I'm not really thrilled with this new trend of releasing albums with one set of exclusive material for one store and a second set for another store. I'm also a little ticked about Trisha Yearwood's new album (though less ticked than if I hadn't heard about it first). I was about to select it as a free album through BMG but then I found out that they were re-releasing the album with extra tracks on it. Of course, I'd like the extra tracks, but the free selection has come and gone and who knows when it will be available again or if the new version will even be available from BMG. Of course, I could pick it up in the store, but as referenced above, how many different versions of the second album will there be? Does anyone see this as a potential flag for a large portion of the CD industry flushing itself down the toilet? You have the CD industry crying that it's losing money yet CD's are still 18 or 19 dollars a pop if you don't know how or where to shop. You have the movie industry crying foul over losing a ton of money and yet movie tickets are coming close to 10 dollars in some metropolitan areas. Remember when both of you could go the movies for 10 dollars? I do and I'm not that old. Is any industry in the United States comfortable? The jobless rate keeps dipping, but no one seems to be getting ahead.
Prince was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. Since Steve Martin was the host, I decided to bite the bullet and watch the show. Thankfully Martin was very funny, and Prince was superb as usual. One of the sketches was Martin at the table with one of the regulars and it plays as an infomercial with the pamphlet entitled, "If you can't afford it, don't buy it." (Or at least something to that effect) Follow that up with an MSN article Monday morning about Credit Cards being used for survival debt due to emergency or lack of planning and it adds up to a nation's credit card debt that is probably coming close to the budget deficit. And yet, we have a weekend, actually just about a 4 hour block of one weekend where people will spend 2.5 million on 30 seconds of time. Considering how lame most of the commercials actually were this year, I'd say it was money well wasted. 2.5 million would buy a lot of food for an under-developed nation. Hell, 2.5 million would go a long way toward making our own homeless feel less dehumanized.