The CD era saw the standardising of the Beatles' discographies worldwide, but the Hey Jude album is not available on compact disc. All of the tracks contained on Hey Jude can be found on A Hard Day's Night and Past Masters.

The Hey Jude album was not compiled by Capitol; the project was conceived by Allen Klein and Apple Records. Klein had negotiated a more lucrative contract for the group in 1969 and was anxious to sweeten the pot with an additional album. He directed Allan Steckler of Abkco/Apple to work on an album. Steckler chose songs that had not appeared on a Capitol album in the United States and which spanned the group's career. He also focused more on recent singles than on earlier material. The absence of the songs from a US Capitol album was partially a consequence of the Beatles' unwillingness to include single releases on their contemporaneous albums, partially a consequence of their arrangement with United Artists in 1964 and partially due to the habit (of EMI affiliates worldwide) of recompiling the Beatles' British releases for local markets. Steckler chose not to include "A Hard Day's Night", which had been released as a single by Capitol and was available on the United Artists soundtrack album, "I'm Down", which was the B-Side of "Help!", and "The Inner Light", which was the B-Side of "Lady Madonna". He also overlooked "From Me to You", "Misery", and "There's a Place", which were first issued in the US by Vee Jay Records but had not yet been issued on a Capitol album. "Sie liebt dich", a German-language version of "She Loves You," and the single version of "Get Back" were also ignored.

Wasn't there some CD boxed set of the US albums relatively recently? Perhaps the copy Finche Platte found was out of there.