Record labels forgot these songs existed. One man rescued them

Twenty years in the past, your music assortment consisted of no matter CDs or information you might cram into your bed room.

Now, anybody with an web connection has entry to extra music than they may take heed to in a single lifetime.

In October 2022, Apple Music boasted its catalogue had reached 100 million songs. Since then, a median of 120,000 new songs have been uploaded on daily basis, making the present whole round 176 million tracks.

But right here’s the factor: There are nonetheless enormous gaps.

You can’t stream Ray Charles’ 1977 album True To Life.

Charli XCX’s debut single, !Franchesckaar! has been swallowed by the digital void.

Most necessary of all, there is no technique to hear 1993’s Christmas primary: Mr Blobby by Mr Blobby.

In reality, one survey by the US Library of Congress advised that lower than 20% of all recorded music was out there on the web.

Sometimes, these recordings are tied up in advanced contractual agreements. De La Soul spent twenty years clearing the samples on their landmark debut album, 3 Feet High And Rising, earlier than it lastly arrived on streaming companies final 12 months.

But a whole bunch of different songs have merely been forgotten.

That’s the place Rob Johnson is available in.

By day, he is a 41-year-old working in enterprise growth for a London legislation agency. By night time, he’s a music business crusader – digging up obscure gems and persuading report labels to make them out there on-line.

Over the final six years, he’s been chargeable for 725 releases, together with tracks by Sting, Cher and Annie Lennox, with a powerful bias for late 90s pop acts resembling Billie Piper, S Club and A*Teens.

“I’ll admit it’s a really unusual factor to do, but it surely offers folks lots of happiness so why not?” he tells the BBC.

It all began in 2016, when he helped his buddy Jan Johnston – a trance vocalist who’s labored with Paul Oakenfold – to get her catalogue on-line.

“Plenty of her solo music wasn’t on the market, just because it was by no means an enormous hit for the labels,” he remembers.

“So I mentioned to her, ‘OK, this can be a hare-brained scheme, however why do not we contact them and ask them a) do you continue to personal it and b) are you able to launch it?’”

With no business expertise, Johnson merely referred to as the switchboards of the UK’s largest report corporations.

“I hate speaking to strangers on the telephone, however finally I obtained via to the precise folks they usually have been like, ‘Yes, we’ll fortunately put that out’.”

In passing, he advised to Warner Records that they add a few of Louise Redknapp’s outdated albums, to capitalise on her look on Strictly Come Dancing.

“Good spot,” was the reply.

That’s when he realised this might develop into a full-time passion.

“I had a bit little bit of momentum, so I obtained bullish and thought, ‘Why don’t I simply ask them to launch extra?’”

To persuade the labels, he needed to show there was a requirement – so he arrange a Twitter account the place followers may make requests, calling it Pop Music Activism.

Almost instantly, he was flooded with messages about Victoria Beckham’s debut single, Out Of Your Mind.

“It was slated on the time, however lots of pop followers regarded again retrospectively and thought, ‘That was a little bit of a enjoyable bop’,” says Johnson.

After a number of calls, he obtained it uploaded in June 2018, since when it’s amassed 1.8 million streams on Spotify alone.

“The response was fairly enjoyable,” he says. “You understand how gays will be excessive? They have been like ‘Oh my God, this has saved my life!’

“And it occurred throughout Pride month, which was a pleasant little cherry on the cake.”

Rescuing songs takes lots of work. Contracts need to be checked, authentic recordings need to be sourced, and streaming companies require reams of metadata.

But when it really works, artists are thrilled.

“Rob’s unimaginable. What he’s performed for me, I’d do something for him,” says Maria Nayler.

Known for singing Robert Miles’ 1996 hit One And One, Nayler’s story is a basic story of music business misogyny.

After singing on dozens of trance anthems within the Nineties, she was signed to Kylie’s then-label, DeBuilding Records. But when the corporate discovered she was pregnant, it scrapped her debut album.

“They went, ‘We’re not releasing any information when you’re pregnant. It’s gone on the shelf till the newborn’s born.’

“Then, after all, 9 months down the road, nothing occurred.

