Germanofon

Back in the early 1990s when independent CD releases and reissues were still in their infancy, a mysterious "import" label appeared on the lists of UK distributors called Germanofon. From the get go it was obviously an unofficial "bootleg" label, and quite patently nearly all sourced from second hand, sometimes well-worn vinyl. But as these were largely rarities and never reissued on CD before they were welcomed by punters as a stop-gap, a way to hear some classic old Krautrock only otherwise available as hard to locate or pricey vinyl.

Here I'll hand over to an earlier Discogs profile for the label...
"In 1994-1995 Germanofon, who claimed to be based in Luxembourg, managed to get their CDs into many normally respectable music retailers, both brick and mortar and online, who normally would never deal with bootlegs. In reality the Germanofon pressings were bootleg and were invariably mastered from vinyl. Sound quality was highly variable, with some releases sounding fairly good while others were transcriptions of old, severely worn LPs replete with surface noise and distortion."

All quite true, which concurs with my own writing in "The Crack In The Cosmic Egg" (Krautrock Encyclopedia, CD-Rom version)...
A CD reissue label that appeared in the 1990's of dubious legality, reputedly from Luxembourg, and operating via distributors in Southern and England. The majority of their releases bear no label name. Most Germanofon CD's are mastered from LP records or cassettes. At Ultima Thule we were always reluctant to stock these, as many were rather dodgy, yet they did fill a big hole in the market at the time, and they unearthed some unknown classic rarities.
To which was added...
According to Second Battle's site, in December 1997 "GERMANOFON announces by letter, that the company is going to retreat from the CD market in 1998, but not without expressing words of thanks for the good cooperation with its worldwide customers. No further comment."

In 2015 a few Germanofon discs have still not seen official reissue as yet, like the early Kraftwerk releases and few Brain label titles.

A few interesting points about Germanofon...
Early releases had GEMA as rights society, although Germanofon was never ed with GEMA (not on their database at all).
Other identifiers like OSA, ACD, TSP were on some discs looking like rights societies. We can be sure that OSA here has nothing to do with the Czech rights society, and neither ACD nor TSP correspond with any other label on Discogs. After many lengthy discussions in the Discogs forums it was agreed that all these releases (excepting the related HF label) should be identified as Germanofon. Still, people keep listing things wrongly and duplicate entries because of the scant info on some of these releases.

I'd still love to know who Germanofon were and where they really came from. In fact, were all these titles released by the same people? It would seem that 941001 to 941024 were. 941031 plus were much more "ad hoc" (sometimes featuring cheaply done computer graphics not on the originals). A few releases were of reasonably good quality, like the Kraftwerk titles which sounded tons better than those from other unofficial labels like Crown. A couple even had special custom made packaging, like the debut by Birth Control in a circular pill box and 18 Karat Gold in a golden silk-screened jewel case (curiously Lothar Meid told me that he quite liked it and thought it sounded better than the LP), yet many were well-shoddy like the badly distorted Satin Whale "Desert Places" and Release Music Orchestra's "Life" both still awaiting official reissue as I write this. Anyway, whoever they were, they certainly had a wide-ranging taste with releases ranging from Krautrock classics through to the pretty dire, plus a few not German items like Ruphus albums (Norwegian band), and Swiss artists, including the still mega-rare Düde Dürst "Krokodil Solo".

We maybe have an answer here: https://www.discogs.sitioby.com/forum/thread/714919

