Audio of Ernst's remarks during Elvis Week

I"m not sure that they "didn't sell." How do we know that? I think of them as catalog place holders- that is, classics. They need to be in print. Just as BMG knew that the '60s and '70s boxes wouldn't match the '50s boxset (see quote above), they surely didn't press too many of the first three albums, did they? I rather doubt it.

We'll never totally agree on this, Kylan, as I think Elvis did in fact have many albums that were best sellers (have you not seen the sales figures for them?) and of course critics then and now have come along and recognized at least 5-7 of them, easily. The bigger problem is that retail is hurting and the CD era is probably dying out, so at this point, the "genre" sets are perhaps a final grab at bringing in new sales.

Interestingly enough, it appears that "Reconsider Baby" on the new R&B genre collection is a brand new DSD 2006 remaster and to be honest the sound is absolutely stunning (mastered by Vic Anesini), although I haven't compared it to the FTD set yet, which probably sounds a bit more laid back. I would not be surprised at all if "Elvis is back" would make it back into the main catalog as a DSD upgrade to the BMG reissue, all newly mastered by Vic Anesini.

P.S.: The "Loving You" BMG reissue came out in 1997 and was upgraded in 2005, so given that the "Elvis is back" BMG reissue came out in 1999, it should be upgraded in 2007, right? There must be something coming out next year other than Elvis genre collections (you would think)...

I hope you're right about that, thenexte. I noticed that Ernst did mention "Elvis is Back!" and perhaps he knows something we don't.

When BMG say the original albums ‘don’t sell’ I would guess that they are arguing that the sales of a mainstream re-issue for a title such as “Elvis Is Back” wouldn’t be comparable to the sales of a new hits or Christmas compilation.

What they don’t tell us however, is that the re-issues are never afforded the same amount of publicity as the compilations, so for the most part the public know nothing about them. Personally I find it difficult to believe that somebody that has enough interest in Elvis’ music to buy a blues compilation wouldn’t be interested by a title like “Elvis Is Back”, but such titles would need to be promoted for them to have any chance of selling.

Of course the compilations make money for BMG and help to keep Elvis in the public eye, but over the long term this policy is having a detrimental effect on how Elvis is perceived. We now have countless compilations that duplicate the same material whilst a number of equally great recordings are no longer available via mainstream records shops, and that’s were this policy is selling Elvis short.