Broken Promises, Broken Habits

This is getting ridiculous. Duran Duran’s EMI reissues have suffered yet another delay – the third or fourth this year. The deluxe editions of Duran Duran and Seven and the Ragged Tiger, previously set for March 30 and April 20, have now been bumped to May 18. This complements the recent news that the next wave of reissues – covering Notorious and Big Thing – will hit stores on July 6 instead of the planned June date. (The deluxe reissue of side-project Arcadia’s So Red the Rose is still set for April 20.)

There are a number of problems wrong with this situation – namely, the fact that U.K. audiences are still getting these titles on their intended March release date and the ongoing calendar shuffle scuttles EMI’s paper-thin plans to make these reissues chronological (itself scuttled by the fact that Rio, the band’s second LP, was the first one to be reissued).

But there are bigger problems too – problems that, if left unchecked, could doom the catalogue industry as it stands and hurt any future chances of those old songs being anything close to a sure thing again.