Super Expanded Ultimate Deluxe Edition

Rudie

OK gang - tell me if I'm just being a cranky old man (but please do it nicely - I'm a very sensitive soul!). This is just one recent example of a band releasing a Deluxe Edition of a fairly recent album. I'm not so concerned by the video content on this one, but I hate it when they add extra music. It seems to me that this is happening more regularly, with relatively recent release being repackaged. I don't mind it when an album is 30 years old and they expand it (although it's usually unnecessary), but why should I be "penalized" for buying an album when it comes out and then it gets expanded a year down the road with extra music? Just venting...

If you don't agree with me, all I can say is "Hey you kids, get off my lawn!"

choiceweb0pen0

Considering it hasn't even been a year since The Suburbs came out, I don't think you're being too cranky. If we could add another annoying feature is bonus content to entice you to preorder and to pony up extra money for said content.

Bad Thoughts

I sympathize. Suburbs isn't yet a year old? It seems silly to begin the process of archiving its construction. Most albums don't get better because of the added material. If the individual songs were left off, they usually found their way to later albums. Buying expanded albums from eMu makes the process of expanding albums particularly perverse.

thomnottom

It's still a step up from when companies announce the deluxe editions a couple weeks after the original release. This used to happen a lot with DVDs.

Personally I don't think they should be doing expanded editions for at least 5-10 years, although I'll make the exception if it's a bundle that includes material available separately. Like assuming that this one will just be The Suburbs CD as it is now with the DVD as a second disc which can also be purchased on its own. I remember Moby doing this with Play, where it was "reissued" maybe a year later with a remix compilation.

BigD-Bluez

There used to be an old lady in my neighborhood who would hang out the window and scream at everybody, especially kids, "Get outta here! Get the hell outta here!" The more years go by the closer I get to actually understanding this behavior, and I feel absolutely the same about super deluxe - it's like they're doing it just to f**k with us. What were we, chopped liver the first time around?

Germanprof

I agree. It is just a transparent mechanism for getting a certain subset of the customer base to buy the same thing twice, and making me feel manipulated is not in the same psychological ballpark as making me like good music. (I wonder if it was ever also in some way a response to the market in used CDs, as it immediately devalues used copies of the initial release and refocuses attention on new copies distributed by the label.)
What I also hate is bands bringing out "greatest hits" compilations and then adding two new songs that almost never stand up to the quality level of the collected material (if it were that easy to just go write two new songs that are as good as the best few songs of your career, every band would be releasing smash hit new albums) and are there just to make the core fans buy the collection of songs they already own.
(This springs to mind. The live version of Over my Head is worthwhile but the other new tracks were meaningless dross compared to the collected material.)

For me the deluxe version becomes attractive when it is over a decade old and gives me a load of new material (e.g. live cuts etc) that sweeten the deal of repurchasing something on CD that I once owned on vinyl, making it feel less like a repeat purchase. like this, for instance

Kenny

The National has done it with their last three albums, but they tend to offer the new material for free to those who bought the original. I have four copies of High Violet, so the marketing is working on me. I happily paid for it each time.

ScissorMan

Generally speaking, I also refuse to support this sort of thing, not even to replace vinyl. I've bought box-sets by the Auteurs, Magazine, Nick Drake, Robyn Hitchcock, and of course XTC, but most of that was stuff I didn't already have (at least in non-bootleg form). I've also bought "remastered" versions of CD's that I already had by XTC, but well, that was XTC, wasn't it? To be honest though, these days I rarely buy CDs at all...

The only two exceptions (other than XTC) that I can think of at the moment are Absolute, the Garbage best-of which (IIRC) had a DVD included, and the 5.1 DVD-Audio remix of the Talking Heads' Fear of Music, one of my favorite albums from the New-Wave era, which I bought mostly because I'd just set up my first (and so far, only) 5.1 system at home - and the only version I had was on vinyl. The remix was really well-done, and there were some other extras too (including the stereo version on a separate disc), so I didn't feel ripped off or anything.

I have a great deal of sympathy for bands who are hurting financially because of lousy contracts and shoddy marketing, even if they do occasionally feel compelled to take advantage of the "completist impulse" among their existing fan-base. But y'know, not all of them are hurting because of lousy contracts, if you know what I'm sayin'. And I figure my cats and I probably need the money as much as they do.

Bad Thoughts

I think it should also be noted that by an artist's third album, there doesn't tend to be much wasted potential. They already have a good sense of how to work in the studio, who to work with producers and company men, and what material deserves to be worked on. I often find that the expanded versions of later albums to be filled up with useless material that needn't see the light of day or with live cuts from arena concerts.

jonahpwll

P picked up a couple of those deluxe editions on my old BMG account. One for Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On?" and the other for Tears for Fears "Songs from the Big Chair". Both had alternate takes that were decent stand-alones and live tracks that made the "b" disc worth listening to.

There was a Radiohead one (or two) that I am interested in, and I'll likely one day get the expanded Spiritualized "Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space", though what I've heard of that, my purchase will be more of my love affair with the album than any real additional quality content that it adds.

amclark2

I hate any extra songs tacked on an album, whether it's a re-issue or a super deluxe or whatever. To me it ruins the integrity of the album. On the other hand I love rarities collections and ep's. I can't understand why bands don't put the extras on a rarities collection or ep. Why give it away for free? It may not have huge selling potential, but, to use Kenny as an example, if the extra songs were on a National ep or 7" instead of an album, he'd probably still by that. But I might also by it, where I'd never ever by another copy of the original album to get the extra songs.

The Beatles never put extras on their disks, and look at the killing they were able to make on their rarities collections. Of course not everybody's the Beatles.

And but if you really feel the need to give the extra stuff away, please put it on a separate disk. It'll cost you all of $.02, and then I can listen to the album the way you meant it to be. Or give a download code for the extras.