Monker wrote:Well, motivation was not the question.
The comment was made that Styx should remaster this and that. The question is that is it not labels who remaster and release albums?
Your answer is that it is up to whoever 'owns' the master tapes...and if the band can, and is willing, to pay for their use, along with paying for somebody to 'remaster' them, and pay to have it packaged, and pay to have it distributed. I doubt very much that Styx would be willing to pay so much to do this on their own.
Sometimes it's a shared decision. Look at Genesis - they own their masters, but they needed Virgin in the UK and Atlantic here in North America to put them out. That happened twice. First, the mid-90s remasters I believe Genesis did (Nick Davis did the mastering). The recent emixed box sets that came out were initiated by Genesis but they had to acquiesce to record label demands to a degree because of the overall costs involved of packaging and such.
In the case of Styx, Uni/A&M do own the masters so they can control what is put out, but I'd have to check - I think Styx does have some say/approval in some of the releases. When the GI Deluxe Edition was bandied about, the rumor was the band nixed the bonus material. They have some influence come to think of it because Dennis had "While There's Still Time" pulled from the samplers and GH2. So with Styx - at least as of the mid-90s - it's not cut and dry.
Styx, unlike Genesis or Peter Gabriel (both of whom own their own masters), has never stated anywhere to my recollection they wanted that control. It is a game of economics, and I don't think they (or Dennis) care about spending that money to have total control over the catalog.
Like I've said many times, I've talked to people on the record company side of the fence and they have no interest at this point of issuing formal remasters. That's why they're doing things like licensing to Audio Fidelity.
