‘Limited Edition’ or Marketing Ploy?

Buy it. Buy it now. In fact, buy six--someday they might be worth something.

That’s the unstated pitch some record companies are using to sell readily-available albums by presenting them as collectibles or fleeting “limited editions.”

And they’re dangling some big names--the Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Queen and, most prominently, the season’s seemingly ubiquitous Garth Brooks.

The new Brooks album, “Double Live,” hit store shelves last month with six different covers, including one embossed with a shiny “first edition” seal that suggests a certain limited-edition quality, even though a million copies of each cover were sent out.

“I know for a fact that some fans went out and bought 12--two of each cover so they keep one unopened,” said Pat Quigley, president of Brooks’ label, Capitol Nashville. “Collectibility works very well for us. . . . Garth has devoted fans.”

Indeed, the fans scooping up extra copies helped the album enjoy the best first-week sales in music history with 1.08 million copies sold.

But some industry insiders are decrying the multiple covers and similar tactics as crass maneuvers to exploit and mislead fans.

“It’s like the salespeople say in meetings, ‘Yeah it’s a limited edition--limited to what we can sell,’ ” said Rick Wietsma, an executive vice president of WEA Inc. who oversees the production of albums on the Warner, Elektra and Atlantic labels. “There are things being put out now in packaging designed to make people think it’s unique or limited and that’s really not the case.”

True limited-edition albums, usually produced only by the hundreds or thousands, are issued every year as promotional tools or collectors’ items aimed at the most devoted fans. The packaging is often elaborate or unusual--wood crates, metal shells, perfumed boxes, padded fabric casings--or the music itself is culled from rare performances or catalogs.

But now mass-manufactured albums are arriving on shelves with the earmarks of collectibles. For example, a new repackaging of Frank Sinatra’s “Duets” albums is labeled “limited edition,” the same phrase that appears on a new Queen box set, even though both collections are widely available. And last month, the copies of “The Best of U2: 1980-1990” that went on sale in Canada were numbered, prompting some U.S. fans to start a quest for them, even though they are otherwise identical to the stateside version.

The term “limited edition” is routinely tacked onto the titles of albums collecting the works of veteran artists to add to the appeal of the product, but rarely is the term meaningful, says Gary Johnson, co-owner of Rockaway Records, a Los Angeles shop that caters to collectors. “It’s a nebulous term, granted, but they even put it on stuff that comes out with 50,000 copies,” Johnson said.

In the case of Brooks, 1 million copies of an album stamped “first edition” drew cynical responses from the music industry.

“That doesn’t seem to be a bonus for the fan, that seems a little more like greed to me,” said Jeff Magid, who oversees production for Geffen Music. “The intention is to sell two or three instead of one.”

Quigley acknowledges that his label “has been bombed” by industry criticism for the multiple covers and other marketing tactics for the Brooks album, but he added that fans “deserve marketing” and that music “needs to be more of a collectible if it’s going to grow in pop culture.”

The strategy isn’t completely new--in fact, copies of a new remastering of the Beatles’ so-called “White Album” bear serial numbers, just like the original 1968 vinyl release--and the assorted specialty packagings through the years have been gobbled up by a vast collectors market.

But the most coveted albums, the ones that qualify as true collectibles, were produced in small numbers and were never marketed as keepsakes, points out Pete Howard, publisher of ICE, a newsletter for music fans.

“I’m a serious collector myself, and I know if something proclaims itself a collectible, it usually isn’t,” Howard said. “Not to be a snob, but collectors snicker and sneer at something that was made to be a collectible.”

Quigley disagrees.

He says the Brooks first edition albums will become valuable in the years to come, joining the collectors’ market that sees vintage Elvis Presley and Beatles records fetch hundreds of dollars. But Johnson, who can get $600 at his store for a mint copy of Presley’s 1957 Christmas album, doubts that today’s commonly sold compact discs will ever ascend into the realm of collectibles.

Johnson and Howard point out that the sheer number of albums produced today--along with the durability of compact discs compared to vinyl LPs--makes it unlikely there will ever be a scarcity. “Unlike those old records, no one is going to wear them out as often or throw them away and make them rare,” Howard said.

Still, what’s the harm of adding a serial number, special seal or some other flourish to compact disc packaging to entice fans? One problem is that some of the special packages mean extra production costs and, sometimes, a higher price, said George Scarlett, vice president of product management for the Tower retail chain. A recent KISS album, for example, was released with four different covers, which meant an additional $4 was tacked on to the album’s price tag, Scarlett said.

“It was hard for our customers not to see it as a rip-off,” Scarlett said. “But I’m sure we had fans who bought all four. It’s a way to get people to buy more than one, and no merchant on Earth is going to gripe about that. But as a consumer, I like fun collectibles, I like unique collectibles. But mass-market collectibles? That sounds like price gouging.”