Missing digital music

The Wall Street Journal has a nice article today about why so many old music albums are not available in digital form.

"while most pop new releases are a click away, some artists' "back catalogs" are frustrating patchworks, with albums unavailable because of rights issues, because clearing those rights isn't a priority for a record label, or maybe just because they're way down on an awfully long list. Think of them as the digital-music revolution's missing in action."

Part of the problem is that when the music was produced there was no digital rights smallprint in the contracts. There are also publishing rights issues and the music labels own policies on releasing back catalogue material (it's low priority).

Yet when this is all sorted out, these WSJ journalists seem to think that the labels back catalogue is "found money", just as CDs were in their early days, as people bought CD versions of their favorite albums.