While libraries and archives are highly visible in discussions of preservation of and access to cultural heritage, providing widespread access to sound recordings has not historically been a major part of their mission. As a result, many forms of popular or commercial music were, and remain, unevenly collected. Access to popular musical heritage, for most people, has been accomplished instead through the marketplace. The radio and record industries were the primary means through which much of the world experienced popular music culture for most of the twentieth century, though they face new competitors in the twenty-first via digital distribution channels. Record labels, however, generally only kept materials in print based on economic demand; furthermore, smaller independent record labels routinely went out of business, and if their holdings were acquired by a larger company, reissue of the bulk of the defunct company’s discography may not have been economically justifiable. Out-of-print recordings, for which a small but dedicated set of enthusiasts remained, thus often remained unavailable, except via second-hand sales in possibly obsolete physical formats.
The duty of providing access to such recordings has instead often been carried out by reissue record labels – third-party commercial institutions that license recordings (or issue public-domain recordings) which are no longer kept in print by their original rights holders. These labels have kept niche genres accessible to new generations, and are often run by devotees who are motivated by aesthetic concerns and who operate on slim profit margins due to the special-interest nature of their offerings. Indeed, for some older recordings, such as pre-World War II cylinders and 78rpm discs, it was only the work of assiduous private collectors that ensured the survival of many recordings. The role of reissue labels is one which attracts very little attention, either from academics or from the access and preservation communities, but which deserves further examination.
Systematic collection of commercial recordings remains rare in library and archival collecting, perhaps a legacy of the longstanding belief that popular cultures are less worthy of consideration than serious cultures (though some excellent national and institutional sound archives now exist for older and rare recordings). Even less common among institutional collecting are bootlegs and mixtapes, rarely given a second thought even by private collectors and sometimes legally troublesome. Yet far from spurning them on account of their copyright-defying status, libraries and archives should, rather, begin endeavouring to collect such records, as evidence of cultural practices surrounding what Barry Kernfeld calls “disobedient music distribution”.
Heritage institutions have much to benefit from recognizing the contributions of reissue labels to audio accessibility. The potential for symbiotic partnerships exists, in that reissuers make it easier for institutions to acquire desirable recordings for collections, and in turn, libraries and archives could look to reissuers as a conduit for negotiating wider access to their holdings. Furthermore, reissue labels and cultural institutions might become partners in attempts to change copyright laws for the benefit of greater access, especially in the realm of orphan works legislation.