“In this point in time, they’d all be slaughtered, however within the Nineties I simply accepted it.”

Johnson was a fan of Nayler’s single Naked and Sacred, and contacted her in 2018 to ask if she needed assist liberating her unreleased materials.

“I used to be a bit like, ‘Who is that this man?’,” she laughs, “however he knew extra about my music than I did.”

It was a tricky challenge. DeBuilding had been purchased by BMG, then acquired by Sony, and finally closed down. No-one was certain who owned Nayler’s grasp tapes.

“It was a nightmare,” she says. “No-one needed to speak to Rob.”

Out of choices, they despatched a blanket electronic mail to 75 folks at Sony. Within two minutes, the archive workforce replied and agreed to trace down the music.

Nayler’s album, She, was lastly launched in January 2023. Next month, she goes on tour with dance producer Robert Gillies, who has remixed Naked & Sacred for his subsequent single.

“After all these years and all that tough work, I simply really feel actually, actually completely satisfied,” she says.

It’s an analogous story for Alexis Strum, who was signed and dropped by two main report labels within the early 2000s.

She was left with two fully-completed albums, recorded at a value of £500,000, that have been by no means launched.

“Emotionally, it was enormous,” she says. “It’s like having a portray that no-one’s ever seen, or a e-book that no-one’s ever been allowed to learn.”

Some of her unreleased songs have been recorded by Kylie Minogue and Rachel Stevens, however a small group of devoted followers clamoured for the originals.

“Rob informed me folks had been exchanging my demo CDs on eBay,” she says. “I did not even know anybody knew about me!”

With his assist, Warner and Universal not solely handed over Strum’s masters, however agreed to write down off her money owed.

Her hottest music Cocoon lately hit 500,000 streams (“half one million greater than Universal thought it was going to have”) and, once we converse, she’s again within the studio.

“I’m a mum and I’ve been working in IT, so it is actually bizarre to be like, ‘I’m going to be a pop star’ once more.

“It feels so ridiculous that it is really believable.”

One one that’d relatively neglect their debut album, nonetheless, is Adam Rickitt.

The former Coronation Street actor signed a six-album take care of Polydor in 1999, hoping to develop into the UK’s subsequent teen idol.

“Let’s be sincere, I had little or no management over the inventive facet of it,” he laughs.

“They knew what viewers I used to be concentrating on, and it was the homosexual viewers, the pink pound, and younger teenage women.”

His first single, I Breathe Again, was an enormous hit, thanks primarily to a video the place he seems utterly within the buff, however when subsequent songs missed the highest 10, each Polydor and Rickitt misplaced curiosity.

His album, Good Time, stalled at quantity 41 and was, for years, unavailable on-line.

“I completely perceive why I’d have slipped via the online,” he laughs. “It’s not precisely like Burt Bacharach disappearing off the face of the earth.”

Unaware of Johnson’s marketing campaign to get the album resurrected, Rickitt was bemused when it sprung again to life in 2018.

“The album interval wasn’t my favorite but when folks nonetheless prefer it and discover it enjoyable, that’s cool. I’m proud of being the retro kitsch man,” he says.

“But taking me out of the equation, I do suppose it’s a disgrace that the report labels can resolve what songs folks can or can’t take heed to.”

Johnson says there’s nothing sinister about these choices. Catalogue groups with restricted sources are clearly going to gravitate in direction of confirmed hit songs.

Still, there are blind spots. For a very long time, NSync’s single Girlfriend was “greyed out” on Spotify – with the label apparently unaware that the freely-available album model wasn’t the identical because the hit remix with Nelly and the Neptunes.

“I picked that one up with Sony US and now that’s getting hundreds of thousands of streams,” says Johnson

It takes a fan to identify these items. And Johnson, who devotes “two to 4 hours per week” to his challenge, has simply the right combination of ardour and affability to nudge labels in the precise route.

“It makes followers completely satisfied and it offers artists a way of closure,” he says, “but it surely’s additionally a approach of cataloguing music for historical past.

“Whatever is on Spotify now will migrate onto the companies we’ll be utilizing in 10 years, whether or not that’s a chip in our head, or no matter.”