The Complete Albums 1970-1998

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Warner Bros/Reprise Albums 1970-1998
Click on album name for song listing

Buy 146 song MP3 album from Amazon.com (US)
No longer available for download

Buy 146 song MP3 album from Amazon.co.uk (UK)
No longer available for download

Yes, this is an amazing "bargain," "deal," whatever you want to call it. If you don't already have all the albums, or you have them on CD but haven't ripped them to mp3 to play on your computer or your handheld device, this is a no-brainer. In fact, if you are missing even one album, it pays to buy this MP3 album because, at its current price, it is cheaper than the usual price of most if not all of the individual MP3 albums.

It is time to rejoice! Or is it? I am definitely not rejoincing because this represents the final nail in the coffin for music ownership. CDs are still preferred by those of us who grew up with vinyl albums, and even though the print is small, we still appreciate the album artwork that comes with most CDs. When albums are sold online by the big players, they never (or almost never?) include the equivalent of the old album art which included mulitple pictures, full credits, song lyrics and usually some insight into the album as a whole, or a fairly long writeup about the artist.

 

But what we get is only a small part of the problem; the big part is what the artists get. And, while they still get their songwriter royalties, times two if they are also the publisher, it's a tiny step from MP3 ownership to streaming where the artists get almost nothing. I see this move by Warner as a not so subtle push to streaming, where the only way the artist can make any meaningful amount of money is by touring and selling "merchandise." And that works pretty well for the top names, who can sell t-shirts for $45 and sweatshirts for $75 (those are real numbers), but it doesn't work for anybody else. And artists who are songwriters first can no longer see a career where they can earn decent money if a top name performer records one of their songs, and - in the past - some money selling CDs when they perform. So, the question is, who will write the songs? Robots, I guess.

The collection of songs needs no introduction; even if one is not already a Lightfoot fan, the song titles speak for themselves. All the chart hits and popular radio cuts are here ("If You Could Read My Mind," "Sundown," "Carefree Highway," "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," "Rainy Day People") as well as other popular songs that were A or B sides of Warner singles ("The Pony Man," "Talking in Your Sleep," "Beautiful," "Don Quixote,"Cherokee Bend," "The House You Live In," "Race Among The Ruins," ...); well, too many to name. And deep album cuts like my favorite "Sit Down Young Stranger" are just icing on the cake.

This new MP3 album is available now from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk; not yet on Amazon Canada, as far as I know. Downloads must be licensed for each country, so at this time purchase is available only to people in the US and UK. I assume that it will be available from Amazon Canada, but I don't think that people outside of Canada can even see MP3s; let me know if you see it on sale there so I can update this article. Also, it appears not to be available from Apple. Again, I don't know what the future may bring, nor do I know if this album will remain available at this price.