after years of seeing the phenomenon of various bonus tracks vary from retailer to retailer i have a question, this may have been answered long ago (or even recently considering my memory) the new boz scaggs got me thinking on this, why does best buy get bonus tracks and amazon doesn't? it happens all too frequently anymore.

so:

what exactly does a retailer have to do to get "exclusive" bonus tracks on their copies of a new album?

pay more for the initial product?

advertise it more?

prominently display it in the B&M's?

or is it something else?

There's been cases there there have been Amazon-exlcuisve bonus track. A few years ago, both The Doors and Eric Clapton had such tracks. There are also Traget-exclusives and probably some others that I don't know about.

I miss the good old days of going into a record store, buying a record or CD and that would be it, not having to worry about anything else. I remember back in 2000, when The Who's BBC album came out and there was a Best Buy exclusive. At the time, the nearest Best Buy to me was about 70 miles away. I made the trip

It is a frustrating practice. At this time when CD sales are diminishing, it doesn't make sense to further divide and alienate the remaining audience. Perhaps the record companies and retailers don't notice that Rome is burning. The goal ought to be getting as much music in the hands of as many people as possible and making them feel like they got a good deal when buying a CD. Having said that, I'll be buying the new Boz Scaggs disc from Best Buy. Does that make me part of the problem? I don't know; I'm just a fan.

Jim

I don’t think that these exclusives alienate consumers at all, for no better reason than if they did, both retailers and labels would have stopped making these agreements years ago, and the current examples are certainly scaled way back from certain promotions that have happened in the past. While an artist may have the goal of bringing as much music to the consumer as possible, the goal of labels and retailers is to earn a profit; if they fail to earn profits, they will cease to exist as profit-making enterprises. It's also not that difficult to understand how these exclusive agreements are intended to benefit both the retailer and the label:

Here’s the fundamental transaction: Artist wants to record and sell music to Consumer. Consumer wants to buy music from Artist. [Consumer(Money)-->New Title<--Artist(Music)]

Consumer and Artist both need Label to manufacture and market recordings containing the music that Artist wishes to sell and Consumer wishes to buy. Consumer and Artist also both need a Retailer to facilitate the exchange of money for the music. As middlemen, Retailer and Label facilitate transactions on behalf of both parties, transferring music to Consumer and money to Artist, and taking a cut of the purchase price for their services. Thus, the basic exchange taking place becomes [Consumer(Money) --> Retailer --> New Title <--Label <-- Artist(Music)].

Label needs Consumer to be aware of New Title, and is willing to invest money to promote New Title. Consumer cannot buy New Title without awareness of its existence. If a set percentage of all consumers who learn about New Title will ultimately buy it upon Release Date, Label knows that the most effective method of boosting sales is by increasing the total number consumers that they reach via marketing.

Retailer not only wants to sell New Title to Consumer, Retailer wants to prevent Consumer from buying New Title from Competition. Ordinarily, Retailer agrees to order X number of copies of New Title from Label to sell on Release Day. However, both parties have an incentive to reach an additional, cross-promotional agreement with one another, because Label knows that Retailer is an effective means of marketing, providing Retailer with a noneconomic negotiating tool attractive to Label. Also, Retailer is willing to offer marketing services to Label because it wants to reach an agreement with Label more favorable to Retailer than the agreements that Label has with Competition.

With all this in mind, it's hard to see how these agreements hurt anybody. Consumer gets music, Artist gets money, Label gets a special promotion and Retailer takes sales away from the competition. Also—obviously—Retailer, Artist and Label all receive an extra benefit if Collector Consumer buys multiple copies of the same New Title. Again, if these exclusive agreements truly damaged the music/retail industry by alienating consumers, they would have ceased long ago.

From this perspective, it would appear that the party taking the biggest risk in these agreements is Retailer, because Retailer is risking the possibility that New Title/Deluxe New Title may not sell as well as projected, leaving Retailer with unsold inventory. However, Retailer may be willing to accept this additional risk because it is also always seeking new and ongoing ways to entice Consumer into entering Retailer's establishment, providing Retailer the opportunity to sell Consumer other Products. Even a Deluxe New Title may do this when it is being sold at clearance prices.

Again--none of this negatively impacts the fundamental transaction taking place--the exchange of money for music between Consumer and Artist. Consumer’s decision to completely forgo buying any copy of New Title from any retailer is much more likely based on Consumer’s dislike of the actual music on the disc than on the marketing of that music.

Plus the UK version of that had a snippet of "Spoonful" that the US version didn't have because of licensing. I can't say that I went to London *because* of that (it was a business trip) but I took advantage of the opportunity.

Although I did drive to Canada to get a Sarah McLachlan CD because it didn't have a track that the US version would have, but that's kind of anti-this thread.

How about when you buy the cd and then two months later they released a "deluxe" version with two or four extra tracks.

To answer the original ?, my answer is a combination of already established marketing relationships & $'s.

What upsets me is when I have to aquire multiple versions to get the entire album. Yes Magnifacation was one of the worst examples, though I believe someone finally issued a version with all the bonus tracks in one place.

At least with Circuit City gone, it's one less to worry about.

& don't forget that Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, The UK & The USA all often get special exclusive bonus trax.

And then there's releases like the upcoming Tori Amos reissues where only 2/3 of the rarities associated with each album get put on the new version......... I do think the old Australian "Tour Edition" of Under The Pink was pretty complete for the time; but there is stuff on the new version that wasn't on that also.....

or do what mccartney did with 'memory almost full" sell an album for more money, put it in a DVD case so it looks special, add extra tracks and then re-sell it 6 months later with those extra tracks PLUS a couple more for LESS money than it originally sold for.

that, to me, was the all time worst fleecing by any artist anywhere anytime.

The latest Gretchen Peters album came with an Amazon-exclusive bonus EP, "Hits & Misses".

Oh so ironic as I interviewed Davey Johnstone yesterday for my book.

He gave me details about the new Elton album.

10 songs are finished and make up the album (expect a return to Rock and Pop of old).

But Davey was not happy with having to record 4 extra songs exclusively for the retailers. We talked about how great the 35-40 minute albums used to be.

Amazing that these songs are being recorded only for that purpose!

Steven Wilson! The new one has almost 2x the bonus tracks as the basic album!

This is where the CD has hurt music. Bands and/or labels feel obligated to fill it to the brim.

Therefore that filler dilutes the great tracks and therefore much hard to make those classic albums we all fell in love with.

Rick A.

With a very few exceptions (Wilson again!), the bonus track thing does work best as a 2 disc set with live stuff & b-sides.

Early Tori Amos could also justify 2 cd sets/bonus tracks.

That problem doesn't exist in Australia. There really is only one retailer that sells large volumes of CDs here JB HiFi and we get zero exclusive CDs with bonus tracks appart from the standard official issues

You guys used to get exclusive 2 cd "Tour Editions" Tori Amos & Sheryl Crow come to mind; I know I've seen others.