Why do record co. delay releases so much?

[u2valleygirl]

Okay, so I've been waiting for Live's new album The River to be released. It was supposed to be released in Nov., then got pushed to May, now it's pushed back to June.

It's already been released in Holland so it's finished but I just can't understand what the stategy is for delays.

Does anyone know why record companies do this?

 

[indra]

Several things can be behind it.

A band I like has had a couple of cds delayed in the past few years. The first one was delayed due to a manufacturing problem. It ended up being released in one country (Australia) several months before being released eleswhere. And their new album is just going to be released next week, but has been ready for over a year. With this one the main thing holding it back was that an album they released as kind of a quick side project (on a different label from their main one) got more attention than they expected and the main record label wanted to release that album and have them promote and tour for it.

Plus this band, like many smaller bands, has different labels in different countries, so it's not always possible to coordinate release dates as the big guns do. Some countries don't get domestic releases for several years after the release by a band's main label.

Good thing it's fairly easy to import cds.