Get Yer New American Land Edition Here
“The record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance!”
So Bruce Springsteen’s label & management have cooked up a nice little scheme. They’ve released a new “American Land Edition” of Springsteen’s Pete Seeger tribute, We Shall Overcome, just in case listeners would like to revisit a work that has faded into rock & roll history since its original release back in, um, April. But for Springsteen devotees who actually bought the record in the spring, don’t worry, you haven’t been forgotten – the new “edition” has a few “bonus tracks” that weren’t on the first. Just for you.
I’m trying to wrap my head around possible rationales for this, and I can only come up with one. Fewer and fewer people care about Springsteen these days (especially a record of Springsteen doing Seeger covers, though at least it’s not one of his stultifying all-acoustic affairs), so in the face of declining market share, the thing to do is target the small group of people who really care, and try to get them to buy the same record twice.
Sadly, there’s some precedent for this kind of thing. You may remember Tracks, the mostly-terrific four-CD set of career-spanning studio outtakes that Springsteen released back in 1998. Great collection, well worth the box-set sticker price, but probably only of interest to hardcore Springsteen fans. And predictably, the much larger group of non-hardcore Springsteen fans didn’t buy it. At which point the label wisely decided to reach out to the non-hardcore market by distilling the box set down to a single-disc compilation, 18 Tracks. But the label also wanted to make some more money from the hardcores, so three of those 18 Tracks were previously unreleased, not to be found elsewhere.
I know, I know, this kind of thing is common and it sounds naïve to be complaining about it. There’s a long history of greatest-hits comps from all kinds of artists that include a throwaway new track or two, for instance. And this is a free country and a free market and if you don’t think something’s worthwhile you don’t have to buy it, etc etc.
But isn’t it galling that the more you care about an artist, the more the label sees that passion as leverage it can use to extract a disproportionate amount of your money? And isn’t it curious that an artist who’s renowned for his supposed empathy for and connection to his fans is apparently so blasé about exploiting the most loyal of them?
So Bruce Springsteen’s label & management have cooked up a nice little scheme. They’ve released a new “American Land Edition” of Springsteen’s Pete Seeger tribute, We Shall Overcome, just in case listeners would like to revisit a work that has faded into rock & roll history since its original release back in, um, April. But for Springsteen devotees who actually bought the record in the spring, don’t worry, you haven’t been forgotten – the new “edition” has a few “bonus tracks” that weren’t on the first. Just for you.
I’m trying to wrap my head around possible rationales for this, and I can only come up with one. Fewer and fewer people care about Springsteen these days (especially a record of Springsteen doing Seeger covers, though at least it’s not one of his stultifying all-acoustic affairs), so in the face of declining market share, the thing to do is target the small group of people who really care, and try to get them to buy the same record twice.
Sadly, there’s some precedent for this kind of thing. You may remember Tracks, the mostly-terrific four-CD set of career-spanning studio outtakes that Springsteen released back in 1998. Great collection, well worth the box-set sticker price, but probably only of interest to hardcore Springsteen fans. And predictably, the much larger group of non-hardcore Springsteen fans didn’t buy it. At which point the label wisely decided to reach out to the non-hardcore market by distilling the box set down to a single-disc compilation, 18 Tracks. But the label also wanted to make some more money from the hardcores, so three of those 18 Tracks were previously unreleased, not to be found elsewhere.
I know, I know, this kind of thing is common and it sounds naïve to be complaining about it. There’s a long history of greatest-hits comps from all kinds of artists that include a throwaway new track or two, for instance. And this is a free country and a free market and if you don’t think something’s worthwhile you don’t have to buy it, etc etc.
But isn’t it galling that the more you care about an artist, the more the label sees that passion as leverage it can use to extract a disproportionate amount of your money? And isn’t it curious that an artist who’s renowned for his supposed empathy for and connection to his fans is apparently so blasé about exploiting the most loyal of them?
posted by DW | 13.10.06
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