Why the new album of Bob Dylan came out with a circulation of 100 copies

The label of the famous American rock musician Bob Dylan recently did a very strange thing: they released a compilation album with a very limited edition of 100 copies.

The album entitled “Collection of the 50th Anniversary” is 4 CDs, and it is produced only in Europe. The album contains the works of Dylan’s first years of work: unreleased home recordings, live performances of a folk club in Greenwich Village and the cut content of his second studio album, The Freewheelin 'Bob Dylan.
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The album is minimalist - four CDs, a paper envelope and a carelessly composed track list. The compilation was released in a very limited edition of 100 copies, which is enough to use for its own purposes the new European copyright law. One can speak about such motives of the album release for several reasons at once.

Representatives of the record label Dylan declined to comment on this strange release. Much more interesting is the comment on the title of the new album - this is The Copyright Extension Collection, Volume 1. As you can see, even licensors can be honest, and a law professor at Duke University, James Boyle, is confident that this is the exploitation of laws.

The fact is that not so long ago, the European Union extended the terms of copyright protection from 50 to 70 years, after these periods the work falls into the category of public domain. But there is a small detail: to get an additional 20 years of protection, you need at least once in these initial 50 years to publish protected works.

This material was recorded in 1962 and 1963, and the label was forced to publish it at least some minimum circulation. Thus, copies of master disks that never left the limits of the vaults saw the light for the first time.

The new law was called the Cliff Law by the name of the British musician of the 60s, Cliff Richard, who lobbied for the change, arguing that a living elderly artist should not lose his royalties after 50 years from the date of publication.

Critics, however, felt that the new law would be useful only for record companies and megastars (of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones) of the past, who risked losing exclusive rights to their records. Most of the musicians, this law will not bring anything.

In the law there are small tricks against ordinary musicians. For example, you can terminate the contract with the label after 50 years and get full rights to their works, which is intended to help the authors. But for the end of the agreement, it is necessary that the record company did not release a single reprint of the controversial works a year before that threatens a wave of such 100% original albums.

It is possible to argue long about the morality of such bills and their benefits for authors and consumers. At the same time, albums for selling albums are going on Ebay, and prices for hot fans are around a thousand dollars.

According to the materials of the National Public Radio and the lot on Ebay .