I respect your opinion. We’re all entitled to one. I tip my hat for your willingness to put yours out there. I saw your post on Facebook but intentionally avoided the comments. I think R.E.M. ran its course for the guys, and it’s not something they want to spend a lot of time on anymore. I miss them and kinda wish they’d offer more t-shirt reproductions, but I don’t feel angry over anything. I’m appreciative for the music and the memories they’ve given me. I admire them for walking away on their terms and for pursuing other endeavors and interests. They’ve earned that right in my book.
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Not sure if you’ll be interested, but thought I’d give a little commercial insight as I worked in head office product for two of Europe’s largest entertainment retailers, between 2004 and 2010. This is when physical media was still everything.
The thing I wanted to point out was that back catalogue sold surprisingly little in those days. At points, i remember about 92% of all sales came from chart products, top 100 stuff. The remaining 8% was back cat that obviously covers every artist ever. Now, that 8% was still very valuable at the time, but there will have been plenty of times between albums and publicity in this era, that REM would’ve sold precisely zero back cat in a week across the UK and Ireland, one of their key territories until the end.
Back cat was used to drive footfall (people liked to browse) and promo’s such as a “3 for £xx”. Promos would only happen when record labels would pay the retailer up to 6 figures from their marketing budgets to reduce the price and drive sales. Product is hardly ever put on sale without the supplier funding it.
It would be promos and “re-heats” due to a new album release that would drive an artists back cat sales, but even then, particularly the IRS catalogue would’ve been selling far less than people would imagine.
Why am I saying all this? Well, as you say, the physical re-issues didn’t sell well, but I guarantee it would be even less than most would imagine. Profits would be tight for an indie label and Michael and Mikes press junkets would’ve cost 10’s of thousands of dollars in hotels and flights alone. That’s before any other marketing. Whilst I don’t doubt that the label would have maybe funded something, again I would guess it much less than you might imagine. Those physical releases won’t have been hugely profitable, and I don’t think for a minute that a band each worth 10s of millions of dollars would have leant heavily on an indie label at all. This will be a big consideration for the box set you mention, and the amount of work they put into reissue’s of their increasingly less popular work.
Sorry if that bored you or you knew all of this. Thought it might be interesting to some and I was having a tea break 
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I don’t know a thing about the inner workings of labels, promotional tours, etc. However, I don’t buy into the notion that the majority of the funding for their post-R.E.M. releases and tours to promote anniversary/archival releases is coming out of their own pockets. That’s why I tagged @ethank, I thought he might be able to shed some light on the subject.
Well, actually, I’ve just done something I should’ve done before and seen Concord Records is worth $4billion! They’re nowhere near as small as I imagined. So, yes. That changes things so I now agree, certainly on the re-release front. I imagine everything else based around HQ is self funded though.
Worth keeping up though in case anyone is interested.
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