There are a whole lot of things that really annoy, anger and upset me about the music business, and here is where I'm going to vent those frustrations. Every so often I'll write a piece about my “pet hate” at the time, and anyone who wants to comment, argue, agree, or slag me off is welcome to contribute. As usual, all views expressed here are my own personal ones, and I understand others may not agree or may have differing views. The format of this is going to be somewhat loose, and from time to time I may venture outside the confines of subjects dealing exclusively with music, but whatever I'm talkng about, I will be spitting venom at it like some aged, crabby old puff-adder!
I'm all right Jack --- keep your hands off my stack!
or
Why it is unbridled greed, rather than illegal downloading, that is spelling the end of the old regime for the music biz. To quote from Blackadder: “Would you like to make some money? No, I would like other people to make money and give it to me!”
(The above two album sleeves are from two separate albums, released seven years apart. I'm not joking...)
A subject that has always bugged me is the release, release and release of greatest hits albums. Now, I have nothing against them
per se, in fact a collection can often be the best, easiest and least expensive way to get into a new artiste, or find out if you are going to like their music. When I was younger and we had no YouTube, itunes
(yes, yes, you've told us all this before! We know: you're incredibly old. Incredibly. We get it...) or any of that nonsense, you had to buy or get a loan of albums if you wanted to get into an artiste, or check them out. I used to make a point of getting their greatest hits, or a live album --- which usually contained some or most of their best work --- as my way in, and it's through that medium I got into artistes like Bob Seger, Supertramp and Genesis, among others.
So I have nothing against greatest hits packages. What I do have a problem with is the constant release of further “greatest hits” collections. If they are all or mostly new songs, that have been released in the interim between the first collection and this new one, then fine. The Eagles' Greatest Hits 71-75 obviously does not take account of the material released after 1975, which of course includes the seminal “Hotel California” and its many hits, to say nothing of “The long run”. So yes, in that case, come 1978-1980 or whenever, a new greatest hits package is not only acceptable, but almost essential, as the catalogue of the band has grown by now and there are some songs very much worthy of inclusion in a greatest hits collection that were not available to be on the original.
But using the Eagles as my example of when it's okay to release a further greatest hits collection is a two-edged sword, for they --- or rather, their label --- are also the prime culprits for over-releasing, and unnecessary collections. Between 1976 and 2005 there have been no less than nine “greatest hits” compilations released. Nine! The first two, okay I can let slide: “Greatest hits” and “Greatest hits 2” are at least different albums, and service two separate eras, the first covering their output from 1971-1975, with the second concentrating mostly on “Hotel California” and “The long run”, and released six years later, a reasonable space of time wherein it would be agreed there was a need for an “updated” greatest hits.
But then it all goes to Hell.
1985, only three years after the second greatest hits, we get “The best of the Eagles”. Well, okay, so it sort of compiles the two greatest hits albums into one collection. Fair enough. I guess. Three years after that, we have “The Legend of the Eagles”. Even that, well, okay: I don't know the album, maybe it's a retrospective of their career to date. We're treading a thin line but hell, let's let that one slide. Flash forward to 1994, and we have “The Very Best of the Eagles”. Ohhhh-kayyy.... so what we were told was “The best of the Eagles”, well, wasn't, cos now we have the
very best. But okay, I suppose that happens.
And then it happens. The millennium hits us and we get a boxed set called “Selected works”. Basically, it's the last four greatest hits albums stuck together along with a few more tracks and a live concert. It's a four disc affair, so probably only the purists and collectors will buy it. But hot on its heels in 2001 comes, are you ready for this? “The Very Best of the Eagles.” Hang on, I hear you say: wasn't that the title of the album released in 1994? Yes it was, and to add insult to injury (and sorry for shouting here but I feel the point needs to be made, and made with all the venom and anger I can put into my writing) IT'S THE SAME EFFING ALBUM!!! The VERY same! EVERY track that's on this album is on the previous “Very Best of the Eagles”. They're just in a different order!! So anyone going out to buy this and not bothering to check the listing (would you do that? Probably not, but let's assume for the sake of argument someone did --- maybe someone buying the album for their loved one, but not familiar with the Eagles' work) would buy the very same album they may have bought seven years previous!
Oh, that's bad enough, my friends, but there is more! 2003 rolls around and the guys over at the label obviously all need new cars, so what to do? Ah, roll out another Eagles greatest hits! What shall we call it, they wonder, and decide on … now, see if you can guess. Think really hard. Yeah, that's right: “The Very Best of the Eagles”! Again. This time, it's not
totally the same album, but most if not all of the songs that were on the previous
two albums that go under that name are there, with a few others thrown in, probably just to confuse people and trick them into thinking they are buying new material.
Now of course you can always say well it's up to people whether they buy these compilations or not: no-one's forcing them to shell out their money. No, they're not, but when you see an ad for a new Eagles greatest hits album, you don't expect it to be the very same damn album as the one you bought years ago. No, I didn't buy any of these specious “Very Best of” albums, but in incenses me that the labels are let get away with it. How long does this go on? How many more greatest hits can a label release? Not only that, they had the audacity to make the album covers of both the “original” two “Very Best of the Eagles” identical, as if they knew that they were ripping people off, didn't care and were essentially flipping the fans the finger! That boils my blood and yes, grinds my gears!
But even this ridiculous example aside, how many other bands have had greatest hits album after greatest hits album released? Dire Straits have three, ELO about five, not including some older compilations. Robbie Williams has five, Springsteen has four, Bryan Adams has five. Even my hero, Tom Waits, has a staggering seven! I'm not blaming the artistes here: I know the labels release these independent of the performer. But how many times can the fans be ripped off, again and again and again, before it's too much?
