LAST AUGUST, WHEN Chris Brown decided to release 10 new tracks, RCA Records decided not to make them available as a new album or collection. Instead, the label added them to the beginning of his June 2019 album, Indigo, and called the new, 42-song work Extended (Indigo). One of the new tracks, “Overtime,” drew 10 million Spotify plays, boosting the deluxe album from No. 13 to No. 6 on the Billboard 200.
Artists tacking on bonus tracks to previously released albums is hardly new — Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Rod Stewart, Lady Gaga and others have done this for years, both for CDs and iTunes. But in the streaming world, the “deluxe album” has a new benefit of extending the life of a big release.
Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts,” originally…