Are these China CD's legit?

Discussion in 'Marketplace Discussions' started by KBanya, Jan 8, 2004.

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  1. KBanya

    KBanya Active Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    CT
  2. I bought a Springsteen "Best Of" from China at a Record Show in NJ. The sound was excellent(HDCD), tracklisting great, packaging just ok.
     
  3. MikeT

    MikeT Prior Forum Cretin and Current Impatient Creep

    Location:
    New Jersey, USA
    A friend of mine bought a Beatles "1" from China and it was a three disc set, claimed to be HDCD, and half of the song titles were spelled wrong in English.

    My friend claimed that the disc sounded fine.

    Not sure if they are legal, per se, but they exist, obviously.

    Personally, no matter how good a deal they might be, I wouldn't buy them since I really do wonder if the artists get royalties or not from these "grey" market releases.
     
  4. soundboy

    soundboy Senior Member

    I buy legit Hong Kong CDs from the likes of Universal, Warner, EMI, etc.... and you wouldn't believe the amount of typographical errors that occurs. Both in Chinese and in English. Not to mention the SPARS codes. The Taiwanese labels are even worse.
     
  5. ronbow

    ronbow Senior Member

    Location:
    St. Louis MO
    I got a Taiwanese BRAINWASHED (with a second disc of Lennon Imagine) and 1, which included bonus tracks and a second disc of .. well .. very little rhyme or reason to the track selection, mixing Rubber Soul era tunes with PPM and White Album. And HDCD to boot. I've assumed they are legit, sort of.

    My hunch is that once EMI licenses the Beatles tracks to Asia, they are simply happy that they are seeing legit issue, and much less concerned with packaging and presentation, software piracy being as rampant as it is over there. My guess is that EMI prefers to focus on licensing revenues over there, while totally managing overall packaging and the integrity of the releases in the West.
     
  6. Claude

    Claude Senior Member

    Location:
    Luxembourg
    I rather think these are pirate CDs.

    The omnipresent HDCD and 24Bit/96KHz stickers seem a bit dubious. Are all these titles licensed to the same chinese manufacturer? One feedback says "Neutral : HDCD plays on regular CD players but not on HDCD player-no response to e-mails". If the HDCD logo is just bogus, would a serious manufacturer do that?

    Why would a Beatles 3CD sampler be sold for $10? This is a commercial seller seeking profits, and legit Beatles CDs have never been that cheap.
     
  7. soundboy

    soundboy Senior Member

    EMI is very VERY well established in Hong Kong and even in China....going back to before WWII; they don't need to license anything to another company. Back in the 80s, when EMI started issuing CDs in China (Queen's "Greatest Hits" was one of the original 10 titles released in China), it entered the market when it partnered up with a Chinese record label as a joint-venture. By doing this, the Chinese label would lose as well if piracy becomes a major issue.

    I have to agree the Beatles CD seems to be a pirated disc.

    >>self pimping mode<<

    Here's an intersting discussion I started on music piracy in China and Hong Kong.
     
  8. ronbow

    ronbow Senior Member

    Location:
    St. Louis MO
    Well, this all makes sense, and makes the case for them being pirates, but even in a relatively ordered society like Japan, we were seeing oddball compilations even in the late 70's-early 80's, that didn't quite seem right, similar to the 3-CD sampler referenced above.

    I would surely think that Japan would have been in a position to manage that, given it is a very top-down culture.
     
  9. 4_everyman

    4_everyman The Sexual Intellectual

    Location:
    Gillette, Wyoming
    I'll admit to having purchased a handful of these gray market collections from dealers in China. More than half of the time (4 out of 7), the CDs were indeed HDCD-encoded as advertisted. The track listings are often comical. :D
     
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