Antigoon wrote:Is it just me or is everybody here ignoring the fact Dreyfus IS mentioned on the CD as owners of the work....
Drefus is listed as co-publisher, along with JMJ. We have to keep
music publishing and other rights separate in this discussion. A music publisher does not "own the music":
A) A publisher is assigned exploitation rights to compositions (not recordings).
B) A record label is assigned release rights to recordings (not compositions).
Both these two different rights are "sold" by the artist to A) a publisher (FDM), and B) a record label, Disques Dreyfus (DD). As new compositions are not made under the old FDM contract, they are published by Jarre alone, as you can see on Teo & Tea and the new tracks on the Aero album and Gdansk DVD. This is part of the reason Jarre now has his own company, AeroProd, which is not only a management, but effectively also a record label
and publisher in one organisation.
We can clearly see the pattern of how the rights are assigned: Jarre is free to re-record and perform live his own compositions, as he has done and keeps doing without Dreyfus (publisher or record label divisions) interfering. Evidence: the Aero album and the concerts. FDM is still the publisher for these compositions, but as they are new recordings, they do not belong to the master tapes that DD owns rights to. On the other hand, DD can re-release the original albums because they bought the master tape rights from JMJ. Evidence: the Re-Oxygene set, Essential 2004 and various other re-issues.
In short, when it comes to the old music, DD has the master tape exploitation rights, and JMJ along with FDM has the composition exploitation rights. For the new music, Jarre alone seem to have the compisition rights, and we can only guess that he is safeguarding his master tape rights better now than before, since he as AeroProd to look after his interests.
Another thing is that if DD re-issues the old albums, Jarre is still paid royalties from the sales or from licencing to movies, etc. And it works the other way around too; FDM probably receives some standard fees for JMJ's use of the old compositions. So this is not where the current conflict lies.
Another aspect of this is that until FDM/DD and JMJ solves their problems, we will never see a new round of official remasters of the Dreyfus-era albums sanctioned by JMJ himself, as Jarre probably will not agree to be involved as long as they keep fighting. There might be remasters that technically are legal, as they are legally and properly released by DD under licence to whatever company they choose, but Jarre will not be involved until they solve their problems. This is a pity because if the Sony remasters are out of print, JMJ's back catalogue will not be available to a large extent, at least until DD decides to re-release "unsanctioned" albums. The New Oxygene Master Recording is an example of this. Would Jarre have made a "new recording" that is 99% identical if he had master tape control today?