Because there's a market for it. Do you need the music biz to be explained to you?

Well clearly not. Because there's alot of "true" (wtf?) Nirvana fans out there, as opposed to fans of "little kids singing to them" (again, wtf?).

Certainly it's ridiculous that there's been so much exploitation of the band's name since Cobain's death, but the fact is that Nirvana still have a credibility and a legacy that means they know this stuff will sell. It's the same reason any classic artist has so many greatest hits releases put out over the years. These compilations are only designed to sell over the course of a Christmas, maybe tailing along for a year, then a couple of years later they'll put out a new one that's a fresh new product for people who missed the last one. Some of them are rushed together, some of them are of dubious authenticity, but some of them get given good treatment, with remixed or remastered material, and unreleased material dug up from the archives.

Of course, if you look at older bands, the current example of note being King Crimson, they reissue their entire catalogue repeatedly. It's not so that they sell the same stuff over and over to the fans, it's so that the catalogue stays in print. In the case of King Crimson, their catalogue up to the mid 90s was remastered at the start of the millennium and put out on Virgin, who then held the rights to it. Then band-leader Robert Fripp managed to get all the rights to the entire catalogue, so those same editions were now quietly put out by his label Discipline Global Mobile, so that once the Virgin ones vanished from shelves, these versions would replace them. This year Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree stepped in to produce 40th anniversary editions with surround sound mixes, and even new stereo mixes where Fripp was not happy with the originals. Some people (myself included) will end up with duplicate albums from these various reissues, but these are the best and most definitive versions yet, that will replace permanently the previous editions.

What I'm getting at here is they will keep releasing new compilations and boxed sets as soon as the old ones stop selling, and it's not because there's more stuff for old fans to hear, it's because there's new fans all the time, and they always want to have new stuff to promote and sit on the shelf for each new "generation" of fan. It's the same with any business. Dyson's standard vacuum cleaner has been improved with new technologies over the years, so a model you bought last year might be marginally less good than the one you could have bought this year... But if it was the same, they wouldn't be able to sell it with "The new Dyson with state of the art Supersuck Technology - nobody sucks harder than a Dyson!"

The old fans already have all the music. They're not going to buy a compilation unless there's something new on it.

In what sense fail? Sure it's not going to be a number 1, but it'll sell plenty and make a shit load of money.

There's a simple answer to this whole thing.

Don't buy it.

It's still a profit, just nowhere close to as much as a little kid singing to two notes.

Yes I do believe Nirvana will be outsold by little kids because little kids are popular among the most popular age. Not too many adults buy music as much as teenagers, and if teenagers are buying Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers, well then they have a more successful single/album/DVD. Plus, just because Nirvana are considered legends doesn't mean that everyone is goin' to go rush like crazy to buy their albums. It's all about what the public wants. Besides, most of their compilations were failures. Only the first box set and greatest hits album was popular and the rest was shit. Nobody bought it. What makes this album any different?

First of all, when I mean kids, I mean children ages 10-18.
Second, Adults don't buy more music than teenagers do, and the singles/albums charts are proof. Also, If adults bought more music, the music industry would be full of older musicians and no child stars. As well as that, teenagers would be listening to the same music because children are easier to influence, and since more "adult friendly" music would've been mainstream, then pop music might not have existed.
Thirdly, When I mean adults, I mean like true adults. Not smartass, pot-smoking college kids. Besides, most "young adults", as you call them, buy more "grown up" pop, which is really nothing more than pop artists who are older than the teen pop stars.
Fourthly, Nirvana was a pop sound too. So are all the current artists. And one day, the current artists will become more popular than Nirvana because they impacted culture on a larger and longer scale.

Young adults, people in the 19-30 demographic, buy considerably more music than teenagers. This is because they have student loans, or jobs, neither of which a 14 year old will have. Thus the 14 year old buys records when he gets his pocket money from mother & father, the 22 year old buys stuff when he gets paid, and as he gets paid more he is able to buy more.

Granted I am slightly more fanatical about music than Joe Average, but in my old job there I'd regularly buy somewhere between 3 & 5 albums a month. Now yes, the singles charts are the almost exclusive domain of younger folk, because a £3 single involves less saving up than a £12 album. But this discussion is going nowhere because you are too young to actually understand what we are talking about here so I'm going to just bring it to an end.