Photos

By Mark Brown
Special to MSN Music

With younger music fans going digital, embattled record labels are rethinking physical recordings and retooling their packages for the Gen X and boomer fans still willing to pay for CD and vinyl albums. It turns out emptying the archives of rare, ... more live and unreleased material is a heck of a lot easier, safer and lucrative than finding and developing new artists. In the case of hallowed artists whose classics have already been reissued multiple times, the new vogue is to court the VIP collector with ever more elaborate, expanded reboots.

So, box sets priced in the triple digits are all the rage, with old analog studio tapes being lovingly restored and digitally transferred to polish old treasures to a new luster. This fall brings a rich harvest of such releases. Here's a sampling of the most lavish, as well as more modest versions for fans bracing for a possible double-dip recession.

Clockwise from top left: Pink Floyd (Storm Thorgerson); Nirvana (Retna Ltd.); The Beach Boys (Capitol Records); U2 (Island Records)