It's often unfair to compare the Rolling Stones to the Beatles but in the case of the group's mono mixes, it's instructive. Until the 2009 release of the box set The Beatles in Mono, all of the Fab Four's mono mixes were out of print. That's not the case with the Rolling Stones. Most of their '60s albums – released on Decca in the U.K., London in the U.S. – found mono mixes sneaking onto either the finished sequencing or various singles compilations, so the 2016 box The Rolling Stones in Mono only contains 56 heretofore unavailable mono mixes among its 186 tracks…

In front of 1.5 million people, one of the biggest free concerts in history, The Rolling Stones' performance on February 18, 2006, in Rio de Janeiro was a historic event. Fully restored and remastered from their A Bigger Bang World Tour, this includes 4 unreleased tracks: "Tumbling Dice," "Oh No, Not You Again," "This Place Is Empty," and "Sympathy For The Devil."

Universal's 2018 set The Studio Albums Vinyl Collection 1971-2016 isn't the first time the Rolling Stones] post-Decca catalog has been boxed up. Back in 2010, all the albums up to 2015 (which means it didn't include 2016's blues record Blue & Lonesome) were offered in a set that was a companion to the similarly limited-edition box The Rolling Stones 1964-1969. In a sense, the 2018 set functions as a cousin to ABKCO's The Rolling Stones in Mono – a 2016 box containing mono mixes of all the material the Stones officially released on Decca – but where that set was issued on both CD and LP, The Studio Albums Vinyl Collection 1971-2016 is, as its title suggests, explicitly designed as a vinyl package…

The Rolling Stones’ first studio album of the new millennium, 2005’s A Bigger Bang, made its mark around the world. It charted in the top five in almost two dozen countries and earned Platinum or Gold certifications in the U.S., U.K., and other international territories. Messrs. Jagger, Richards, Watts, and Wood supported the album with A Bigger Bang, the tour, between 2005-2007 – and it became the highest-grossing concert tour of all time (until U2 usurped its crown). On February 8, 2006, the Stones took the proceedings to Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for a massive free concert. That show was captured on film and released to cinemas and DVD while the audio was broadcast on XM Radio. Now, the mega-show is coming to various formats in remixed, re-edited, and remastered form as The Rolling Stones: A Bigger Bang – Live on Copacabana Beach on July 9 from Eagle Rock Entertainment.