Wednesday, April 13, 2005

CD/DVD combo, a winner!

DualDisc: Double the format, double the fun | csmonitor.com

"Record labels have also noticed that their cousins, the film studios, are selling billions of DVDs by stuffing them with bonus features. That's led record executives to conclude that music buyers can be enticed by new albums or back-catalogue reissues by adding similar extras to DualDiscs, which have the capacity for 30 minutes of video in addition to a surround-sound mix. For example, a reissue of Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue" includes a documentary about the making of the celebrated work. The Springsteen album, which will retail for the price of a regular CD, includes, among other things, footage of the Boss playing songs acoustically. It's surely only a matter of time until some artist includes a "commentary track" to play over the music."

This is a good direction, and hopefully a good sign that future U2 releases will be bundled with goodies usually left on the cutting room floor. U2 included the Unforgettable Fire documentary on the Slane DVD, and that was a great bonus. The digital box set has about a dozen previously unreleased tunes, many of them outtakes that would normally have gone unreleased. Hopefully U2 will include those tracks as bonus material on a future release. Yes, give us more!