Digital only US reissues:

Scott Baio - The Chachi Albums
Tommy Tutone - Self-Titled & "Tommy Tutone 2"
Grand Funk Railroad - "Grand Funk Lives" & "What's Funk"
Bob Newhart- "Bob Newhart Faces Bob Newhart", "The Button-Down Mind On TV", "The Windmills Are Weakening", "This Is It!"
Black Sabbath - "Born Again", "Eternal Idol", "Seventh Cross"
Eric Carmen - "Tonight You're Mine"
Peter Frampton - "Where I Should Be" & "Breaking All the Rules"

EMI, Sony, Warner, & Universal are now DIGITAL only for the majority of catalog remasters
Amercian Beat & Wounded Bird license the physical CD of SOME of the reissues but insiders tell me our days are numbered

Jimbo I feel your pain

Most of the good stuff has been reissued on CD at some point, but still this is terrible news.

i always those 2 grand funk titles and never got around to ordering them from mark farner's website. he stills shows them as available, but i don't know if they are silver CD's or CD-R's

renny

Jimbo hasn't turned into a CD? This thread disappoints me.

Once again, I think this reflects that the labels just don't get it. The main consumers of digital music are younger listeners who are disinclined to buy CDs. Conversely, the main consumers of reissues such as those listed above are older listeners who have continued to buy CDs while the format has otherwise declined. I doubt that I am alone in my inclination to decline to spend any money on digital only releases, so I expect that the purchasers of these digital only titles will be few and far between...

I don't recall where I read the article, but I could swear reading that CD sales have dropped worldwide, not just in the US. Yet, as I look at various online retailers (and the various reissue announcements here) it seems like the UK has actually been reissuing more catalogue titles than ever. Maybe they are trying to "beat the clock" as copyrights are starting to expire there. But, whatever the reason, they seem to be more in touch with what us older music buyers are interested in. Or are the British labels more willing to release titles which might only sell in the thousands while the US companies don't feel it's worth releasing anything that will sell less than 10,000 copies?

Download only is disappointing to me, but not the end of the world if it's flac, ape or shn with FULL printable cover art. If download only is mp3 (or ANY LOSSY format) only, the RIAA is losing this customer. I have a large enough collection that my world wouldn't end if I never bought another album.

I'd love to know what those Sabbath reissues are-they were part of the remasters series by Castle in the UK in 1996, so maybe they're just reissues of them.
If they've finally decicded to remasters those albums, why digital only? No way in hell I'm bothering. Also, I'm not sure if you meant "Seventh Star" or "Headless Cross" on the last remaster. Either way, they're among my favorite Sabbath albums ever, but I'm not paying for a download-it's just not happening.

I believe that CD's from the U.K. are charged a flat songwriting royalty rate for each CD title, while in the U.S., songwriting royalties are paid out on a per-song basis. Or something like that--I wish I remember where I read that in the first place (probably in a back issue of ICE). But essentially what it boiled down to was that a U.S. CD with something like 26 songs on it would cause a higher total royalty to be added to the wholesale price of a CD, rather than a CD with only, say, 15 songs on it. In the U.K. however, the royalty on each CD title is the same regardless of the number of songs. This probably the biggest reason reason why U.K. releases tend to have more songs on them than their US counterparts (this stretches back at least as far as the Beatles, if not farther). Somebody else can probably explain this better than I can, but my theory then is that as far as reissues go, a smaller U.K. label can perhaps better afford to release older material, especially if the songs date back to the 60's when the average album cut was closer to two minutes long, allowing for many more individual tracks on a 78-minute compact disc.

Or not.

That's the impression I had gotten... it's like, and now a choice of viewing on BBC Television. Just started on BBC2, the semi final of Episode 3 of "Kierkegaard's Journals," staring Richard Chamberlain, Peggy Mount and Billy Bremer, and on BBC1, "Ethel the Frog," with special guest Jimbo the CD.

...and now for something completely different: a man with a CD player up his nose.

For what it's worth, my anal compulsive personality has led me to keep a file (just a list really) of the various purchases I have pending at any time. I've probably been doing this for twenty-five or more years, and it allows me to know what's "in the pipeline". I have categories for the books I have on order, music, video, etc. As of this morning -- for the first time ever -- there is absolutely nothing in the music category.

