That has to be an urban myth. No major label released a CD that was copied from a vinyl record. Have you got any specific examples?
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Why would that piss you off? The situation is not necessarily either/or. The 'needle drop' could be offered as yet another format. Sort of like "also available as a high resolution download, and also as a needle drop download". So you get to pick and choose your favourite format. What's wrong with that?
Ryan Adams has released a 'needle drop' download in addition to the regular digitized master tape (i.e. CD). Sounds pretty mainstream to me.
In the more of a 'grey market' arena, I remember receiving a John McLaughlin "Devotion" CD back in the late '90s from a publishing house that wanted me to review the CD on my blog. It was very obvious that the CD was cut from a 'needle drop' source, and from a shockingly bad LP -- lots of pops and clicks etc. Still, it sounded pretty decent. (I may still have that CD lying somewhere in my basement)
That's a bit different to suggesting that some early CD releases were needle drops, though. it was a flagship new format - in 1983 discs cost £12 which is about £30 in today's money. If any of them had just been copied off the vinyl I think we would have heard about it.
That's recent though, Paul was talking about the early days of CD unless I'm mistaken. I've read that a lot of the early releases were not processed in any way, they just dug the master tape out, started it running into the ADC and went for ciggy and a cup of tea so any blemishes the tape had picked up were faithfully transferred. I've got an Issac Hayes CD that has a couple of drop outs on it (not the band).
Maybe someone else recalls the vinyl transfers and what albums they were?