The Death of The Greatest Hits / Compilation Music Album

The greatest hits compact disc produced by major record labels is dying and its slow death can be directly attributed to the turbulent music industry's lack of understanding of the internet.

Extremely Profitable

The greatest hits CD from its inception was an enormous money maker for labels. As soon as the artist release two decent records, a label would encourage them to compile their greatest hits and re-package songs that the label already subsidized. However, with iTunes and other music downloading locations, there is no need for a greatest hits album, because you can make it yourself. You can also custom tailor it to your personal liking. No longer will you have to hear the artist's or label's favorite songs, now you can actually hear your version of a band's greatest hits.

This problem has led many bands and labels to confusion about when and what to compose their greatest hits albums with. Many consumers view the greatest hits album with great disdain and that it is a label's attempt to grab more money from the consumer. This dichotomy has led labels to pressure bands to release the greatest hits album even sooner.

Conflict Between Artist and Label

The Sacramento, California, band Cake (its hits include "The Distance" and "Short Skirt, Long Jacket") was requested by its former label, Columbia Records to make a greatest-hits album. With only a handful of well-known albums to its name, the band judged a best-of disc to be premature. They refused, prompting a legal fight between Cake and Columbia.

In the end, Cake left to form its own label, Upbeat Records, and will instead release "B-sides and Rarities" on October 2, 2007 with a live disc to follow this fall.

"I have mixed feelings about greatest-hits albums," said Cake lead singer and guitarist John McCrea. "They're a force that can be used for good or evil."

"For us at that point, we felt like it wasn't the appropriate moment -- that we hadn't existed long enough to warrant some sort of wistful retrospection. It kind of reeked of desperation."

Too Early?

In recent years, many artists including Hilary Duff, Sugar Ray and Britney Spears, have released greatest hits albums early in their careers.

The proliferation of iTunes and numerous illegal downloading destinations have given consumers the entire access to a band's library and has directly led to the decline in greatest hits sales. Despite the number, greatest hits discs are still very profitable to labels. The songs have been produced, therefore the main cost involves marketing and promotion.

To entice to allure of a greatest hits CD, labels are accompanying them with unreleased material, (which often finds its way onto the downloading sites) and appealing packaging.

Several prominent bands have chosen to holdout, including Metallica, Radiohead, AC/DC and Phish. As many other bands, these bands feel that the greatest hits cd degrades the overall integrity of the primary albums. AC/DC and Radiohead have even gone so far to refuse to add their musical collections to iTunes, where their albums would be cut to single tracks.

Does The Label Need Consent To Produce?

The determination of whether a label needs consent to produce a greatest hits CD varies from contract to contract. The enormous amount of money at stake makes the greatest hits cd a priority, because catalog sales account for about 40-50 percent of a label's annual gross.

"If an artist has a say in these kind of things, you'd think that they'd want a greatest-hits record to be an intro to the band as a way to guide you into buying the rest of the records as opposed to being a substitute," said Steve Kandell, deputy editor of Spin magazine.

Greatest hits records have been known to become enormously successful, for example the Eagles "Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) which is the greatest selling album in the U.S. Also, Bob Marley's "Legend" was and remains a high selling album.

On the other end there are band such as Aerosmith and U2 who have been criticized for consistently releasing greatest hits albums. U2 followed 1998's "The Best of 1980-1990" and 2002's "The Best of 1990-2000" with 2006's "U218 Singles." Last year's "Devil's Got a New Disguise: The Very Best of Aerosmith" was the band's eighth compilation over the course of their 27-year career.

"There's a reason why it doesn't seem very artistic: it's not. It's a commercial ploy," says McCrea. "That said, there are some terrific greatest-hits albums."

In Summary

iTunes and music downloads are here to stay and they are only going to get more and more users with time. Record companies must embrace the technology and understand how the technology can be used to their benefit instead of sticking to the old model and attempting to bring lawsuits against violators. The greatest hits compilation album may be dying, but greatest compilations will live on in each and every one of our computers.