Like so many summer's full of blockbuster film sequels, this summer is also full of music follow-ups. May has already seen the release of several successful new albums, most notably Linkin Park's Minutes to Midnight, which debuted at #1 in Billboard's album charts and scored the highest number of copied sold to date this year. Also released was the new Maroon 5 album, which knocked Linkin Park off the top spot this week. The most talked about new album is Paul McCartney's first on the new Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) music label Hear Music.

All three of those albums are fairly guaranteed sellers, primarily because the artists' last albums enjoyed great success. The new methods of promotion that surrounded these releases also certainly speak to the large scale of their releases. Who hasn't noticed the Paul McCartney catalog that is now available on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s iTunes Store and the new album that has been available for pre-order since May 15th and still won't be released until next Tuesday. These dates and the time may mean nothing, but consider it in comparison to seeing a movie poster for the new Harry Potter movie at the theater complex.

New albums are not the only heavily marketed and promoted music products for this summer though. With the pending reissue of the Traveling Wilburys catalog in a couple of weeks, Warner Bros. is prepping another reissue to promote or at least ride in that release's coattails. Tom Petty, who was a Traveling Wilbury, is set to reissue the album he first released last summer with four new tracks. A year ago that album peaked at #4 in the album charts, so it has seen success already. Is this a ploy to strengthen Traveling Wilburys sales, or to strengthen Petty's sales alone?

The point of citing these release dates and different facts of release and success is that this summer (and pretty much every summer for the last few years) has been full of large scale music releases that resemble how we think about the big movie blockbusters. With so much talk within and outside the music industry this year about Digital Rights Management, and what labels are going to drop the technology, we can't overlook the fact that business is going on as usual.

It was twenty years ago today... well not exactly, but it was 1987 and five of the world's most influential musicians came together to record a b-side for George Harrison's "This Is Love" single. Harrison , along with Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and ELO's Jeff Lynne, recorded "Handle with Care" and created supergroup history. You may not remember the Traveling Wilburys, or even have known those artists were involved, but in 1988 their album Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 reached #3 on the Billboard albums chart and sold more than 2 million copies.

For more than 10 years that album along with the follow-up two years later, have been unavailable. This summer Rhino Records, an imprint of Warner Music Group (NYSE:WMG), will re-release both Traveling Wilburys albums as well as bonus video material in a special reissue set. It's an interesting re-issue for this summer, not because it does not deserve to be re-issued, but because it is part of the re-issuing of George Harrison's post-Beatles career by his estate (here is the press release).

Warner caught a lucky break with these reissues because most of Harrison 's material reverted to EMI (he was originally with the London-based label as a Beatle and a solo artist). It was assumed that these two albums also reverted, but those assumptions were obviously wrong.

This reissue will do quite well because it was a collaboration between five talents and received such high praise upon its initial release. By comparison Harrison's solo material was often hit or miss.