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original matrix data of the first 50 Germanofon on Discogs:
941000 Kraftwerk ~ Organisation ‎– Tone Float: 940.000 ✳1
941001 Kraftwerk ‎– Kraftwerk: 40602 ✳ KRAFTWERK CD1 ✳1
941002 Kraftwerk ‎– Kraftwerk 2: 40602 ✳ KRAFTWERK CD-2 ✳1
941003 Tanned Leather ‎– Child Of Never Ending Love: 40701 ✳ 941.003 ✳1
941004 Sixty Nine ‎– Live!: 40701 ✳ 941.004 ✳1
941005 Sitting Bull ‎– Trip Away: 407?? ✳ 941.005 ✳1
941006 Emergency (6) ‎– Get Out To The Country: 40712 ✳ 941.006 ✳1
941007 Birth Control - Birth Control: not correctly entered yet
941008 Epitaph (2) ‎– Outside The Law: 407?? ✳ 941.008 ✳1
941009 Gift (5) ‎– Blue Apple: 40714 ✳ 941.009 ✳1
941010 Satin Whale ‎– Desert Places: 40718 ✳ 941.010 ✳1
941011 Drosselbart ‎– Drosselbart: 407?? ✳ 941.011 ✳?
941012 Brainstorm (9) ‎– Smile A While: 407?? ✳ 941.012 ✳1
941013 Gash (3) ‎– A Young Man's Gash: 40728 ✳ 941.013 ✳1
941014 Emergency (6) ‎– No Compromise: 40728 ✳ 941.014 ✳1
941015 Harmonia ‎– Musik Von Harmonia: 40728 ✳ 941.015 ✳1
941016 Rufus Zuphall ‎– Phallobst: 40729 ✳ 941.016 ✳2
941017 Eulenspygel ‎– Ausschuß: 40729 ✳ 941.017 ✳2
941018 Sixty Nine ‎– Circle Of The Crayfish: 40802 ✳ 941.018 ✳1
941019 Abacus (3) ‎– Midway: 40802 ✳ 941.019 ✳1
941020 Amos Key ‎– First Key: 40803 ✳ 941.020 ✳1
941021 Harmonia ‎– Deluxe: 41020 ✳ 941.021 ✳2
941022 Krokodil ‎– An Invisible World Revealed: 40803 ✳ 941.022 ✳2
941023 Kraftwerk ‎– Ralf & Florian: 40718 ✳ 941.023 ✳1
941024 Curly Curve ‎– Curly Curve: 110784 ✳ 941.024 ✳1 - prefix seems wrong
941025 Neu! ‎– Neu!: 41020 ✳ 941.025 ✳1
941026 Neu! ‎– Neu! 2: 41020 * 941.026 *1
941027 Cluster* ‎– Cluster: 4???? ✳ 941.027 ✳?
941028 Cluster ‎– Cluster II: 4???? ✳ 941.028 ✳?
941029 Cluster ‎– Zuckerzeit: 4???? ✳ 941.028 ✳?
941030 Neu! ‎– Neu! '75: 41020 ✳ 941.030 ✳1
941031 Gila (2) ‎– Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: 4???? ✳ 941.031 ✳?
941032 Sperrmüll ‎– Sperrmüll: 41??? ✳ 941.032 ✳?
941033 Electric Sandwich ‎– Electric Sandwich: 41??? ✳ 941.033 ✳?
941034 Epsilon (4) ‎– Epsilon Off: 41107 ✳ 941.034 ✳1
941035 Highdelberg ‎– Highdelberg: ????? ✳ 941?035 ✳?
941036 Satin Whale ‎– Lost Mankind: ????? ✳ 941?036 ✳?
941037 18 Karat Gold - All-Bumm: ????? ✳ 941?037 ✳?
941038 Missus Beastly - Missus Beastly: ????? ✳ 941?038 ✳?
941039 Niagara - S.U.B.: ????? ✳ 941?039 ✳?
941040 Sinto - Right On Brother: 50209 ✳ 941040 ✳1
941041 Sweet Smoke ‎– Darkness To Light: 50??? ✳ 941?041 ✳?
941042 Limbus 3 ‎– New-Atlantis: 50??? ✳ 941?042 ✳?
941043 Release Music Orchestra ‎– Life: 50216 ✳ 941043 ✳1
941044 Creative Rock ‎– Lady Pig: 50221 ✳ 941.044 ✳1
941045 Second Life ‎- Second Life:‎ 50??? ✳ 941?045 ✳?
941046 Düde Dürst ‎– Krokodil Solo: ??????
941047 Creative Rock - Gorilla: 941047
941048 Xhol ‎– Motherfuckers GmbH & Co KG: 941048
941049 Thirsty Moon ‎– Thirsty Moon: 941049 ?
941050 Asterix (6) ‎– Asterix: 941050

If you can fill-in the missing ? data, please do and message me too.