And what about those
really annoying ones, where they sneak in one or two new tracks, so that even if you don't want the album you may have to buy it to get the new material --- which will probably end up being available later, on other albums, but isn't at the moment. How underhand is that practice? But that's nothing compared to those “special editions” that come out, at usually hugely inflated prices, with extra tracks and rarities and interviews and god knows what-all, the worse when these editions are then supplemented by yet more releases. Take the example of “Progress”, the last album to date by Take That. When the album was released, there was also a “Deluxe Bonus Edition” fans could buy, which as far as I can see only differed from the “standard” edition in that it included a five-minute video. Then the next year they released “Progressed”, which was the album plus an EP, with admittedly eight new songs on it. But the question has to be asked, again, when is enough enough?
The ultimate in this idea of stretching things to breaking point comes, I believe, with the recent release of the Pink Floyd “Immersion sets”. They have somehow managed to extend one, admittedly fantastic album, into SIX discs! How, I know, but I'm staggered by the audacity. Anyone who is a Floyd fan has “The dark side of the moon” already, probably on vinyl and CD, maybe DVD and Blu-ray, but who is really going to need six discs of one album? And in these trying financial times too, it seems to make no sense. I know the “Immersion sets” were put together by a Floyd fanatic, and are, by all accounts, great value for money, but come on: something like a hunded and twenty pounds for a set? Who has that kind of money? But the real fans will feel they have to buy these sets, and therein again lies the major problem.
These “special editions”, “ultimate collections”, “collector's editions”, call them what you will, feed on the collector's need to have everything associated with their favourite band, and their willingness to pay any price for something that seems “limited” or “exclusive”. I don't subscribe to this mentality. If I like a band, I probably have all their albums, maybe some live ones, perhaps their greatest hits. I don't go too much for unreleased, rarities, special editions, special mixes, collector's editions and so on. It doesn't impress me that a boxed set has a forty-page colour booklet, photos of the band and some sort of badge, for instance, or a poster. I don't feel that justifies jacking up the price to ridiculous heights. Some may, of course, and my opinion is only my opinion, but I think in general the slowdown in record sales shows that people are getting fed up with being ripped off, again and again and again, to quote Status Quo.
And this is part of the reason, I believe, why people now download much more than buy albums. Yes, of course you'll always have people who want something for nothing, but most of us are just annoyed at having to pay unrealistic prices for our music. When I were a lad, albums --- vinyl albums --- sold for about £5.99 to £7.99, with a double or live album maybe coming out at £9.99. When CDs came out, we of course knew these would be more expensive, and they went from about the top end of the vinyl spectrum (with vinyl, at the time, still around and quite popular and CDs only finding their way onto the market slowly --- few people even had a CD player!) at about £9.99 to about £12.99. Suddenly, vinyl began to fall away in sales and availability, and CD prices jumped to anything up to £19.99, where for a long time they remained. That's almost a two hundred percent increase over the course of probably thirty years!
And when the internet stuck its unwanted mush in and people began to realise they could download the same music for little or nothing, did the record companies respond by lowering their prices, competing with the online presence as you would expect a business to? No, they did not. They bitched and ranted and sulked, and tried to have all avenues to online music either tightly controlled --- by them --- or shut down altogether. But though they succeeded in some places (Napster, Audio Galaxy, Allofmp3.com, we salute you!) there was no way they could close every site or service down. The genie was out of the bottle and granting wishes left right and centre, and no-one was ever going to recapture him. People were sharing music, realising they could bypass the music industry entirely, and as a result the profits began to fall.
But that's all a direct and eventual result of the decades of greed and almost contempt for their consumers that the record companies as a whole evidenced, and it finally came home to roost. They still make noises, bring lawsuits and try to have laws passed to effectively ban music on the internet that isn't under their control, ie doesn't make money for them, but are they ever going to succeed? It's widely accepted now that a lot of music is available for free, or at least much reduced prices than we used to be forced to pay. Many bands have taken the idea and run with it, effectively setting themselves up as their own record marketing division, dealing with the fans directly and giving them a very good deal. Some even allow you to download their new album for free, if that's what you want. For them, it's not so much about making money off the album as getting the exposure, which should lead to more fans at the gigs, more merchandising and a better profit ratio in the end.
The record companies have only themselves to blame, and I feel nothing but a sense of satisfaction and justification when I see them moan about only making x million this year, or whatever, and how music downloading is killing their business. They try to tell us it's killing music, but of course it's not. They used that ploy in the seventies and eighties when they told us that “home taping is killing music” --- what a load of old tot! Particularly with the quality at the time of cassette tapes, few people would want a taped copy of an album as opposed to the genuine article. But they feared losing money, and since the advent of free music on the web they've been panicking, haemorraging money and profits, and panic has now turned to outright desperation, with the SOPA and PIPA acts proposed, and for now, defeated or at least staved off. But they won't go away; they'll be back, probably in some altered form, and eventually they'll more than likely find their way into law.
It could have been so much different. If the record companies had engaged with people instead of taking them to court (and most times losing, thereby setting their overall case back), had gone with the flow instead of swimming against the tide, and had moved with the times instead of being implacably opposed, impervious to change, like the pensioner who still watches black-and-white TV or won't use a mobile phone, it could have gone so much better for everyone. Now, thanks to their refusal to bend, the record companies will either gain a massive, inflexible monopoly over music, or fade away into irrelevance.
I know which outcome I'm hoping for!