Rip-offs

[purlieu]

Yeah, that's a very unusual move. Wouldn't happen nowadays, given just how much money labels seem to make from boxsets. I'm partial to a super deluxe edition myself, but do really dislike it when there's usually a fairly small amount of music that's exclusive to the box, especially when the box is limited edition. Very often this exclusive material isn't even available digitally, meaning - for example - literally the only legal way to get the remastered version of The Divine Comedy's long, long out of print Fanfare for the Comic Muse, related b-sides and outtakes is by forking out for a 24 disc boxset.

There's so much wrong with boxsets, though. I recently spotted an import version of The Beatles' Let It Be box that has the album, outtakes and Glyn Johns mix - everything other than the Let It Be EP of four alternate mixes - fit onto two CDs, packaged in a digipak. Ok, so it's missing four tracks and the 5.1 mixes, but it gives an idea of how the whole thing being a six disc boxset is a total waste of resources. Similarly, the Pink Floyd rarities boxes and booksets and often advertised as having a huge number of discs, despite all the BluRays being duplicated as DVDs. I can't help thinking anyone interested in forking out £300 for a boxset is the sort of person who will almost certainly have a BluRay player. A huge waste of plastic and ridiculous price increase in the process.

[DJ Bob Hoskins]

Oasis also deserve credit for releasing their CD singles on just one disc, each with the A-side and 3 B-sides. This was at the time when most of the popular bands (e.g. Blur, Pulp, Manics, Radiohead, U2, R.E.M. etc. etc.) released their singles as 2 seperately-sold CDs, usually with only 2 B-sides each, so you'd have to buy the A-side twice if you wanted all the B-sides. Always thought that was a total scam and I refused to buy into it.

I recall that at some point in the late '90s the BPI changed the rules in the UK to the effect that CD singles with more than 3 tracks became classed as EP's, and therefore no longer eligible for the singles chart. From that point on, even the Oasis CD singles were released with only 3 tracks instead of the customary 4.



I'm with you on the box set stuff in general. Typically I have only ever bought sets which get you the artist's entire back catalogue for less than it would cost to buy the individual releases (preferably with some nice artwork/packaging and some bonus material too). The Velvet Underground Peel Slowly & See and Joy Division Heart & Soul sets are good examples.

On a side note: Ever since Radiohead released In Rainbows in 2007, it has become customary for journalists to mention how pioneering the band's 'pay what you want' model was. To this day it irks me to read this, given that at the time I spent €60 on the 2LP + 2CD special edition because it was the only way to obtain the 2nd CD of extra tracks. I don't even own a turntable. Then I paid a further €120 or so for two tickets to the live tour which had been announced to coincide with the album release

So despite the 'free' album, I somehow ended up giving Radiohead more money in one week than I had to any of my favourite bands over the years up to that point. I suspect they are maybe not so much altruists as they are experts at parting me from my cash.

[Pauline Walnuts]

^^

[purlieu]

On the Radiohead front, who remembers last year's Kid A Mnesia double cassette for £60?

[DJ Bob Hoskins]

I suspect their accountant remembers it every time he/she takes a dump on the gold toilet in their Hawaiian holiday villa. If I recall correctly, the double cassette was the only format that contained all the bonus tracks.

On the plus side, they did create the excellent Radiohead Public Library where you can access everything they've ever released for free and in high quality, including digital copies of the all extra bits and bobs of artwork etc which came with the crazy-expensive special editions. Although it's a bit late for me considering I bought most of 'em already :(

[DJ Bob Hoskins]

^^

[Rich Uncle Skeleton]

On the Radiohead front, who remembers last year's Kid A Mnesia double cassette for £60?

Ha , took so long for them to shift all of those copies, hope that was a lesson to them. Love both those albums to bits but sixty quid for two cassettes, the newly put together 3rd thing and incomplete b-sides? Fuck right off.

Noticed ads for the merchandise popping up again on Facebook...looks like they're quite keen to get shot of all those tea sets and bed linen etc. but not lower the price...all moaning aside I got two very nice prints of the front and back covers of Kid A from that side. Still need to frame them.

If anyone was tempted by the hardback Kid Amnesia book but put off by the price, i think amazon might still be doing it for a tenner.

[holyzombiejesus]

R.E.M.
Chronic Town 12" EP - 40th Anniversary Edition
£30.99

[Sebastian Cobb]

I wonder what the price-per-unit is on tapes and lp's at different sizes of run?

Cos when you look at record prices and then see cassette release is only a couple of quid more than a bundle of mp3's it does boggle my mind given there's loads of shit that needs to be made to assemble a tape and then they have to record them all, sure they have industrial duplicators that do lots of them at once and at high-speed, but it's way more faff per unit than slamming two plates together between some plastic.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

R.E.M.
Chronic Town 12" EP - 40th Anniversary Edition
£30.99

love love love this record but yeah, absolutely not

[buzby]

I wonder what the price-per-unit is on tapes and lp's at different sizes of run?

Cos when you look at record prices and then see cassette release is only a couple of quid more than a bundle of mp3's it does boggle my mind given there's loads of shit that needs to be made to assemble a tape and then they have to record them all, sure they have industrial duplicators that do lots of them at once and at high-speed, but it's way more faff per unit than slamming two plates together between some plastic.

