Remasters and Reissues A Look Back

Original Story by Aaron J Sams (2024-07-12)

Today U2 took a planned pause in their “To Love and Only Love“ collection of remastered singles. Up until now, there has been a newly reissued single every two weeks since the project started. We expect the final singles to resume soon after skipping this week. Five singles are left to be issued, and the band are expected to wrap up in September with “Electrical Storm”. (In 2021 when working on updates to their YouTube channel, U2 also took the month of July off, this is part of their traditional time off.)

It is obvious via the comments we see that many are enjoying these newly remastered singles on streaming services and were missing having a release today. U2’s efforts to keep their discography accessible through new remasters and releases also has brought some negative comments. These comments suggest we would never see these types of efforts when U2 was a younger band. We see suggestions that these reissued singles are taking advantage of their fanbase for money. And we see comments about the band wasting time doing work on these old singles that we already have.

U2 reissuing their material isn’t new. Those who have been collecting for a while will tell you U2 have been remastering and reissuing their releases since the start of their career, and it’s been a constant process since 1979. We’ll dig in and look at some of these programs over the years.

New Formats Rising

During the career of U2 we’ve seen vinyl peak, decline, and decline again. Cassettes have come and gone. CDs took over and declined again. With the establishment of iTunes in the 2000s it looked like online music purchases would stay around for a while, but these days most people have moved along again and are getting their music via streaming services. Music streaming makes up 84% of the US music industry revenue, and brings in far more money than CD, digital downloads, or vinyl. More music is consumed via these streaming services now than is purchased in any physical format, or any digital format. You no longer own the tracks, but instead pay a subscription fee to listen to as many tracks as you might want, or use a free service which is often supported by ads. Not much of U2’s music has been available on these services beyond the albums to date, and what has been available has often been poorly curated, and of varying quality. U2 are remastering all of their singles, with the current focus being on the singles between “Discotheque” and “Electrical Storm”. Just like they did as other formats have come along, U2 are embracing streaming, and making sure their music can be heard, and at the best quality.

As new formats came along U2 would often take a step backwards and reissue older material as well. When the CD came to popularity in the late 1980s, U2 would go back and reissue a number of old singles in that format. Up until the release of The Joshua Tree release, none of their singles had been available on CD prior. “Fire”, “New Year’s Day”, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and “The Unforgettable Fire” were all issued towards the end of the 1980s in Europe, and they were popular. So popular, they often went back to print for a new pressing as previous runs sold out. For many these CDs were an opportunity to hear some of the earlier music that had been less accessible on vinyl. It isn’t just singles, U2 have been quick to push out albums in new formats as they become popular. When CDs started taking off in the 1980s, The Joshua Tree was the first album released at the same time on CD, cassette, and LP. But the band did go back and reissue their earlier albums on CD as well. Likewise when digital cassettes became a new format in the early 90s, U2 released a number of older albums in the format to test the waters including The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, Rattle and Hum, Achtung Baby and Zooropa as well as their then current album Original Soundtracks 1.

As well, U2 have often reissued new pressings of records as the older versions begin to run out of inventory. There’s a number of items in U2’s catalog that are continually repressed every couple of years to keep inventory available in stores. In some countries its easy to spot a repressing. In Japan, every three or four years, U2’s entire catalog has been getting repressed on CD since the early nineties. These repressings all contain a new catalog number, and different OBI artwork. In other countries, it may be difficult to spot a new pressing, as there is little to differentiate between earlier.

Is U2 making a fortune off of putting B-sides and rare tracks up on streaming services? It’s unlikely it brings in much. These are going to be consumed at a lower rate than the hits, or even the album tracks. But as more and more people turn to streaming, if your music isn’t on there, you lose listeners who are leaving their CDs and vinyl behind.

Three? Try Dozens

As copies of an album or a single sell, you also have to replenish supply or there is nothing there for fans to buy. As copies start to become scarce, U2 have often put out new versions of these older pressings to keep a supply available for those who might wish to buy them. Their first single “Three”, initially released in September 1979 was a limited 12-Inch on CBS Records. It sold out quickly, leading to U2’s first placement on the Irish charts. The band would reissue the 12-inch at least six times, the first reissue being in 1979 to get import copies into the record stores in London before the band toured there in December.

