I was inventorying some older titles this evening and came across an issue I'd like to get some feedback on from my fellow collectors...

I'm looking at 3 discs from an '80s rock band, all "domestic" versions purchased in local record shops. The packaging and liner notes were printed in the U.S., but the discs themselves were manufactured in West Germany.

How would you classify these with regards to country of origin - are they U.S. or German?

Those are likely "Target" cd's from the dawn of the cd age. I personally consider them USA editions, they were made in Germany because USA manufacturing capacity wasn't yet in full screen, but released in the USA. Some collectors consider those cd's sonically superior & some of them (especially the WEA issues with the colored Matte finish) sell for a TON on ebay.

If the CDs were produced primarily for the American market, I'd classify them as American releases that happened to be pressed in Germany. If memory serves me right, in the early days of CDs there were very few CD manufacturing plants around the world, and many "domestic" US CDs were actually made overseas.

Even today, with domestic DVDs you see notes that the discs were made in Mexico, or Canada, or elsewhere.

Most of the early US cd releases were either pressed in Germany or Japan.

Geoff, excuse my ignorance but what does the WEA stand for ? Obviously Warner European something...
I ask because I have seen these advertised in various selling sites on the web.
Are WEA issues really credited as having better sound than the standard Warner pressings ?

I use WEA to stand for Warner/Elektra/Asylum, for years the 3 main label affiliations under the WB umbrella.

Yes, that's what I meant. Sorry for the industry lingo.

Or Warner/Elektra/Atlantic, I think.

I believe it's Warner-Elektra-Asylum

Once again, Wikipedia saves the day:

WMG's roots in what became Time Warner date back to the founding of Warner Bros. Records as a division of the Warner Bros. movie studio in 1958, in reaction to one of its contracted actors, Tab Hunter scoring a hit for Dot Records, a division of Paramount Pictures. In 1963, Warner Bros. purchased Reprise Records, founded by Frank Sinatra 3 years earlier so that he could have more creative control over his recordings. Reprise was operated in conjunction with WBR.

After Warner Bros. was sold to Seven Arts Productions in 1967 (forming Warner Bros.-Seven Arts), it purchased Atlantic Records, now WMG's oldest label. For the next 2 years, Atlantic and its subsidiary label Atco Records were operated separately from WBR and Reprise.

In 1969, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts was sold to the Kinney National Company. Kinney (later to be known as Warner Communications) combined the operations of all of its record labels. The following year, Kinney bought Elektra Records and its sister label Nonesuch Records, and assembled the labels into a group known as Warner-Elektra-Atlantic, also called WEA for short, or Warner Music Group. The WEA name was also used as a label outside the U.S.

In the mid-1970s, WEA expanded by purchasing Asylum Records and Sire Records. The former was merged with Elektra to form Elektra-Asylum, though the separate names would still be used as well. The latter became a sublabel of WBR in the meanwhile.

So, it looks like WEA stood for Warner-Elektra-Atlantic even before the company acquired Asylum.

Not correct. Country of origin is the country of manufacture. If the disc is made in Germany for the US market, the coo is Germay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_of_origin

I disagree.

I think the problem here is that "country of origin" may not be the best phrase to use in this instance. Geff used the term "edition," and I think that -- or perhaps "release" -- is a better word to describe what we're really talking about. (Calijawn started this thread, though, so he can certainly correct me if I'm misunderstanding him.) If the disc was manufactured in another country but packaged and released here for domestic sale, I'd call that a US edition.

Think of all the items assembled and sold here in America, but with parts made in China. (Or, in the case of Mr. Roboto, with parts made in Japan.)

Thanks to everyone for their feedback. And yes, I meant "country of origin" more in the vein of "Which edition is this?" rather than the technical definition which Baba nailed nicely.

For now I've decided to label these as domestic issues with a footnote indicating the overseas disc manufacturing.

(Incidentally, the titles in question weren't infamous "targets" - good guess, though - but actually the first two Def Leppard albums.)

"For now I've decided to label these as domestic issues with a footnote indicating the overseas disc manufacturing."


Just to complicate things a little more, I thought I'd throw this in. Given the technicalities of country of origin and all the talk about the recent Billy Joel 30th anniversary edition of The Stranger, I decided to look at my old version of the Stranger cd.

I found in the small print on the booklet that the copyright, of course, belonged to CBS in NY (not Sony at the time) and that the "record" (as it states) was manufactured in Japan by Sony. But on the disc itself, at the bottom of the black ring around the label side is the note that the disc was manufactured in Austria!

I know the record companies were struggling in the 80s to keep up with demand. I'm guessing they were pressing as much as they could where ever they could, printing booklets as quickly as possible and "throwing it all together." I don't know if this was a CRC issue or not. If I recall, though, by the time they got around to CDs Columbia House was not putting the CRC mark or barcode on CBS product. The cover photograph looks like a third or fourth generation photo copy compared to the new 30th anniversary edition.

In my experience, the Austrian CBS issues were usually really imports.