For mass run tape duplication they don't use duplicators, they use automated tape manufacturing machines that use large reels of tape and automatically splice them into empty shells (called C0s - a shell that only contains the reels and a short length of leader).


As for costs, For a single disc 8-track 180g LP with colour labels, colour inner sleeve and outer sleeve you are looking at about £3700 for 500 which includes vinyl mastering, laquer cutting and stamper production. For 1000 it's about £5400 and for 2000 it's about £8800

For 500 cassettes with full colour inlay and labels it about £1300.

[DJ Bob Hoskins]

What the fuck have they done to the cover art?



I know many R.E.M. fans are getting on a bit in years but it's a bit soon to be rolling out Large-print editions of the record sleeves. The original was perfect.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Cheers Buzby!

[Greg Torso]

Just found out a couple of Shizuka albums were posthumously released last year. Cool! Oh, vinyl only ～  no digital release. Sold out everywhere. One copy on discogs for £200. What's the fucking point you engineers of misery.

I hate Discogs!!! *shakes ailing fist at £150 copy of a record I bought for £5 in 1994*

[holyzombiejesus]

Andy Bell (the Hurricane #1/ Oasis one) clearly didn't make enough money from selling his soul to The Sun so now he's released 3 10" singles, comprising of remixes, "stripped-down" versions or covers that "inspired" his shitty album. £16/ 4 tracks each = almost 50 quid for 12 songs.

I remember the unfairly maligned Sarah Records/ AYSTGH? fanzine railing against this shit back in the '8os. They were right then and Andy Bell's a cunt now.

[Custard]

And he's not even the best Andy Bell!

Fancy that new reissue of Paul Weller's Modern Classics hits collection, from 1997?

That'll be 43 squid please!

https://amzn.eu/d/6a2Thhi

Bizarrely it comes with a "bonus disc" of a live show that nobody seems to want. If that wasn't included they could have sold it at a reasonable price

Apparently Weller has form in trying to rip off fans with vinyl reissues of his stuff. Yeah, a real voice of a generation! Fucking old walnut looking cunt

PS you can get the original CD of this in the usual places for approx £1.24. And Our Paul won't get a penny!

[dontpaintyourteeth]

way of the world I spose and not entirely relevant to this, but it's pretty shite how £13.99 now seems to be the default price for CDs in hmv now. It's like the nineties again, except we're much closer to collapse!

[holyzombiejesus]

Without cheating, have a guess how much the new Foo Fighters 7" (one side an old FF song and the other a cover by an artist called H.E.R.) is going on sale for.

[boki]

20 quid?

[holyzombiejesus]

20 quid?

£23!

[boki]

Fucking, fucking, hell.

[Johnboy]

Things have actually got a lot worse in the time since this thread started.

One disc LPs selling for 45 euro as if that was fucking normal, which unfortunately it is.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Things have actually got a lot worse in the time since this thread started.

One disc LPs selling for 45 euro as if that was fucking normal, which unfortunately it is.

That reminds me JAMC have announced a new album.
https://themarychain.com/glasgow-eyes

24 quid for the single plate is fairly typical these days, but upselling a 2 plate version at 45rpm for 40 quid (50 if you wan't the white labels!) seems a pisstake. I hope that's all they're doing and not selling a partial 1-disc album.

They've also called the album 'Glasgow Eyes' but have only announced a tour date in Edinburgh so far, lol.

[holyzombiejesus]

Fucking, fucking, hell.

Yeah. I thought (actually, still think) Suede are cunts for doing 'limited' 7" picture discs of their first 4 singles for around £20 a pop but at least they looked better than this crap.



'Indies exclusive coloured vinyl plus obi' for £7 extra seems par for the course nowadays. Loads of record shops are doing shitty obis so they can market records in their top 30 as '____ Records exclusive' and charge a few quid more for them. I'm so past that 'we need to help the little shops survive' bullshit when they're doing crap like that.

[PaulTMA]

Glasgow Eyes sounds like a Hue & Cry album title

[Beep Cleep Chimney]

Anyway, I spotted the vinyl edition of Parklife for £49.99 in HMV recently, which is fucking absurd.

Even more absurd is the fact that they've suddently just decided to add another tenner to the price for a laugh.  Saw it in in there with my own eyes the other day and emitted a fairly loud "Ffffffuckooooofffffff" when I clocked the price. 
Sixty quid.  Ludicrous.

https://hmv.com/store/music/vinyl/parklife

[Sebastian Cobb]

I got Parklife on cassette for a couple of quid at a car boot. I've never felt it needed to be upgraded tbh.

[phantom_power]

It has never made sense how slapping a bit of pre-existing music onto vinyl can cost 20 quid for some artists and 40-50 for others. Obviously it is demand but you think they would make more money with a more reasonable price point as more would buy it

[SteveDave]

Also, "Parklife" was released as one album in the 90s. Now it's a double album.

It was made (as a lot of 90s albums were) for the CD and don't make sense on vinyl with side one and side two flows.

I suppose there's money to be made from repackaging them in different colours though.

[idunnosomename]

Also, "Parklife" was released as one album in the 90s. Now it's a double album.

It was made (as a lot of 90s albums were) for the CD and don't make sense on vinyl with side one and side two flows.

I suppose there's money to be made from repackaging them in different colours though.

stupid how the HMV site doesnt mention that. You could easily fit 51 min on one LP though edit oh its nearly two minutes longer than that. Pushing it