Who owns the music?

[Kurt Graber]

Maybe this topic has come up before but for some of us that don't know. Who owns the rights of the music for example all the LLoyd green albums on the "monument" label. I realize a lot of this stuff might have been destroyed in a fire at Bradleys barn?? years ago. The grapevine says that this stuff is never going to be released on CD, and I'm talking about tons of albums etc...I know that Tom Bradshaw bought the rights to some of these old recordings and released them in a cassette format years ago. If the masters are available, who owns them and what kind of pricetag is on them. My point here is not for monetary value it is for preserving good music and keeping it available in some sort of Digital Format. I cringe everytime I hear the scratches and such on some of my old steel records that I would love to have in a modern digital format CD. I constantly see ads for Professionally made CDs for a very reasonable price. With modern updated recording and mixing gear that is now affordable by basically anyone who has the desire to own it, I believe a professionally made CD could be made very cheaply. Obviously if it were this easy somebody would have legally converted all of the old steel records already. I would just like to know who has some knowledge here of the costs involved etc....And maybe the power of a group of people instead of one(example- Tom Bradshaw) could purchase the rights and rerelease more of this stuff. An easy response to this would be "It would be to expensive, and nobody would purchase enough to subsidize the cost", well what is the cost, and where are the goods???