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Down with re-release artists

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benn600:
I just have to proclaim my sincere disrespect and disgust for artists who re-release albums.  There are many I can think of off hand but I won't bother naming them.  My definition of breaching this rule is releasing a CD--typically a quite popular album--and then re-releasing the same album as a deluxe or expanded edition with 2 - 6 more tracks.

This causes me great pain and diminishes my appreciation for the artist.  This disappointment can easily extend to include greatest hits albums with a new track or two.  Then, we are buying the whole CD for very little real benefit.

On the other hand, I have a few top-favorite artists who have never fallen down this pit.  Greatest hits albums have their place but they should not include new material.  It's defeating the purpose of the title of the CD.

A big time artist recently did this and I mistakenly stumbled onto the Facebook fan page for the re-release.  Total disgust.  Everyone was commenting how awesome it was to get more music by the artist.  In this case, it's also a laziness on the artist's part.  They may have already been recorded from the previous session.  It's destroying the "album" mentality.  Clutters up libraries.  Wasted purchases.

It is merely an excuse to pump more content into the world of music without constructing a full-length album of great new material.  A quick sale of a few cheap tracks.  Of course it works well for those who download tracks one at a time.

I think music is losing some of its power held several years back.  Lastly, I am so incredibly sick of hearing people get sick of songs because they were overplayed on the radio.

That's my rant for the next few months.

newsposter:
"looks like I'm going to have to buy the White Album again....."

Agent K, MiB

jkrzok:
I don't mind getting the Beatles' re-releases; the sound quality is sufficiently improved to make them worth it. And they waited 20 years. Some bands, like the Stones, do remasters every few years it seems.

That said, I don't care for remastered releases in general. My question is always "Why didn't they master them right in the first place?" Perhaps technological advances can account for some of the need but when a 2 or 3 year old album is remastered some shenanigans must be going on.

And I absolutely loath "deluxe" albums coming out some few months after the original release. If the songs weren't good enough to make the first release then why bother. Or perhaps they weren't really finished with the first release? No, it's all about squeezing dollars from the fans. We no longer wear out our recordings so they find other ways to buy the same music over and over again.

Daydream:
From my experience there are 2 reasons for this:

1) The album wasn't initially mastered through a full digital chain (I have CDs till very late 80's that came out as AAD) so for quality and / or to take advantage of the new technology albums get re-released. These may be worth it if the upgrade is real or one should stay the hell away from them if they experience the compression level of today mastering (thank you I'll stick with my analog processed release from the '80's)

2) Second reason - pure economics, micro, macro and anything in between. Albums have a certain shelf life, after that they go out of print (entirely or just in certain markets). To still generate interest in the material new editions are mastered (completists welcome to your deluxe editions) or - the ones I hate the most - here come your Greatest Hits edtions. When the Greatest Hits run out of print we're invited to a new Greatest Hits wave, slightly different than the first and so on. I'm a devoted fan of a certain band, but as much as I like them for decades now, the joke is that there will be at some point a release of "The Best Of The Greatest Hits"!

Going back to create some more custom fields to deal with the madness...

dcwebman:
This doesn't bother me too much anymore since I can do the download of those new tracks like you said. I'd rather do that and get more from that artist than do without. What bothers me more is artists that put out a U.S. version, then release it say in the U.K. with an additional song, then somewhere else with another song, etc. Trying to get all those additional songs to make one complete album is costly because usually you can't download those different versions.

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