It's one of the biggest headlines catalogue music fans have been waiting decades to hear - if not necessarily in the context they'd like.
Today, Bruce Springsteen announced ten of his albums from across his entire discography have been newly remastered from the original analogue tapes by Bob Ludwig. The list includes five classic LPs - Springsteen's first four albums Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973), The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle (1973), Born to Run (1975), Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) and Born in the U.S.A. (1984) - and five recent ones - We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006), Working on a Dream (2009), The Promise (2010), Wrecking Ball (2012) and the just-released High Hopes. While Born to Run, Darkness and the Darkness-era outtakes set The Promise were all significantly improved for remastered box set treatments in recent years, this marks the first time that anything has been done to the first two albums (as manager Jon Landau had alluded to earlier this year) or the celebrated Born in the U.S.A. since they were first transferred to CD some three decades ago.
These albums, mastered by Ludwig under the personal supervision of Springsteen and his engineer Toby Scott, were indeed sourced from the original tapes, newly transferred by Jamie Howarth of Plangent Process. The Plangent Process playback system is lauded for its ability to correct pitch errors and other distortions in the magnetic tape over time, allowing for what may be the most detailed take on Springsteen and The E Street Band's sound.
Now: all of this is great news so far, which was an attempt to steel you against the not-so-great news: these 10 masters so far currently only exist as Mastered for iTunes titles. While the MFiT process as a guideline starts with 96 kHz/24-bit resolution masters - well beyond the quality of a compact disc - these masters will be ostensibly compressed to some degree in order to fit as an AAC file.
Which, of course, begs the question: will these new remasters be available in some other capacity? Certainly services like HD Tracks would post the remasters as lossless files. And of course, there's the idea of remastered CDs - a practice that Springsteen's catalogue - which, alongside that of Prince's, is probably the most glaring in this respect - has largely evaded over the years. (That doesn't even consider if other albums - say, The River (1980) or Nebraska (1982) - will be restored by Ludwig and company.)
We've reached out to Sony Music for comment on the matter of possible physical releases of these new Bruce Springsteen masters, which would certainly be one of 2014's bigger stories on the catalogue/reissue beat were it to happen. When we find out, we'll make sure you, our treasured reader, is kept in the know.
Until then? As a wise man once said, "Show a little faith - there's magic in the night."
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So best to wait to see if they release the cd's?
They'd be crazy not to, wouldn't they?
They still make CD's?
"these masters will be ostensibly compressed"? why "ostensibly"? they will _necessarily_ be compressed.
given the horrible noise compression and digital artefacts on Springsteen's albums since the mid-1990s (particularly bad on the last few releases), which he seems not to notice, the Boss is hardly the man I would trust to oversee new masters of his own material. 🙁
I really want physical editions. Sorry, but I think I'm safe in presuming the main market for these would be CD or vinyl buyers.
So, the remastering on these are better than those from the previous reissues? So, what you are saying is that I threw away a wad of money on the Born To Run set a while back?
Would love deluxe editions of The River, Nebraska, BITUSA & Tunnel Of Love.....
Unfortunately ladies and gentlemen the CD is becoming extinct. This year there will be a number of artists that will only release their music via digital distribution. Economics, convenience and instant gratification is driving this market. I really like these reissue labels but most are hurting ... just ask Sundazed, Iconclassic, Friday Music, Collectors choice and many others about their margins. It's a real shame.
Yes, CD's are on the way out, but it's a long goodbye. If they're still releasing CD's of obscure acts-and they still are--they are obviously going to be releasing new and archival material by major artists in a physical format for probably a few more years. And don't forget, for all the ink spilled about vinyl, it's still a niche format. CD's still outsell vinyl editions. And who knows, just as vinyl made a comeback after it was declared dead, CD's may still get a second life....
I would imagine that the "average" buyer/rebuyer for these titles is not someone looking for an upgraded edition, but rather someone who doesn't buy CDs (or stopped buying them some time ago) and/or doesn't understand how to convert them to files in iTunes.
