You know sometimes I just like to chat to you about what's on my mind, and today I'm thinking about where to draw the line - when you just can't suck any more money out of songs.
It is very common for an artist to include acoustic versions of select songs on a deluxe album, that's cool. But then we have artists putting out a full album of previously released songs, this time recorded acoustic. Do we like that? Obviously work goes into the new CD and it keeps the band relevant for a little longer but sometimes it feels like they're buying time. They don't have anything new but they still want to have something for the fans to hear. I personally love acoustic albums, love hearing the stripped down songs like it's the first time again. I also love live albums and those are somewhat popular among artists. Those don't create more work for the actual artist, more for their producers etc. but they can make a lot of money off them. A prime example of someone who has sucked their songs to the last drop is Justin Bieber with "My World". We got the originals, the acoustics, and then an album of remixes and a few live tracks. I ate it all up, as I was a huge fan but was it all necessary? Probably not. I still enjoyed having all those variations of the songs though. It is all a money grab? Maybe.
Side note because I like to bring One Direction into everything: A lot of people claim that the band is only after as much money as they can get with the consistent albums, mechandise in every form, the movie and all that but what they haven't done is put out any variations of old songs. They had a perfect opportunity to release a live album twice now, to accompany the tour DVD they put out, or to accompany This Is Us. But they didn't and I have no idea why. I know you can find the tracks online that are ripped from the movies but that would have been a jackpot especially because the audio had already been mastered to sound great. Sometimes their management/PR/whatever seems to be focused on the wrong things. Most fans would rather pay for music than some bogus socks with their faces on. They're trying to keep up a young fanbase but their music has grown up too much. I'm off on a tangent now but I've been wanting to talk about this for a while.
To conclude: as much as we like having something new constantly, do we really need it?