THE harsh realities of a downloadable musical world have finally, it seems, knocked some sense into the labels and how they deal with and price their back catalogues.

For decades, the industry did what it wanted - when the CD format arrived, it was viewed not as a technological advance but rather a way to get consumers to buy, buy and buy again (for the second time) in order to update their record collection. Enough was enough, though, when they tried to foist the minidisc onto the public and the public merely reacted with an indifferent shrug.

The digital revolution means there will be no new physical formats - as in the lucrative leap from vinyl to CD. There still remains, though, a massive desire on the part of the labels to flog the same thing twice.

The beauty of back-catalogue sales for the labels is that they are dealing in a tried-and-tested product; there are no studio recording fees, and no one has to pay the rehab bills of the junkie lead singer. Launching a new act now - with the amount of music media out there - is becoming prohibitively expensive, and remember, for every 10 bands signed by a label, only one or two will go into profit.

There's only so many ways you can tart up back-catalogue product. Time was, when you wanted the Greatest Hits album of a particular group, you could go into a record shop and ask for just that and everyone would understand you.

Now it's Greatest Hits, Essential Hits, The Best Of, The Very Best Of, The Singles, The Complete Collection, etc, etc. This can really get on your tits - to justify calling a compilation by another name, someone has taken off some songs and added on some others, just so the album can be called "new". It's stunning how one band can have six different albums - all with the word "Hits" in the title - with such different tracklistings. Look for yourself, it's disgraceful. Questions should be asked in the house ...

The latest industry way of dealing with/re-flogging back catalogue circumvents this problem nicely. There's a whole bunch of what's known as "2+1" hybrids that have just been released and it's the most intelligent thing the industry has done in about a decade. The 2+1's all deal in back catalogue - they round up all the tracks that matter over two CDs and then add on a single DVD with all the videos, promos and so on that matter.

You would be correct in assuming it sounds like another cynical attempt to sell us the same songs again, but only in a bells-and-whistles new format.

It's not. The 2+1's only came about because a major label, Universal, had the amazing idea of actually asking people who buy records how they would like their back-catalogue releases to be packaged and priced.

Detailed consumer research was carried out last year in Europe's three biggest markets - the UK, France and Germany - and most everyone replied they wanted the 2+1 format at a non-exploitative price.

The end result is that you can now get your two-CD comprehensive Greatest Hits collection plus a DVD for a retail price of €20. That's the European standard price for the 2+1. In Ireland it'll probably end up being €38 for the usual nonsensical "oh but we're different" reasons.

You would expect this 2+1 format to be restricted to the mainstream big sellers - Lionel Richie, Maria Carey et al - but in the 50 titles just made available you'll find The Jam, The Cure, Squeeze, Siouxsie and The Banshees and the preposterous but mot amusing Motley Crue. You'll notice I refrained from putting the umlauts over the relevant letters in their name - this is for the simple reason that they are from California, not Lower Saxony.

Well done Universal, other labels please follow. I'm off to listen to the Crue.