"Bonus Tracks" wtf?

CDs are more expensive in the UK than the USA.

So, the 'international' edition gets a 'bonus' track, and the 'domestic' edition gets the lower price.

Of course, 'domestic' means USA not where you happen to live.

Also, stop dicking around with long silent pauses at the end of the record or 99 empty 1 second tracks or splitting songs into multiple tracks because you hate shuffle play or CD length tracks that contain 12 songs or any other kind of stupid structuralist horseshit that detracts from the listening experience instead of enhancing it. It is your job to entertain us, so DANCE!

DANCE YOU ORGAN GRINDERS' MONKEYS DANCE! AND SHAKE YOUR LITTLE TIN CUP AND TIP YOUR MONKEY-SIZED BELLHOP CAP!

xpost

Mark, that still doesn't make sense, because a CD costs the same to press no matter how long it is. I'm sorry you guys are getting dicked around on pricing even more than we are, though.

Also, lots of US releases have songs that are labeled bonus tracks, even though as I noted above, there is no CD that lacks them.

lol CDs

Well, the thing is that while it was once usually true that the bonus tracks are "on every copy of the CD sold," that's not the case these days: a lot of big releases now have special versions just for a chain like, say, Best Buy with a bonus track or two, or as in the case of the new Smashing Pumpkins album, a different bonus track each for Best Buy, Target, and iTunes.

Also, a lot of times when there's a bonus track at the end of every copy of an album, particularly hip hop/R&B albums, it's because it's a remix or a single that was already released on a soundtrack or compilation, so the 'bonus track' distinction is mainly used to seperate it from the album proper.

The weird thing is that all through the 90s, major label artists would have to cough up bonus tracks for international editions of their albums, supposedly because in places like Japan, imports of the U.S. versions are actually cheaper (?) so record labels there need to give some kind of extra incentive for Japanese record buyers to buy the Japanese version of the album. I don't know if this still goes on, but it seemed like the filesharing era had kind of destroyed the necessity for completists to hunt down Japanese imports just for an outtake or remix, and bizarrely now is the time that U.S. labels have decided to pick up on the tradition.

http://www.orthogonal.com.au/music/godley_creme/lol_i.gif
Consequences?

xpost TIMING!

Good point in your first paragraph, Alex, although I'd never consider any music by the fucking Smashing Pumpkins to be a bonus.

This kind of thing bugs the fuck out of me, as you might imagine.

i hate disappearing bonus tracks. like the radioactive version of the german oak album had none of the boatload that were on the german reissue. and the reissue of meic stevens' "outlander" on water is gonna have NONE. from rhino (i think 7 bonus tracks) to some bootleg (3 bonus tracks) to legitimate (ZERO). suck!

(though, uh, i guess the rhino version was legit.)

I've considered starting an mp3 blog that just gives away all the 'Best Buy/Wal-Mart/Target exclusives' that big chain stores get to slap on their versions of various major label albums.

bonus tracks are rarely any good. if they were they would've been on the album in the first place.

Good point, blueski, but search any ILM thread about various bands' best b-sides and it's pretty clear that bands/labels often don't know what the best songs are and leave perfectly good tracks off of albums all the time. And sometimes, as a fan, you just want to hear it all, if only to satisfy curiousity.

xp: or maybe they were were released as singles that weren't included on any albums and were, in fact, good. or demos. or songs that would've made an album too long to put on vinyl. YOU CLOD.

You waste. You little man.

t's pretty clear that bands/labels often don't know what the best songs are and leave perfectly good tracks off of albums all the time. And sometimes, as a fan, you just want to hear it all, if only to satisfy curiousity.

the fans know which bands tracks are best better than the band does yeah!

or maybe they were were released as singles that weren't included on any albums and were, in fact, good.

wow i never thought of THAT

oh, sorry dude. you said this:

bonus tracks are rarely any good. if they were they would've been on the album in the first place.

so, you know, my bad for reading that as trying to express what it appears to express.

