Regarding the QRS rolls made for Ed Archambault (a huge business, still
in operation).

Note how "La Gamme et L'Amour" is numbered PB 6427, and the copyright is
ascribed to Paul Beuscher, hence the prefix is the publisher's initials.
Which prompts these musings…

France regarded rolls as equivalent to sheet music; rolls made by the
dominant maker L'EMP were sold under the name of a piece's publisher
(e.g. Francis Salabert) rather than the roll maker. These roll numbers
are always prefixed by the two letters of the composer's name. So the
Archimbault roll is a bit different. I wonder if at some point they
imported rolls from France for the Quebecois market?

Canadian copyright is an amalgam of British and American concepts with
some French, too. Unlike American law, Canada's 1921 legislation followed
the Berne convention with automatic copyright; no need to use the
copyright symbol, for instance. American piano-roll copyright at the time
used ASCAP rules that required the publisher and publication copyright
date on roll labels, but not the composer's name. The law that covered
Archimbault's rolls would have been Canadian, even if the roll made by
QRS followed its usual label layout.

Interestingly, the Canadian legislation initially fixed the mechanical
rights payments to two cents per flat playing side and presumably
dictated the payment for rolls.

Julian Dyer