Record company rip offs

I mosied down to Fopp today at lunch to have a gander at all and sundry in the way of books, DVDs and CDs.

I was dismayed and a little horrified to discover a few things. For some reason Warner haven't been content to issue yet ANOTHER Smiths best of in two formats. They've now reissued the original singles on 7" format at £4 each!! For that price, you can pretty much buy the actual albums. Most of the b-side material is on one of the many many compilations (think "The World Won't Listen" or "Louder Than Bombs"). You need to either be stupid, a diehard Smithie or someone who can't handle listening to more than 3 minutes of music at one time to wanna buy these.

The other shocker I saw was yet ANOTHER reissue of Echo & The Bunnymen's "Ocean Rain". I bought the last reissue with four or five bonus tracks. Now they've tacked on a CD recorded live somewhere or other and jacked the price up from around a fiver to £18. That's around £13 for a throw-away live disc people - much like the Joy Division reissues.

The last disc I saw was "iSelect" by David Bowie. This was the CD that was free with the Times in the summer. The price on this throw away collection of tracks EVERYONE has? £19. That's right - £19. It's 12 tracks. You could buy "Best of Bowie" and a couple other albums and still have change from £19.

I had to leave the shop at this point. Why oh why does the music industry STILL think they can get away with these types of practices?