Meanwhile, news accounts noted that stores were pulling the Electric 80s set while a new version with more conventional cover art was being rushed to market.

Seems like it would be just as easy to put something on the cover which looks like a barcode but isn't a valid set of symbols in the UPC barcode. (I mean, not a barcode referring to a nonexistent product, but a bunch of vertical lines which aren't a well-formed example of the barcode pattern— bad parity or something.)

Let's see. Amazon has an image of the CD. Deciphering the UPC/EAN symbol gets us [6 02498 09662 8], which is in fact a barcode for a music CD assigned to Universal Music Group. That's where the story diverges, though — it seems to be the UPC/EAN for The Very Best of George Gershwin (Decca, 2003; Decca is one of Universal's labels).

In Between Dreams has the barcode 602498802526.