[Introspective] Discography 2 tracks, was: Final results ofthe final round of the Rating Project

David King dking at xmission.com
Mon Aug 11 10:20:04 PDT 2003


As it has already been mentioned, a Discography 2 that simply continued on
where the first one left off would be a very unattractive album to any
record company particularly one in the U.S. since none of the tracks would
have enjoyed any success in the States.

It's kind of funny to hear devoted fans (who have every album if not every
single release) debate what a compilation release should look like as far as
the track listing.  The record company couldn't care less what members of
this list would or would not like to see on a compilation.  There's not much
that they can do one way or another to get the type of people that subscribe
to a list like this to buy the album.  Since most will have every track
already, they know that you will either buy because you're a completist or
you won't because you're not.

They want to find a way to make a new collection attractive to other
less-devoted or casual PSB fans.  There are basically three groups of people
they want to entice to buy this compilation: 1) People who don't own any PSB
music, 2) People who own Discography but nothing else, and 3) People who
have a lot of albums from when PSB were "popular" but very little since.

This is not an easy task.  If you make it too much like Discography, those
who have the first one already may not see the value in buying another
compilation.  If you make it too different, you end up leaving off crucial
earlier tracks that the person who doesn't own anything yet would require to
buy the new compilation.  It's a balancing act that ultimately comes down to
marketing people trying to guess what will sell the most copies.

The question that no one seems to ask is whether a new compilation is even
necessary at this point.  Certainly they have plenty of great songs that
weren't on Discography.  But, compilations are about nothing more than
chasing the almighty dollar/pound.  If PSB were through, it would make sense
to do a final 2 or even 3 disc compilation to try to milk everything they
can out of the catalog.  But at this point, there wouldn't seem to be a
compelling argument that a compilation will be a great seller.  (Don't get
me wrong though ... I'll be right there in line buying it when it comes
out.)

Either way, it will be interesting to see what materializes out of the new
compilation...

--D



> There's no maybe about it; they've already said more than once on the
> website that it would be a career retrospective, not Discography 2.  I
agree
> that it's a stupid idea, but what can you do?  There's no question that
past
> the first two Very singles, the Boys' popularity has very much been on the
> decline in the general public.  Consider that the last compilation had
four
> #1 singles and a Discography 2 would have none.  Erasure are doing the
same
> thing as the Boys in terms of a new compilation.  They've already
announced
> the track listing for that, and it's woeful to say the least, taking 13 of
> its tracks from the Pop! compilation, plus throwing on a remix of one of
the
> oldies, and only adding 5 new songs...brutal.  They have announced that
> there will be a 2-disc version of that, however, although what is on the
> second disc has not been revealed.  Filling it with the remaining singles
to
> make a complete collection would be a good idea, as I think it would be
with
> the Boys.
>
> David
>
> >I understand what you meaning, but if the people at EMI/Parlophone had
yet
> >a
> >little intelligence left (they loose a lot of it in this RIAA x Napster x
> >Morpheus matter) they will release the Discography 2 and reissue the
first
> >Discography, making 2 sales out of one release.
> >
> >But this will be only if they believe that this hypotetical Discography 2
> >has commercial material on it. Maybe people at EMI don't think that these
> >latest singles from PSB are commercial enough. Let's see what happens.
> >
> >Another thought: Maybe this new greatest hits album will be a double CD,
so
> >it could have all the singles released previously. A Discography 1 + 2
> >album.
>
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