reason why I'd love to see reissues as the masterings from the old LP's could actually be an improvement. I mentioned the Replacements "Don't Tell a Soul" and the ORG reissue is a significant improvement over the original Sire LP I've heard.

 

The Alanis Pill got great reviews and way better than any past version.

 

Really? Those got a US vinyl issue? Hmmm...I stand corrected...I know they got CD issues, that's why I said "after the next two, they didn't even get CD issues".