In yesterday’s big fat ol’ NYT Sunday feature, the Springsteen camp talks about the Wal-Mart-only greatest hits collex:

In an interview with Billboard, Mr. Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, defended the release, saying Mr. Springsteen’s albums were already in Wal-Mart, which accounts for 15 percent of his sales. He also said: “We’re not doing any advertising for Wal-Mart. We haven’t endorsed Wal-Mart or anybody else. We’re letting Sony do its job.”

But Mr. Springsteen said the decision was made too hastily. “We were in the middle of doing a lot of things, it kind of came down and, really, we didn’t vet it the way we usually do,” he said. “We just dropped the ball on it.” Instead of offering the exclusive collection to Wal-Mart, “given its labor history, it was something that if we’d thought about it a little longer, we’d have done something different.” He added, “It was a mistake. Our batting average is usually very good, but we missed that one. Fans will call you on that stuff, as it should be.”

The Wall Street Journal did a better job explaining what happened a couple of weeks ago—and puts in context Landau’s odd reference to “letting Sony do its job”:

[T]hanks to an unusual provision in his record contract, the new collection could help Sony Music defray some of the multimillion-dollar advance payment it made to Mr. Springsteen for “Working on a Dream.” Mr. Springsteen’s seven-album, $110 million deal was so rich that it contributed to the downfall of Andrew Lack, who lost his job as chief executive of what was then known as Sony BMG Music Entertainment shortly after it was signed in 2005.

There’s a lot of reasons heritage labels like Sony pay a lot of money to keep warhorses like Springsteen around, but it’s not to make money from actually selling records. Handing over an average of $15 million per release to a guy who can barely sell a million CDs any more is a tough proposition. (And you have to assume Landau had bucked up Springsteen to a superstar royalty rate a long time ago.) Springsteen sells about a million catalog CDs a year; given his infrequent studio product that might average at most 1.5 million sales a year total, and no one thinks Springsteen is going to sell more records in the future.

If Wal-Mart can foist off a million copies of a greatest hits disc Sony makes eight dollars wholesale on (with a minimum of marketing expense, note), that will actually make a dent in Lack’s Folly.

Landau and Springsteen deserve all the money they can get from a dumb record label, but it’s fun to examine the lose-lose proposition places like Sony get themselves into. If Springsteen leaves, the news is “Sony lost Bruce!” If he stays, the company (which, last time I checked, made money by getting people to pay money for the product it purveys) hobbles itself by shoveling money into the pocket of a guy who doesn’t sell records.

What Lack probably should have done was start leaking the sales figures of a guy who was planning to deliver Devils & Dust and The Seeger Sessions to the label. (Even The Rising, his best selling record of the last twenty years, eventually sold only two million copies.)

Because the financial onus is entirely on the labels. Springsteen, as the Times story notes in passing, grossed more than $200 million on his last tour, he’s been touring steadily for years, and is going out again this time.

But still there’s whining. In the Times story, there’s this quote, justifying his Super Bowl performance last night, from Springsteen: “At my age it is tough to get word of your music out.” Hardly. The word gets out; people just don’t like it. Springsteen and his classic rock fellows get played on the radio all the time, but the new stuff isn’t good enough to take its place with their heritage tracks. For some reason, everyone—the artists, their management, the labels, the press, even marketing partners like Starbucks and Wal-Mart—try to prop up the facade that folks like Springsteen, or McCartney, or Elvis Costello, or whoever, have an appreciable sales base for new product. They don’t.