We readers of websites like TheSecondDisc are too small an audience to prioritize. We may still see some deluxe editions come out on CD, but these will be high-priced boutique/collector items.
Selling music commercially is about moving units, not finessing individual sales. I believe that the music industry still wants to tap baby-boomer wallets, and it realizes that the majority of these people need to find recognizable-to-them products in iTunes. Most geezers aren't going to look to hard to find music. It needs to be shown to them in banner ads and suggestion boxes. Remastering old titles "for iTunes" is a perfect window to promoting those titles in the iTunes marketplace!
This is "now", and we are "then": it happened to our parents, and to their parents too...
Bruce and Jon Landau have to know there is still decent physical demand for the after mentioned titles, right?
That's just it, though...IS there still "decent" demand? "Decent," of course, being defined by the industry execs who make these decisions. Put another way, it doesn't matter how you or I feel about it, or how badly we want the item in question. What matters is whether the prospective sellers are optimistic about the potential sales figures. Yes, I'll be bummed if Greetings, Wild, and Born never get a physical remaster, but I can't act as though it's a given that it's financially justifiable (especially since the industry's idea of what's "justifiable" might be way different than mine, but that's a whole other tangent).
Seth nailed it above regarding the numbers at play with the general population vs. audiophile enthusiasts. Not a knock against TSD, but it's easy to end up in an echo-chamber internet bubble and lose sight of the larger world. I can't remember how many times I've gotten strange looks from people when the concept of buying physical CDs comes up. For vast swaths of the public, it's just not the norm anymore. (And honestly, I think the only reason it hasn't already hit the DVD/Blu-ray market to the same extent is the much larger storage needs of video, which will likely be less and less of an issue as technology keeps advancing.)
The one bright spot is that audiophile manufacturers are recognizing this shift in music distribution. Over the past few years ... Bryston, Linn & Naim have all put out products that are able to do wonders with these lossy files. I have been playing the Black Sabbath mastered for iTunes through my Naim Uniti2. Surprisingly the old warner brother edition of Paranoid & Master of Reality (ripped to ALAC) only marginally better on the high frequencies!
I wonder if these remasters are the source of the 44.1 khz / 24-bit downloads available from Qobuz in France? Some have been available since December.
I bought the first two albums from Qobuz when they first appeared at the tail end of the last year. Greetings seemed a marginal improvement however The Wild, The Innocent etc was especially good. I'm not jumping in on these itunes files (yet) but I will consider the additional downloads now available on Qobuz.
Ideally I'd like a CD set of the remasters and it crossed my mind that there is one major Sony artist who has yet to be given the "complete" album box set collection treatment like Dylan received last year. Fingers crossed.
Although I held no real hope it would ever happen, it is still disappointing to see what may be our only chance to get those rare BITU-era single remixes go by without even one of them tacked on as a bonus track.
Sony wants to do something special for Born In The USA's 30th anniversary — though it was reported on this site that Bruce's management is looking at expanding The River as well, much like it did the last two.
To me, this is Sony doing like Hear Music is doing with Paul McCartney: re-releasing new masters for iTunes, but saving all the extra material for big anniversary/archival editions that will be released wide. This way you don't have to go and buy an extra copy of The River, Nebraska or Born In The USA again when they become part of a box set the following year.
For all this talk of how dead the CD is, The Second Disc covered approximately 500 physical catalogue-related releases last year...and I know we missed more than a few! There's still a sizable market for physical product...even if it's a far cry from years past and dwindling each year due to a shifting paradigm. I wouldn't call the gravedigger quite yet, friends, nor would I expect there to come a time when physical product (niche or otherwise) isn't available in one format or another.
Sony must be completely daft to not realize that some kind of rights deal with Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab would only be to their benefit. Every Bruce fan with or without a job would find a way to snap up superior sounding versions of the back catalogue. I mean, what's to lose here?