Buyer beware. Record companies have been repackaging their most successful albums of the year with three or four extra tunes, in the hope of flogging the same product all over again to last-minute gift hunters, reports Brian Boyd.

THIS TIME last year something strange happened in the charts. Amy Winehouse's Back To Blackalbum - which had originally been released in 2006 - was still selling strongly and lingering around the top reaches of the charts. In the year since its release, Winehouse's profile had upped considerably (high-profile drug arrests tend to do that for you). The singer also had a hit single with a cover of The Zutons's Valerie, a song which was recorded after the release of Back To Black.

In November 2007, Winehouse's record label gathered together a few b-sides, live versions and the cover of Valerieand put them onto to a "bonus" disc which would be be sold only in conjunction with the original album as a deluxeversion of Back To Black- costing about €7 more than the original.

When both versions of the album were placed side by side in the record shops, the deluxe version began outselling the non-deluxe one by a ratio of 3:1. The fantastic news here for the record label was that there were no studio costs for the bonus disc material and the promo had, more or less, already been paid for the first time around. So the profit margin on the deluxe album was considerably bigger.

YOU CAN'T WRAP A DOWNLOAD

Nevertheless, some fans muttered that they had to pay for the same songs twice to get the bonus material. Could the new material not have been released as a stand-alone product? There was another factor at play here, though - most CDs are bought as presents. This remains one of the reasons the CD remains resistant in the face of the cheaper digital download. Put simply: you can't wrap a download.

And CDs aren't presents at Christmas time only; record companies report big sales spikes around St Valentine's Day and increasingly Mothers' and Fathers' Day. And throw in birthdays as well.

TRACKS OF MY TEARS

The deluxe edition plays not only to fans who are "completists"(they have to own everything released by their favourite artist) but also to the thriving CD-as-a-present market. Faced with a choice between the ordinary or deluxe edition of an album, gift-buyers tend towards the latter.

But all of this comes at a premium. For those extra few songs and a music video (and the making of the music video footage), you can pay anywhere between 20 and 40 per cent morethan the cost of the ordinary album.

When the sales figures came in for Winehouse's deluxe release, a lot of record companies saw a relatively lucrative new market opening up for them. The trend is now for an artist to release an album and a few months later to record a new single. A few weeks later the new single will be available on a deluxe edition of the original album which has been tarted-up design wise to justify its heftier barcode scan price.

NOT THE SPIRIT

Leona Lewisreleased her debut, Spirit, in 2007. Last month, a "special edition" of the album went on sale (prices vary widely - but it was on average 25 per cent dearer than the original). The new edition contained her new single (a cover of Snow Patrol's Run), two other new tracks and a DVD. Again fans began to ask why this new material/content wasn't released as a stand-alone product to save people the expense of paying for most of the songs twice.

In her defence Lewis said: "The new stuff will be available on iTunes if [fans] just want the songs." All very well, except that if you went to iTunes to download her big hit Run, you found that it wasn't available as a single download until two weeks after the deluxe edition's release. Which really isn't cricket.

There's also the fact that some people simply don't have a computer or an MP3 player, or can't work iTunes, or simply prefer the physical CD format.

GOOD GIRL GOES BAD

Rihannaattracted scorn from some of her fans for "reissuing" her 2007 Good Girl Gone Badearlier this year in the deluxe format. The new version was the same as the first, but with three new songs and DVD material. "Three new songs", it seems, are the minimum, you can get away with for the deluxe edition. Haven't these people heard of EP releases? EPs were released by bands between albums when they had a few new songs to release but didn't want to price them as a full album. A rather quaint approach all in all.

There are ways around this subtle scam, though: Coldplayhad eight off-cuts from their recent Viva La Vidaalbum ready to be released. Instead of bundling them up with the original album, they released the songs as a stand-alone album called Prospekt's March. The two albums are also bundled together as a "special edition"- thus giving the consumer maximum choice.

PAPERBACK WRITER

Despite the mutterings of discontent from fans, the record labels have now settled on a new and expensive release policy: most high-profile new albums will be released as both hardbackand paperbackeditions on the same day. The hardback edition, which will be priced accordingly, will contain the main album plus a bonus disc of studio outtakes, video footage, enhanced artwork/photograpy etc. The paperback edition, by contrast, will look like the bargain-store version of the glittering and embossed more expensive one.

It puts fans into a difficult position. CDs may have fallen in price, but they are still expensive purchases. At a time when people do seem to be making an effort to stay away from the illegal sites, is this not a slight commercial slap in the facefor loyal fans who want the new material without having to buy the same album again to get it?

CIRCUS TRICKS

The first hardback/softback formats have just gone on release - Take That's Circus, which comes as an ordinary edition and as a "CD and Hardback Deluxe Packaging" edition, is the most prominent of them. Only when the three-month sales figures have been totted up will it be known just how far the market will support the deluxe album.

Cynics observe that the industry is using this dual release ploy as a way to bring in the deluxe album by stealth. The two formats will run side by side for a few months until the ordinary album suddenly stops being made anymore.

At a time of falling CD prices, at last a reason to put them back up again. Buyer beware.