In principle I agree with you but to be honest I don't know if I loathe what they are doing with Bowie because he wouldn't approve or just because I find it extremely annoying. The live sets available only on their website take the cake for the most idiotic release plan of the last years for any major artist.
Those Live Adventures releases were just designed to annoy the most people in the fastest time possible. If they'd have taken all the copies to the top of the Chrysler building and thrown them from the top floor the distribution would have been a whole lot better. Brilliant they were not!
the promo copies of neil young's 'time fades away". not sure how many got out, but he stopped it real quick.
Ween - Paintin the Town Brown (1999) From Wikipedia: This album was initially meant to be the first release on Ween's own record label Chocodog, but Elektra took the project away from the group and released it themselves. This would serve as part of the basis for Ween's departure from Elektra.
Hardly the only Jonathan Richman album, but you could make a case for its being the only Modern Lovers album.
WRONG! At the time of his death Bowie (and since his death, his estate) owned all his masters (from 1969 onward). The record companies therefore absolutely could NOT just release anything they wanted, as they are just DISTRIBUTING the records that Bowie/his estate who owns/controls them gave them to release. So unless you are arguing that the record company is somehow breaking into the Bowie vault (wherever its located) and are stealing his unreleased tapes and basically bootlegging them...(and if so, where are the resulting lawsuits?) EVERYTHING that gets released is done with Bowie's approval (as part of his reported "10 year plan" of posthumous releases) or his estate's at bare minimum agreement (but more often direct instigation). Repackages NEED the estate's sign-off, and as far as unreleased material goes, it gets prepared for release by people of Bowie's choosing that he had worked with in his lifetime (like Visconti, or the musicians who re-recorded new music for the remake of the NLMD album, etc...). I'm certainly VERY ambivalent about that one (the re-recorded NLMD) since Bowie wasn't there to oversee it/approve the final result, but he DID instigate it happening, unless you believe the estate (+Visconti etc) is lying about that. Even if you do believe they are lying, it would be them lying - NOT the record company, as the record company isn't in charge of posthumous releases - the estate is (with input from Bowie via his reported "ten year plan" whatever that was - however specific or vague). You can blame Iman, Duncan, Bowie's decades long serving personal assistant (if she's still involved), Visconti, or even Bowie himself for what gets released posthumously if you want, but you can't justifiably/logically blame the record company, as they are just releasing what the estate prepares and gives them to release.
want to hear all the Deram unreleased songs !! don't think any of the archival releases from his pre-Mercury recordings have included any of them.
