I was in HMV yesterday, and I saw that Warners/R.E.M. have rereleased all their post-Document albums with an extra DVD. The DVD has a DVD-Audio mix of the album, lyrics (horror!), plus documentaries about the making of the record. How annoying is that? I imagine that most people who are going to be interested in that sort of thing are probably likely to be R.E.M. fans in the first place, so there's a good chance that they already have all the albums. If they sold a separate DVD set with the documentaries on, that'd be fine (and if they do, let me know, because I can't find it), but otherwise, it just smacks of Warners ripping fans off. Shock, eh?

(what's worse is that the DVDs themselves are a missed opportunity. Shouldn't they include the music videos for the singles from each album? Oh, but that'd cut into the sales of the video DVD, and we can't have that, can we?)

In other news, it looks as if the new Annie single, Heartbeat is going to flop this week. It's #50 in the mid-week chart, which is depressing when you consider that you can sell about five hundred copies and get a Top 40 hit these days. I have a feeling that Anniemal is going to end up as one of the lost pop albums of this decade. I think the singles chart isn't long for this world, even with the merging with the download figures. Did you know that Moby and R.E.M. had singles out this week? Do they? Elvis' ghost stalks the chart, with embarrassingly low Top 5 sales every week, as the record company scrambles to outrun the public domain. Will EMI do the same when The Beatles' recordings become public property?

The singles market is doomed. But what will replace it? Record companies make most of their money from albums, yes, but that's mainly for established acts. Where will the next generation of pop come from?