There is no current or future release on CD (or any other medium) that I've been moved to place an order for. Maybe I'm getting old, maybe -- as GoogaMooga says -- all the good stuff is already out, but not being able to look forward to something really hurts. For years there was the next Elvis/Beatles/etc. release and more recently the "new" reissue by whoever. Now nothing. And sadly I don't see that changing.

Spiderboy, consider yourself lucky that you've completed all your major runs, I haven't got that far yet. But what you could do is move into obscurities like those out on Rev-Ola. Just this month I've bought the Bergen White and the Roger Nichols albums, and they are both overlooked pop masterpieces.

Yeah, I know I'm giving serious thought to finally rebuilding the Rolling Stones collection I had to sell off back in 1996. I recently picked up a used copy of the "Flashpoint + Collectables" set on Amazon because the price was right...there's really nothing else out there on the store shelves upon which I am willing to waste money. These days the Beatles are about the only act even rumored to have forthcoming remasters.

Adapted for radio by taking a small piece of wood and banging a few nails in it.

Jimbo the CD-doomed?
Stay tuned

These days the Beatles are about the only act even rumored to have forthcoming remasters.

Man, I don't know. I've been spending a ton lately on great new remasters from Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy (Jan, 29), UFO (Jan. 29), ELP, the Genesis boxset remasters, Van Morrison (Jan. 29), etc. I got some of these as gifts, but Jan. 29 is a huge day for me, and The Faces remasters come out in March, and the next Cure remasters are due out in a few months. Some of these are imports, but there's still plenty of great stuff to get IMO.

On this board there are about 60 threads about remasters posted this month alone. Depends on the person's tastes in music for sure, but I'm not seeing any slowdown of releases at all ... in fact 2008 is already looking a lot more expensive for my collection than 2007 was, and 2007 wasn't cheap!

I just don't get this doom and gloom stuff. Yes, the major companies are idiots who rarely get things right and often sabotage themselves, but this has always been true. CDs won't stop being made because of the digital boom anymore than CDs stopped being made in the 1990s when cassettes outsold them. They're still 80% of the market whether they're "cool" nowadays or not, they still sell even when the bands release music digitally months ahead of the physical release (see Radiohead thread), anything there's a market for will continue to be manufactured by someone. We don't need them to be supported by Sony or EMI. It's enough if niche labels license everything for physical release, and believe me they will more and more.

Far as I can see the only thing that's really changing is that the walk-in stores are going away, and bands are learning to release and promote stuff without major label help. If one has a computer to access the information and the mailorder sources — which I know you all do because I see you posting here! — then we'll have absolutely no problem continuing our collections far into the future. Smile! JIMBO THE CD IS ALIVE AND WELL.

I think the problem for the CD is we will soon run out of stores that will actually sell them. I would guess the INTERNET will give the CD life for a little longer but ultimately...in our lifetime...we shall see the end of physical product.

Computers are now hand-held (see the I-Phone etc) add in IPODs and music has become very portable...very down-loadable.

There is one phone commercial where a guy walks past a music shop (like one you find in NYC) and the guy hears a tune. He points his phone towards the music and his phone downloads the song into the phone. He then merrily walks away not buying the actual physical product at that music store. Makes me think of Discorama when I see it.

I largely agree with Linda, but as I posted on another thread today the current trend to release rarities in MP3 format only SUCKS.

I know all about the mail order sources, I just don't order very many CD's by mail--and these days I probably buy about 90% of my CD's through the mail. I guess I mentioned the Beatles as an act whose remasters were likely to arrive at the nearest Best Buy or FYE, possibly even at (an ever nearer to me) Target or Walmart. Last year I picked up exactly three 2007 reissues: the "Song Remains The Same" soundtrack and the two Monkees sets--and I'll bet you a dollar that the Rhino/Monkees series is dead in the water.

Maybe I've just gotten old. Maybe I just don't care for any of the bands mentioned who do have forthcoming remasters (well, no maybe there, but that's for another thread) But the fact is, unless I have a fairly good idea of what I'm going to get delivered to me, I'm pretty much able to resist the impulse to place an online order.

Again, I see myself as becoming one of those vinyl aficinados I used to snicker about--and I'm OK with that. I don't worry that my CD collection will become obsolete, or that I won't be able to find any of the music I enjoy on CD (although I'm reading in another window here that Bruce Springsteen has just released a single to I-tunes only). What I worry about is someday walking into Best Buy and having some kid with a nametag looking at me as though I've got an asshole in the middle of my forehead after I've asked where I can find the CD players.