Taste? What's that?
I'm a proud owner of the Have a Nice Decade boxed set -- seven CDs of '70s hits from the good people at Rhino Records. While there are some gems in there, there's also a lot of crap that seems destined only for the sick and twisted trivia minds out there (like myself). It doesn't help that they didn't get rights from a lot of top artists (fat Elvis screams out for one) and instead we get our fair share of "Disco Duck."

Anyways, I bring that up because Rhino is coming out with an '80s version of that boxed set and it looks like it will be short on great artists (REM, U2, the Police, Madonna, Beastie Boys) and full of everything else. The folks at Slate debate the merits of the boxed set and '80s music in general and it makes for some interesting reading. I'm a child of the '80s and ate up all of the music and pop culture from the decade, so I don't think I'll be turning up my nose at the collection, but rather get a big chuckle out of it. The question remains if I'll buy it. I probably own a good chunk of it on CD or MP3 already, as well as a fair share on 45 (which was going out of style even back in the early '80s).

On a similar tangent with 45s, it seems like record companies aren't releasing as many singles as they used to be. Instead, they're coming up with intricate systems of payola to get stuff on the radio and then trying to make up some of that difference by forcing people to buy albums, even for just one or two good songs plus lots of crap. And the companies wonder why Napster and the other file-swapping things took off. The crazy sales numbers for the U.S. version of Now That's What I Call Music show how much fans want their top hits in a more attractive way.