How often do you treat yourself to reissues of albums you already own? Is it the lure of unreleased demos, improved production, live tracks, illuminating liner notes or possibly something else? I myself am rarely tempted. I’d probably feel differently were I swimming in disposable income, but I usually content myself with the album I have. The one exception is the reissue of The Replacements’ Don’t Tell a Soul, famous among fans for having been saddled with thick production glop that didn’t really fit with the band’s scrappy sensibilities. Between hearing a stripped-down presentation of the music AND the results of an aborted attempt at the album with an entirely different producer, it was interesting to see how the songs evolved. And the live stuff was fun, too, particularly since the band was more or less behaving itself for once.
As always, it’s hit and miss with extended editions. Sometimes you get unique insights into the recording process and/or the evolution of an album, then you get a live set recorded with a cheap cassette player in the back rows in 1977. I’m usually content with the original album and don’t especially seek out reissues, but I’ve got me a lot of classical albums since around the mid 90s that came with additional content, and lots of it was good. Nowadays, I don’t care about buying albums anyhow and I can stream them in any form at my pleasure.