In 1982 and 1983, U2 were gaining popularity, and the older singles were hard to find. “Three” was one of four singles repressed on 7-Inch vinyl issued together as a collectors pack. As new fans discovered U2, it offered an inexpensive way to get the older material that had been out of print for some time. And while the bulk of those sets were done in black vinyl, the band’s first experiments with coloured vinyl started there. Sets were produced that included the records on yellow, orange, or even white vinyl.

The band didn’t stop there. In 1985, as cassette singles were starting to gain in popularity, “Three” was once again issued. This time the cover was different, but it was the same single otherwise.

Remastering Old Tunes

As new formats have come along, technology has improved, and in U2’s case, they’ve often gone back to attempt to improve the sound quality of their releases. When they change the music in a significant manner, it is called remastering. Sometimes these new versions are released with little fanfare, and other times U2 make a bigger fuss out of things. Those reissues of “Three” on 12-Inch? Later pressings used a different master from the earlier ones, changing volume levels and resulting in a different sound, with the early releases being louder than what would follow. (On “11 O’Clock Tick Tock” released a few months later, two different versions of the title track were on the 7-Inch depending on whether you got an early pressing or later pressing.) In 1997, the band released three albums through the Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs series which featured remastering from the original sound tapes as a major selling point.

The 12 singles that make up “To Love and Only Love” are the first time these songs are being released in higher resolution musical formats. That means the quality is better than CD, although there’s some discussion whether the human ear can pick up on those improved changes or not. They are a huge jump forward from the quality that was issued in The Complete U2 on iTunes in 2004. And the changes to each single are being done with the quality of the whole set in mind. The volume has been standardized across the set, which means when you listen to a single from the 80s followed by one from the 00s there’s not a huge increase in sound. And the band has been fixing some mastering issues as they go. Some of the mastering in the late 1990s saw the volume turned way up, often to the point where sound information was lost. (A phenomenon called ‘clipping’) These new masters have fixed some of the tracks which had these issues on CD. These new releases do sound pretty good.

Slowing Down Work

The current “To Love and Only Love” project was announced to contain 12 singles. The work on all of these was done some time ago. The releases have all been remastered, and the artwork recreated. U2 isn’t in the studio working on these each week. (The break this week has been planned since the start from what we’ve been told, and we should get the next near the end of the month.) These releases aren’t holding up work on a new album. If we didn’t have these remastered singles coming out, we’d likely have nothing coming out at this time, and little to talk about until the new album is ready.

Do you have to go out and buy these releases? That’s the beauty of streaming. These releases are available each week for free on YouTube. You don’t need to spend a cent to check out these new remasters of the singles. Go to the U2 page on YouTube, and look for the ‘releases’ tab. You’ll find all of these singles available if you do want to check them out. We understand that they aren’t for everyone. But there are communities out there who are excited for these new remastered digital singles, and are talking about the changes made, the improved sound, and looking forward to the next. Many who subscribe to streaming services are enjoying having access to these tracks without having to dig out a CD, if they even still have a CD from 30 years ago. And a number of fans are discovering these tracks for the first time through this digital collection.

This work to clean up their online offerings has been underway for sometime. In 2017 U2 introduced brand new albums in iTunes under their “Mastered for iTunes“ program. (These new masters have also been used for some vinyl pressings since that time.) More recently they made an album available in Dolby Atmos for the first time with the release of Achtung Baby earlier this year. In September 2020 the band cleaned up their YouTube channel, making many of their promotional videos available for the first time, and often in higher quality than before. And at this point, most of U2’s singles from 1993 to 2019 have been reissued to streaming services. Other artists are doing the same. Madonna, Duran Duran, Depeche Mode and others are all going through similar work.

We’d all love a new album, or a new single, or other new content, and those things will come. Look upon these new refreshed versions of old tracks as a bonus right now rather than a replacement for other things. YouTube is a great way to check them out free of charge if you have an interest. If you don’t? Join us in patiently waiting for news of a new album as well.

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