Reel (2)

I am not entirely convinced that the material that this label releases is officially licensed or not. After looking at all of the releases that Reel has put out, I have not seen one that mentions anything about rights holders, publishers or who the release was licensed from. The most information given is "℗ & © Reel Music" and "A Division Of Good Time Records".

Going to the Good Times Records website linked on this company page, I was met with a single web page with a hover scrollbar displaying the all the labels under the banner (note that "Reel" or "Reel Music" is not listed at all). Out of the 13 listed, 4 of the pages didn't work (leading to a Wix.com error page). Out of the 9 that did work, all each page has is a short description and a photo gallery at the bottom of the page. The quality of these photos varies greatly. Either the images look great, or they have noticable artifacting. Either they're nice size, or they've considerably small. Although I don't have a way to confirm this, I suspect that these are all web sourced images that were pulled off Google quickly. The fact they haven't even updated the copyright year from 2020 on their homepage may also support my claim.

Examing their releases, all from what I have seen say "Manufactured In The E.U." on them. A bulk of the material that they draw from for their releases is over 50 years old, with a few exceptions (such as Crosby & Nash - Wind On The Water and The Sweet Inspirations - Sweet Inspirations). Those two factors combined lead me to believe that they are releasing records in Europe in order to get around the copyright laws of the United States. Europe's copyright law states that the rights for a music recording lasts for 50 years, and then it enters the public domain. Using this route allows for them to release whatever they want and collect all the money for it themselves. Japan has a similar copyright system, and labels such as Oldays Records utilize this same practice.

Reel appears to re-release material sourced from smaller labels like Rocky Road Records and Double-L Records (2). An exception to this would be in the case of the material of ABC (particularly under ABC-Paramount and ABC Records), which was a large label during it's heyday and now has it's recordings owned by Universal. Two of Reels releases are from prominent artists such as Fats Domino and David Crosby / Graham Nash that were originally released on ABC, but make no mention of licensing from UMG on either. And considering that UMG re-released Wind On The Water in 2000 themselves (and was originally released in 1975), the release would not be eligible to enter the public domain. I am unaware if action has been taken by UMG against Reel or Good Times Records at this time.

As for the quality of the releases itself, none of them appear to state any kind of reissue credits or where the source material from each release came from. The reviews on a few of the record pages comment that the audio of each release sounds alright and slightly better than the streaming counterparts. But I doubt they are using the master tapes as source material for a majority, if not all the releases here. They are most likely using existing digital versions or vinyl rips to master from for their releases. WaxTime has a similar situation to Reel, and have been known to do that.

If one of their releases catches your eye during an RSD drop and you're considering buying it, just know that what you're buying is most likely not official. And for the price you would end up paying for one of their releases, you deserve to get a higher quality product.