[Slowhand] Yet another "Clapton" bonus track

[Jon Maclean]

I've just read on Where's Eric! that the UK Amazon digital version of the album will contain an extra track "Midnight Hour Blues", which is not available on any of the previously announced versions.
Pardon me Mr Clapton, but this whole situation sucks.
As it stands, in order to obtain all the tracks being made available in the various general and exclusive releases, one would need to buy the album at least 4 times. Is this how the record industry is belatedly reacting to digital downloading? I imagine that 6 or 12 months down the track, the album will be re-issued with most of the bonus tracks included, but for those (like me) who would like to obtain all the tracks, it would be a risk waiting for this to eventuate. I would be happy to pay the price of a double CD and get all the tracks in one hit, if that were made available right now.
Clapton himself may well argue that he hands a batch of completed tracks over to Reprise to release and it is up to them as to how they market and sell the tracks. But this would be a giant cop-out on Clapton's part. To his many fans who have steadfastly supported him over the years, this situation is a real slap in the face, and can be seen as nothing more than blatant greed on behalf of an industry that has not kept up with consumer trends. As I stated before, this sort of marketing only encourages illegal copying and downloading, which is something the record companies are continuously complaining about.
It is tempting to forward this view to the record company itself, but I know from experience that record companies are less interested in customer satisfaction than banks, so there would be no point.

I think that's about all I can say on the topic.
Cheers,
Jon


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