When and why do you tap out money-wise with box sets, limited edition releases etc ?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Glenn Christense, Nov 21, 2020.

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  1. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    I couldn’t afford the 18-CD Cutting Edge, but I do have the 6 CD box and have listened to and enjoyed the whole thing more than once. Dylan circa 1965/66 is one artist for whom I do want to hear all of the outtakes.
     
  2. Loup

    Loup Ancient Wool Unraveller

    Location:
    Motown
    I don’t do vinyl anymore and I like having the CDs of all the music I have in my digital library if possible. Having said that the end for me was the download only content included on the Flowers In The Dirt SDE. The download only stuff was what I was most interested in on that set so I decided not to buy it.

    Since then I have gone to the other extreme by getting the standard CD (McCartney III) or sometimes, if it fills a gap, the 2 CD editions of the McCartney archive sets. I’m glad I stopped when I did because I think the pricing/amount of versions has gotten absolutely ridiculous.

    Nothing against the people that are having fun collecting them but the amount of McCartney III releases would have seemed like satire a few years ago.
     
  3. Danby Delight

    Danby Delight Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston
    At 51, I also grew up with vinyl, but unlike a large number of posters here in our age bracket, I never stopped buying vinyl during the 90s and early 2000s, both used when it was pennies on the dollar and new releases when they came out on vinyl. And today, all the vinyl I buy is either new releases by current bands or reissues of older records I don't own and can't find originals of. (Most of my Italian soundtracks and library music, for example.) But when vinyl is an option, I'm buying the vinyl. Always have, always will.

    I have no problem with colored vinyl -- black vinyl is colored too -- which is a good thing since the majority of new releases by current bands that are on colored vinyl are ONLY on colored vinyl. There is no black vinyl press, because there may only be fewer than a thousand copies pressed period.
     
  4. Marty T

    Marty T Stereo Fan

    Location:
    NM - North of ABQ
    I tapped out on the new King Crimson Complete 1969 Recordings 26 disk set for the following reasons:
    • Way too much rehash. All the good quality live recordings I have from previous releases. The 5.1, my primary interest, I have on previous releases.
    • Little of interest in what is in the box that I don't already have. There are number of audience recordings that at best I would sample once and then put away forever. The studio outtakes are of most interest and I would likely listen to them once or twice (based on previous KC studio out-take experience) - that has some draw but not enough to get me to take the $200 plunge.
    • An Elton John 8-CD Box with some rehash but much more in the way of interesting unreleased goodies came out around the same time and was half the price (which is not to say the KC box wasn't a great value for those who didn't already have that stuff). So for the money-wise question, it was much better value for me.
     
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  5. drbryant

    drbryant Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    Look, we're amateurs. Check out this girl who bought 32 copies of a BTS album (I think there were random photo cards and stickers). . And to think there is a thread on this Forum that says that the album is a dead concept in music.

     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2020
  6. Keith V

    Keith V Forum Resident

    Location:
    Secaucus, NJ
    The Monkees lost me after the Birds Bees set.
    I got most of the Jethro Tull ones but ended up selling them and keeping mp3s. I bought the smaller Beatles sets. Pretty much CDs that fit on a CD shelf I’ll buy. I definitely don’t feel the need to collect everything.
     
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  7. markreed

    markreed Forum Resident

    Location:
    Imber
    Let's not forget the TD set had an unreleased album, and three full length unreleased live shows from the era. If you're only interested in surround mixes that's your call, but there's at least 7 hours of unreleased material on the set, as well as new stereo/5.1 mixes of multiple albums.
     
  8. Joey_Corleone

    Joey_Corleone Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rockford, MI
    Generally if it is something I don’t have or something that improves on what I do have I am in for my favorite artists.
     
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  9. Lasting Spaces

    Lasting Spaces Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Carolina
    I try not to go over $100 per whatever it is and usually only if it has 5.1 surround content
     
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  10. Vaughan

    Vaughan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Essex, UK
    Of course black vinyl is colored - but it was also ubiquitous. Things have gone mad now, imo. I just didn't spend time looking at the Vinyl, it was a transport medium, and nothing more. I moved on the CD over time, and like you, I'm very happy with my choice. I won't be going back to Vinyl. hey, as long as we love the music, right?
     
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  11. Zappateer

    Zappateer Forum Resident

    Unreleased tunes, demos, live versions, alternate takes...extra music is what I am interested in.
     
