As promised some time back, GagaFrontRow can now offer an update on the Brazilian promo releases of Lady Gaga music that have been puzzling collectors for some time now. As things stand now, there is no conclusive answer yet, if ever there will be, if these releases are official or unauthorized, but a few observations can be useful.
The issue of the Brazilian promos has been addressed with GagaFrontRow by email with Philip Nash, the author of an excellent article on collecting Gaga music for Record Collector (you can read it
here). In his article, Nash included the Mexican promo release of Beautiful Dirty Rich, so that some of us concluded that the Mexican as well as the Brazilian releases are official. Yet, while Nash did not contact an office of Universal, he thought that the promos were "probably official". Nash suggests it is possible in some countries that covers are used from the internet and even that non-official remixes are used on official promo editions, because "in more obscure territories it's pretty easy for someone junior at the record company in that country to put out promos. The person that did the Boys one in [Mexico maybe] just took the artwork for it from [the internet]... The same probably applies to the unauthorised use of remixes." (quotes from email to GagaFrontRow). In other words, even promo editions with non-official remixes can still be official releases, especially when they come from outside the United States, Europe, Japan and other regions better known to release music.
Also affecting the Brazilian promos as well as many other promo releases is that some of them are very easy to reproduce. Unlike promo releases that are clearly official (typically because of their high-quality printing), promos on CDR with very minimal artwork can be easily reproduced. In fact, any CD release can become subject to bootlegging or counterfeiting. Apart from obviously official promo editions (and likewise obviously unauthorized bootlegs), that means that some releases nowadays can no longer readily be classified as either official or unauthorized releases. Some items in the GagaFrontRow collection have therefore been labeled as 'possible' or 'probable' bootlegs, based on best available information. This condition affects various recent promos popping up on eBay, especially those recently issued in France and the UK. Among the dubious examples that have most recently been on eBay are bootleg copies of a
Boys Boys Boys promo, a
Monster promo with fan mixes, and demos of songs from The Fame that were never released as singles, such as
Money Honey. Also note that some of the sellers who specialize in bootlegs (
jkmusicbrazil and
ricrj75 for Brazil) also sell legitimate releases, which further complicates matters.
If you have useful information on this matter or a related collection item, let me know so that I can update this post and the
Collecting Gaga page accordingly.
Also see earlier related posts on
boots and eBay
scams.
