Rubellan wrote:It's not about room, it's about licensing. Someone once posted how certain labels view anything that deviates from a straight reissue as a "compilation", and thus it changes the cost. For example, that old Kissing the Pink reissue on Wounded Bird had repeated tracks from an included EP because it was cheaper to have the EP represented in full than it would have been to exclude the repeated tracks. However, Sony allows you to do whatever you want without it really affecting the licensing fee.
That was me, and it's correct. When I worked for Warner Bros, I pleaded with the Rhino team to reconsider their policy but they wouldn't hear of it. Even now, Sony is apparently the easiest label to work with. My best friend runs the Night Fever reissue label and has many vinyl reissues of Sony-owned titles planned. The other labels? Not so much. He did say Universal is receptive to a lot of what he wants to put out, but even for vinyl releases where he is considering bonus tracks or special packaging, the costs and guarantees often stop him from doing what he really dreams of doing.
I can relate to the whole wanting to oversee the proofs issue as well. When I was at Universal and working on the Fixx Ultimate collection, I was given a chance to review the audio, and it was a good thing - I caught a clipped intro on the single edit of "Built For The Future." But since I couldn't review the artwork proofs, I didn't get to catch that someone didn't properly capture my track annotations, and one of the chart positions listed for one of the songs (I can't recall which one offhand) is wrong. Also, a guy there wrote the liner notes; someone who doesn't know much about the band. They should have asked me to do that as well (I thought we were simply going with Adam's track-by-track notes).