Since the advent of the audio compact disc with its approximately eighty minutes of space, record companies reissuing old vinyl albums on CDs have often used the extra available space to issue "extended" albums with bonus tracks. Usually these are primarily other versions of the original album's tracks, sometimes including concert recordings. And sometimes these alternatives are better than the original. For example, in the Monkees' Head CD, the song Daddy's Song was originally released as a track with Davy Jones as the lead singer. And it was difficult to listen to, putting it mildly. But with the CD release, a bonus track featuring Mike Nesmith on lead vocals poignantly captured the sad message in this song. Besides repeated material, a CD may contain new songs heretofore unreleased, and that is always a treat (especially with the older recordings).
Having said that, I obtained one of those "extended" CDs, this one of the great album Morrison Hotel by the Doors. The signature, opening track is the classic Roadhouse Blues. Well, the record company apparently liked Roadhouse Blues so much that they included four other versions of it as extra tracks! Why couldn't they have put some different material on instead (they did include some "new" extra stuff on it, to be fair)?
But bonus tracks aren't really a selling point of these CDs for me. Actually, it can be quite a nuisance if I'm driving and I want to hear the main, original tracks in random fashion. Then I keep getting the extra material, most of which I really don't want to hear. But that isn't really too much of a problem, either. I just advance to the next track. Still, I don't understand why concentrating on putting different songs on as bonus tracks wouldn't be a more lucrative sales strategy than piling on different versions of already-heard songs.
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Marketing is a funny thing, and I think the real point (from a marketing perspective) is that there are bonus tracks. It's far less important what they are, at least in most cases.
ReplyDeleteMost CDs with bonus tracks advertise them and make them easy to get to, of course. But I have a few that go for the "hidden" material, as a sort of Easter egg thing. I have one (a Lyle Lovett disc, if I remember correctly) that adds some five minutes (maybe more) of blank space, silent time, at the end of the last track, before the bonus track starts. I have another (Jill Scott's "Who Is Jill Scott?") that has a batch of short, blank tracks (maybe a dozen) between the last track and the bonus track.
I hate that. It's not like anything is really hidden. Once you realize that there isn't anything wrong, you can see the tracks there, or you can see the blank space there. It's just disruptive when you're playing the CD (the Jill Scott one throws random 10-second blank tracks at you if you play the disc in "shuffle" mode; ick).