Buying the same music over and over and over...

I've decided to be a holdout... I'm the guy that shows up at Best Buy at 10 or 10:30 on Tuesday mornings (where I've run into Curtis several times as well). Yeah, I know we're supposed to support the smaller record stores and all that, but this post isn't about that... Perhaps I'll talk about that later.

The problem with buying a release these days is that the record companies will invariably release a better version of it later. A prime example of this is with the Flaming Lips (dang, this blog is full of Flaming Lips references). Here's a brief timeline of my last few Flaming Lips purchases:

• Bought The Soft Bulletin around the time it was released.
• Bought Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots around the time it was released.
• Bought the Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots DVD/CD set when it was released.
• Bought The Soft Bulletin DVD/CD set when it was released.

Now please don't get me wrong -- I'm not bashing the Lips here. I'm a sucker for this because I love getting the 5.1 surround mixes and the bonus tracks they throw on the DVDs. But I'm not falling for this with At War With the Mystics. I'm holding on to my cash until the DVD/CD version comes out, hopefully in the fall.

But two versions of Yoshimi and Bulletin pale in comparison to some of the other repurchases in my collection. By my count, the most repurchased album in my collection is Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, with at least 8 different versions or formats purchased. Granted, I fell in love with this album while I was in high school, but that still averages out to a DSotM purchased every 2-3 years. Now that I think about it, I single-handedly kept DSotM on the Billboard album charts all those years.

Some other notable repurchases:

• I own at least 4 versions of Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys.
• I've been through at least 4 copies of A Night At the Opera by Queen.
• At least 4 versions of Kind of Blue by Miles Davis.
• Two versions of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, WTF?
• Three versions of Three Sides Live by Genesis (seems rather apropos, somehow).
• Two versions each of NIN's The Downward Spiral and With Teeth (which just came out last year, and I already have two versions...)

Granted, many of these repurchases are through different formats, such as casette, vinyl, CD, digital, etc... But many of them are expanded/extended/slightly modified versions designed specifically to get fanboy completists like me to buy the same music again and again.

I've decided I'm tired of it. I love the expanded editions and all, but I'm not going to be the first sucker out of the gate to buy the standard releases anymore. I'll hold on to my cash a little bit longer and wait for the expanded edition. I've also figured out that buying the same music over and over is keeping me from discovering new music. That $20 I'm spending on an expanded edition probably could have purchased two sale CDs from new artists. Guess it all comes down to whether we want to buy what we already know, or experiment a bit? Sadly, much of the public, including myself, seems to buy what we already know.

Speaking of buying the same thing in different formats, I just did a quick Pink Floyd search on Amazon, and it looks like Floyd is releasing Pulse as a concert DVD. But that cover looks a tad bit similar to the cover of the Warp Vision DVD that came out a couple of years ago...