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  12. jay.dee

    jay.dee Forum Resident

    Location:
    Barcelona, Spain
    I am extremely picky, so I have not been overwhelmed by the boxsets. However, all the regular new, second-hand, archival and unofficial items keep coming at relentless pace and sometimes I have up to 20 (purchased) recordings in the pipeline to digest... And you know what; I have never been happier! :agree:
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2020
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  13. danasgoodstuff

    danasgoodstuff Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    If it works for you, that's cool.
     
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  14. lucan_g

    lucan_g Forum Resident

    Two factors:

    1. Content
    2. What else is going on in my life at the moment.

    Two is always a factor with purchases, but especially so for big ones.
     
  15. redmedicine

    redmedicine Pop Punk Psych Prog

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    Pretty basic for me, I've only paid over 200 bucks once, which is for The Beatles in Mono vinyl box. Everything else is a price vs content vs my desire tradeoff.
     
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  16. danasgoodstuff

    danasgoodstuff Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    I am less inclined to buy than I used to be, and some of what I do own is because I got exceptional deals on them (Beatles mono cube for $60). That said I recently bought a used Mosaic Horace Parlan over a much cheaper European copyright special and I did buy the White album uber deluxe at full retail. It's a complicated balancing of different factors and then impulse. And some of them get played regularly (in whole or in part), first Stax singles box was the best $60 I ever spent. And some kind of exhausted my interest in a subject. Also depends what I already have, e.g. I don't have any version of Cutting Edge because I already had much of it on bootleg, but if I saw the 2 or 6 CD versions cheap I'd buy. If I saw the 18 CD version cheap, I'd buy and resell.
     
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  17. markreed

    markreed Forum Resident

    Location:
    Imber
    It's a combination of factors for me, namely a balance between Price, Interest, Content and Faffing Around.

    Price - there are key prices I won't go above. My point is around £10-12 per CD of content. That's how much a new studio album costs on CD so for me, I'm buying an expensive and lavish music delivery system. Sure reproduction programmes and badges, posters, stickers & T-shirts are OK but they're not why I buy the sets. I can't dance around the house to a fancy book. And when Bob Mould can do a 24disc set for £85, anything that goes over £10-12 per disc is just price gouging. Which means I tend to watch box sets like a hawk and when it comes down to a level I want to pay (i.e. The Later Years 18 discs at £175, or Sign O' The Times at £99) I bite.

    Interest - how much do I like the band? If there's live stuff, how much do setlists change? Is it The Fall, or Prince, or Mogwai, where setlists were very variable day to day , or is it Depeche Mode or Kraftwerk or Roger Waters, where the live setlists were the 95% the same for months on end? If there's studio stuff, are the rough mixes barely different and padding, or are they genuinely alternate takes and mixes with different vocals, parts, missing segments, and so on? Some acts I love I simply don't care enough to track down every alternate take (The B**tles, Tori Amos), others I'm fascinated by the evolution of the song over time.

    Content - How much is there, and how good is it? The recent All That You Can't Leave Behind set is abusive in terms of the amount of content (1 live show that's been on DVD for 19 years, and 4 unheard remixes?), and wasted potential. The band could easily have put on 3 extra live shows (Manray on CD, Irving Plaza on CD, South Bend on DVD or Blu Ray), and a BR/DVD disc of say Slane/Boston/Promos, but chose not to, that sliced each audio disc down to pretty much £15 each + lots of bits of random look-at-once paper. On the other hand, The Waterboys did a six disc Fishermans Blues Sessions box set for around £20 which had somewhere in the region of 7 hours of unreleased performances. Are the alternate mixes any good, and worth listening to more than once? Did the artist write 60 songs they didn't use, like Prince (The Sign O The Times megaset is the bees knees for unreleased stuff with just shy of 4 hours of unreleased studio material and two live shows)? How does all of that relate to the price? Are they plumping up the price by duplicating stuff on BR and DVD?

    Faffing Around - how much faff is it to own this and keep this? Is it only going to be available for 37 minutes to the people that are really very quick at opening their emails from the bands mailing list and are nearer the front of the alphabet so they get the emails first? How big is it? Does it mean I have to find yet more shelf space? It actually costs me about the same over the lifespan of a mortgage to buy the space the Box Sets sits in than it does to buy the box set. It costs me as much to own as it does to buy! Which I talk about 22 minutes in to this...

