John wrote:Yin Yang wrote:In the USA LP's were sealed. If a store ordered 100 copies of an LP and after months sold 80, they could return the surplus 20 and get refunded.
Each LP had an order number with a letter(s) prefix, like LPM, LSP, CAL, CAS, LOC and each letter prefix indicated the standard price for that range.
There was the monthly Schwann catalogue listing all these prefixes and related price tag plus a list of new releases in all fields, pop, jazz, classical, etcetera.
If after a while the record company wanted to clear their stock i.e. titles were deleted from the catalogue, they punched a hole through sleeve and record, the so-called "cut out". Recordshops could buy these LP"s at a bargain price but did not have the opportunity to return unsold stock.
You guess right, the cut-out was to make sure the record company did not get the records back and refund anything, let alone the full price.
Since all stock LP's in shops were sealed I doubt anyone could insert a photo.
I may have mentioned before, the records I used to buy were not sealed. You could slide the LP out and have a look at the condition before buying. I don't know when this sealing business came in.
l
Since the fabrication of LP's this happened in the USA. Outside the USA LP's were not sealed,except special releases that were sold in magazines/bookshops in The Netherlands (and perhaps other West-European countries).
These shops each week received an x number of weekly or monthly magazines, which if unsold at the end of the week or month could be returned for a refund.
One of those magazines started to release LP's that were sold at a nice price but mainly contained old hits of the artist concerned.
Later on other magazines followed and when the copyright for recordings from 1956 expired in 1982 everybody could release LP's. That is where all those "Danish" rock and roll picture discs came from. The copyright was expired in Denmark, but not in The Netherlands. But hey, it is legal to import!
(when in fact they were not pressed in Denmark as stated, but in The Netherlands, although the composer's rights were paid in Denmark.
An artist like Shakin' Stevens gets mad when he sees a "Danish" or "Swiss" release of his recordings as Shakin' Stevens &The Sunsets offered for sale on eBay, even though according to European law these release were legitime.
The flood of Elvis releases was halted when Priscilla Presley and BMG Germany (RCA) filed a lawsuit and won. The copyright was extended to 70 years after the death of the artist. So now the market is swamped with multiple CD boxes for peanuts of dead jazz artists from the 1940's and earlier.