I'm on the fence. For example, I bought E'm~grief~'s compilation album because it contained 13 out of their 14 songs and I only owned one of their singles, so it made sense for me to buy it since they are one of my favorite UCP groups. Conversely, another favorite of mine on the same label released two 'best ofs' at different points in their career: one before their first drummer left, and one before they broke up, each with a different track list and a new ~bonus track~ on a certain version. While I can see people buying them so they could get those singles they couldn't buy or because they missed 2 years of releases, I think the only reason people really bought them was for the DVDs that came with or the new song. Since neither album is all-inclusive, it does fall victim to being a suggestive 'best of.'
I'd be more inclined to buy a compilation album under a number of conditions in which I am going to list out for you because I don't have to be anywhere until 11:30 :
-IF they have a decent amount of +:Rarez:+ on them. And I mean for real rarez: shit you didn't release but played live, obscure demos, remixes or alternative versions that were only on omnibuses, stuff like that. When bands say "rare tracks," 9 out of 10 times they mean "from CDs that are out of print," not "CDs you have to s the d of a trader to get"...meaning they're not rare at all.
-IF they are a time-period specific compilation that has a lot of breadth to it. For example, didn't Diru have a Decade collection album or something that had like 20+ tracks on it? While it didn't contain everything they've done up until that point, and ignored all of the pre-Gauze goodness, it does span a decent time frame and I could see someone buying it so they have a CD that's more or less representative of that point in the band's career. Another example(s) would be Lareine's Reine de Fleur albums, which both had a lot of content in them. Even though you could arguably just get the CDs that made up those albums, from a download and collectors perspective it saves a lot of time. Syndrome also had a more-or-less complete collection album as well, missing B-sides and weird omnibus tracks or demos, and La'Mule's "Eyes Bloodshed" is another overwhelmingly large compilation album that mixes this point and my next point.
-IF they are rerecordings or reimaginations of songs. See also: Cali=/=Gari's 1, 2, and 第2実験室 改訂版. Most of the time, reimagioned songs are fun and it's cool to see how old songs would sound now. (Most of the time. STILL not over Unknown Despair A Lost). Madeth Gray'll's history album is the perfect example of this: some of the songs were the same as the original versions, while older ones were remastered or rerecorded to have a $100 budget instead of a $10 one. Loved the last version of "Parasite."
It is NOT cool, however, to make every release a compilation to some degree. Art Cube does this quite often and the most imfamous example is Phantasmagoria. They have like "10 albums" but 26 songs in total (not counting the different versions from their revival and SEs)? Hmmm....
