I was looking at Motown on discogs.com and wanted to see what had been released recently by anyone signed to the label today. I see that Motown is very well liked in Japan because it looks like everything's being re-released there! There's got to be interest elsewhere. It takes forever to get stuff from Japan and it's not cheap. Why hasn't the bulk of this stuff not been re-released at least in the US where it all began? Why hasn't a lot of it been made available through mp3 download? Is it a waiting game at this point since it seems like old music is slowly becoming available for download?
Out of curiousity the last few weeks I have put together a list of everything I found at
http://www.bsnpubs.com/motown/motownstory.html that were original releases and marked what was available on CD at least at Amazon, Amazon mp3, and iTunes. I am happy to find a good portion of albums, particularly the Detroit era are available as downloads. By the late 70s and 80s, the availability becomes depressing. But I see some of those titles available in Japan. Who's making this decision and why there? What is going on in Japan?
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