Something which is a real bug bearer of mine, something that really brings my blood to a proverbial boil is when you happily show your loyalty to an artist, band, songwriter, group of Gregorian Nuns or whoever happens to be tearing up the charts at the time, by pre-ordering their latest release, your reasons for which can usually be catigorized as following;

1. you have been eagerly anticipating this record for most of your recent existence and simply cannot bear to think that other ordinary people in the world like yourself should have the opportunity to listen to this record on the day of release before you should.
2. you support the band, and/or the label and out of respect either for their grueling tour schedule, blog and website updates about how hard they worked on the record, or just for the band in general, you reciprocate that in the form of pre-ordering the album
3. any other miscellanious reason like the artwork looks nice?

only to get let down.

You pre-order their release and you either like it or hate it, whatever and then about 3 or 6 or 9 or even 12 months later they re-release it with “bonus” tracks and you are like: “W. T. F.”
The usual scenario is that you hear a new song on T.V or on the radio or on their myspace and think ‘oh wow, I can’t wait for to hear the next record!” only to faced with the soul crushing, stomach churning disappointment when you discover that ‘Track X’ is going to be featured as bonus content on the re-release of a record that you already flipping own.

“FUUUUUUUUUUUUU”.

This a real annoying turn of events for me, and not-so-much because so many of the bands that I follow have been guilty of releasing, re-releasing and re-re-releasing their records. To name and shame a few:

1. Friendly Fires -s/t with Kiss Of Life, now a bonus track on their debut.
2. Florence and the Machine - Lungs with more bonus content than I can be bothered to list. By my reckoning it’s been released and re-released about 64 times now.
3. Bloc Party - Intimacy with One More Chance
4. Ellie Goulding - Lights with *ahem* Lights which, ok, is an ITunes exclusive, but it will also feature on the coming re-issue ‘Bright Lights’

There are others that escape me right now, but you get the point I’m trying to illustrate?

In my not so humble opinion, and speaking as perhaps one of the last of a dying breed of music consumers that still order shiny round things called CD’s that used to be around before ITunes and MP3 players, would it not be too much to ask of musicians and record companies that those amongst your fan base who are loyal enough to effectively provide an angel investment by pre-ordering a record receive some kind of remittance when you re-release that same record with a bonus song?! Perhaps a download link to download the track for 39p? Or whatever is cheaper than the going rate for a song from Amazon MP3? It really is quite a humble request considering that you effectively render our precious pre-release record redundant when you slap a tasty and catchy bonus single on there.

I’m sure there are a 1001 industry arguements for this kind of practice, whether it be to revive falling sales of a debut album, or perhaps purely to keep an artist/singer/songwriter/Gregorian Nun in the spotlight while they are on a particularly lengthy stint between album number X and album number Y, but I’m sure it cannot hurt to somehow reward the disconcerting music fan, who faithfully pre-orders a record with, largely, honest attentions only to be let down when the same record hits the shelves with that track that they have grown to love, I mean nobody wants to buy the same album twice just for one or maybe two songs do they? It really is an awful practice that has been around, i’m sure, for alot longer than recent memory, but unfortunately it still happens today and quite a heavy majority of musicians and record labels are guilty of it.