This Year's This Year's Model
So, another year, another edition of Costello's "This Year's Model." I have already bought this album four times: on vinyl, the first cd issue (which was badly mastered), the first cd reissue (i.e. the "extended play" series with a handful of extra tracks) and, finally, what I was told was the definitive 2cd edition (which is fantastic.)
This week, however, sees the release of the "deluxe" edition - featuring more previously unreleased material - a live set from the time the album was recorded. I won't be buying this edition. I don't want to help to generate decent sales which may lead to more "deluxe" editions being released of albums I have already bought three or four times.
I have just read that there is to be a 40th anniversary edition of Love's "Forever Changes." A double cd edition coming just a few years after the remastered expanded edition, which itself followed the bog standard cd release.
If you really want to see how reissues should be handled, check out the re-releases of the albums by underated 90's indie band, Cud. Their albums have been deleted for years and fetch silly prices on ebay. They are being remastered and released with bags of great unreleased tracks, wonderfully informative liner notes and they cost about seven pounds each when bought online.
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Where do they keep finding new stuff to put on these re-re-re-releases when it's already claimed that the previous 2 or 3 versions were definitive and there's nothing else to release. Surely the bottom of the barrel has been well and truely scraped this time.
Elvis Costello on deluxe editions in the current Word:
'...but they're so frighteningly expensive. I think they've been short sighted....but those records are not going to sell at those prices and they need to rethink the way they're doing it, but I can't persuade them to do so because they have there own agenda and they're busy cost-cutting.'
Trade in
You should be able to take back your earlier versions and get a part exchange. You've paid for the songs any number of times, so a sizeable discount seems to be wholly reasonable.
You don't need to tell me that this is cloud cuckoo land. But as the people who purchase and re-purchase are likely to be the hard core fans who have also paid to see the gigs and bought the t-shirt a bit of payback instead of more fleecing is the least these people could do.
I also note the increasing tendency......
.....of i-tunes (or more likely the label with spondulicks to gather)to make the new extras "album only" to disallow picking off only the new bits. Shameful behavoiour.
The "two new tracks with the Greatest Hits"
is the most blatant and shameful rip-off perpetrated by record companies. Deliberately designed to exploit the loyalty of the most loyal fans and make them re-buy stuff they already have. Record companies have been ripping off both artists and consumers for years and I'm delighted to see them going to down the drain.