So you've never liked a song that the artist who made it thought was crap? I'm not gonna get into the argument about whether musicians are the best judge of their own material, but I don't think it's unusual at all to want to hear bonus tracks/b-sides once you've worn out the album. Bands have a right to not release a song in any form if they really think it's completely worthless. (xpost)

singles = good enough to be on an album / released between albums as a stopgap (always strange unless it's an EP)

demos? unless there's something particularly interesting about the sound/recording in comparison to the finished track why bother?

or songs that would've made an album too long to put on vinyl.

the CD tracklisting is usually considered definitive tho - taking a track off for the vinyl shouldn't make it a 'bonus' on CD.

i was thinking pre-cd, actually. when 40 minutes was a pretty hard-and-fast rule for a long time.

but I don't think it's unusual at all to want to hear bonus tracks/b-sides once you've worn out the album.

no of course it's not unusual to want to hear them. it is unusual to end up rating them over a-sides/standard album tracks tho. or at least the reasons why that would be the case are intriguing, i think.

there are probably already threads where people list which b-sides and bonus tracks they think are the best thing the band has ever done - might have a look.

i was thinking pre-cd, actually.

fair enough but oilyrags is talking about nowadays, where the idea of 'bonus tracks' seems increasingly more redundant.

okay then!

I can think of a big bunch of b-sides by a big bunch of bands that I prefer to a-sides and album tracks. There's loads with Embrace but also people like Orbital, too.

I've considered starting an mp3 blog that just gives away all the 'Best Buy/Wal-Mart/Target exclusives' that big chain stores get to slap on their versions of various major label albums.

-- Alex in Baltimore, Friday, 13 July 2007 13:53 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

Please do this, seriously.

scik you are a weirdo as we established many moons ago.

When did it stop being normal for artists to put out singles that weren't on albums? Obv it still happens occasionally, but at least pre-mid 80s there are tons of examples of classic singles not being on any albums, unless added as bonus tracks later, e.g. Virginia Plain, Some Candy Talking, etc.

Yeah, Ben, I think I will, probably by the end of the summer when I have more free time. I'll try to revive this thread if/when I do.

I made a CD for a girl recently and hided Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" at the end after a 2 minute pause. (Part of the last track, not separated from it). This isn't the same though but quite a nice thing i thought. Hiding a track can be a nice reward for the listener who persists to the very end of the record I reckons.

.. unless you are playing Ash's 1977 CD, of course.

(extra track = drummer being sick in a bucket)

RONG. The silent wait is a PUNISHMENT for the listener willing to go all the way to the end of a record.

"i made you a bonus track, but i hided it"

btw uptoeleven did you get that job email in the end?

Also, sometimes the first thing done w/new cd is popping it into EAC or something to rip it, resulting in NO SURPRISE and a choice between a) a track containing useless silence and b) manually editing away the nothing.

ah but what about the "rewindie" tracks?

And at least one live album, Wire's "Document and Eyewitness" has all the track introductions as the 'gaps' inbetween tracks. Rip that, and all you get are the tracks themselves, no intros!

Waht? I didn't know that was even possible. Kinda cool actually, even if hassle for rip procedurality.

They *could* do that with promos; unrippable/unboot/unshareable.

ha, but they wont, will they?

i would record any 'rewindie' tracks 'live' if they were worth it (i keep meaning to do this with that 'hidden' bit on 'Hello Nasty' before 'Body Movin' cos it's one of the best things on that album)

I did that! (the Hello Nasty bit, I mean)

Plus the 2nd track on 1977, I think it's called Don't Know. It's the only reason I keep that CD, I like that song.

(I always thought no-one knew the title of that second track when I saw it on listings!)

Haha you could be right. That's what I will continue to call it, though.

Steve. I did, sorry i meant to reply and thank you. Have had a week's temp work and my personal emails seem to have fallen by the wayside a smidge. but it's now late friday afternoon and I can catch up. thanks for reminding me and thanks for forwarding that on to me. Sounds like just the kinda thing I'm after.

I really should have just emailed all that to you rather than posting it here. Woops.

Having said what I said above the only example that springs to mind at the moment is the godawful counting crows version of Big Yellow Taxi which really is punishment for making it through the end of that album. I was young-ish and fool-ish.

if you got that far thru any of their albums you deserve no better

i had to listen to that album TWICE in a bar once

It wasn't a bar I was working in was it? jest kiddin'/ I learned the error of my ways pretty swiftly. some of em anyway.

Man, i killed this thread. Sorry.