Why didn't they ever release his XO/Figure 8 outtakes?

They want to milk the artist for as long as they possibly can. They make more money by releasing stuff over the years instead of letting it all out at once. Look at Jimi Hendrix, he still has new stuff being released to this day (his sister is money hungry and has control of the vaults but that's besides the point). Also possible the family and label want to space out releases to introduce new generations of people to his music to get sales of his back catalog. There are some pretty good bootlegs out there with them anyways.

XO and Figure 8 were released on Dreamworks who doesn't care enough

His other albums were all released on Kill Rock Stars and throughout the years have been given pretty impressive remasters/rereleases and the demos from his first three were obviously released in the form of New Moon

XO and Figure 8 got reissued on Plain Recordings and sound notoriously awful. They got a small run again last year on the original label but that was it. I think a few months ago they finally came back in circulation but they're from the same plates as the Plain ones and still sound like shit

I'm sure we'll see Figure 8: 25th Anniversary Edition or something like that with a bunch of half-baked demos tacked onto the end but until then don't hold your breath

>>73270702
There's a few like Brand New Game and Tiny Time Machine. I reckon more will leak over the years. Elliott's got a rather dedicated (and frankly rabid) fan base who always finds a way. Didn't the Basement outtakes leak because a die-hard fan who worked at the studio discover and release them one day?

>>73271798
>Basement outtakes
wasn't the whole album unfinished?

Too much chatter about jews in between takes

>>73272569
Smith intended on making it a double album and wrote about 30 songs for it. Unfortunately, a lot of them were missing vocals before he died. So taking those out of the equation, about 25 were left. His family also chose which songs to put on the record. If you listen to some of the tracks written during the Basement era that didn't make it on there, like "Abused", you can see that this was the darkest stuff he'd ever written. People speculate that "Abused" was about how he was molested by his stepdad as a kid, and since his stepdad had a say in which songs to put on the record, it obviously didn't make it on. So what I meant by Basement outtakes were the songs that were omitted from the "finished" record compiled by his family.

>>73272664
Lmao classic Elliott Smith