     
  18. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    The 3 LP version of the 2 CD Cutting Edge is one of my favorite Dylan LP’s beyond the original albums.
     
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  19. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    That's me! :laugh:

    I wouldn't have even posted in this thread if you hadn't written that. I've never cared for box sets, mainly because I can't get around the idea that I have to buy albums which I've already got just in order to get material that is unavailable anywhere else. This just goes against my grain somehow. If I want a particular live show, for example, and it's finally made available only in a box with other material which I already own or otherwise have no interest in, then no sale. I'll do without, or I'll live with a lesser quality bootleg which I might already have.

    I also don't care about the booklets, or the tour poster facsimiles, or pretty much any of the extras. I just want the original albums (and often that's only a SELECTED portion of a band's discography), which in most cases I already own. B-sides? Sure. Previously unreleased songs? Yeah, maybe. But still, I won't buy a box to get them.

    I hope nobody thinks this is a threadcrap, because it's not. I don't begrudge anybody their interest in box sets or their personal criteria in what they will or won't buy. I'm just sharing my perspective in response to this post.
     
  20. If I Can Dream_23

    If I Can Dream_23 Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    No harm at all in that view. I can respect that for sure. :)
     
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  21. Bruce Burgess

    Bruce Burgess Senior Member

    Location:
    Hamilton, Canada
    I've bought a lot of download versions of box sets, by Dylan, Lennon, The Stones, The Eagles, Floyd and Fleetwood Mac. You don't get the books or artwork but they're a lot more reasonably priced. Anyway, I rarely look at the books or artwork more than once.
     
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  22. zappinnati

    zappinnati Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cincinnati, OH
    In order to buy a box set I usually need one of the following to be true:
    1. It’s a collection of studio albums where I do not own a quarter of them.
    2. There are at least two to three discs of studio tracks (b-sides) I don’t already own.
    3. It’s a complete studio collection in a new format I desire. (I own it all on CD but want it on vinyl. This is rare and I must REALLY love the artist.)
    4. It’s Frank Zappa.
     
  23. Say It Right

    Say It Right Not for the Hearing Impaired

    Location:
    Niagara Falls
    A lot of members here go crazy about these box sets.

    This 1969 King Crimson will be one of the last, most likely, from here. This is to complement the rest of the collection, but seems excessive in scope and price. It's impossible to conceive of listening to all the contents. After the excitement wears, then the set will just look nice with the others, until the urge strikes to bring it back out.

    The Tears for Fears - Seeds of Love is an example of why these are reaching my limit. The hi rez surround is the meat and potatoes. I don't care about B sides, demos, alternate versions. The price wasn't exorbitant on this one, but just the Blu Ray would've been adequate, especially since the "Going to California" concert wasn't included.

    Springsteen has done a superb job with Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River. These sets provide the real meat and potatoes without all the filler. Hopefully something for BITUSA and Nebraska comes relatively soon to complete that classic phase of his career.
     
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  24. The bugaboo of being an urban dweller with an under-six-figures income. Sometimes an increasing lack of space is the clincher for not buying a box set or the like.

    Anyway, as for the question: another vote for “it depends” here. Ultimately it’s down to a mix of unreleased material, good packaging, and rarity of both the box itself and the material it contains. Like, I’d like to get the SDE box of Let it Bleed, but my OG vinyl and SACD will do until I can get it for well under $100. Whereas I had no problem paying well over $300 for both the Pink Floyd Early Days and Come Organisation boxes thanks to the wealth of rare material and generally good packaging (well, aside from that unwieldy storage box for the Floyd).
     
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  25. Theacademyinperil

    Theacademyinperil Forum Resident

    Location:
    Clifton Park NY
    I work in retail so I have to be price-sensitive. The recent Bob Mould and Steve Wynn boxes are a solid value and now reside happily in my collection. The Later Years and Archives II are overpriced and out of my grasp, even though Pink Floyd and Neil Young are among my favorite performers.

    I really enjoy the catalog reissues from Bebop Deluxe, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, XTC and Yes. (Yes, as a matter of fact I am a Steven Wilson fan!)

    I appreciate 5.1 mixes and albums on bluray. I don't want vinyl, cassettes (really, Gang of Four?), marbles or scarves, even if they're merely intended to make piracy more difficult. And I really dislike brickwalled CDs, like those in my Some Girls box.

    I most want a huge Mekons box. Please?
     
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