How Many Best-Of's Are Enough?
[Moozik: New Order - Paradise]
Hardcore music fans such as, er, myself tend to get all rather annoyed when we see new retrospective collections from artists we know and love. After all, I've already got all the songs on their original albums and the well at least it's nice to have all the songs in one place argument no longer makes any sense because I can just make a playlist of the the same songs and be done with it.
There are exceptions of course but collections and best-of's tend to signal the end of times for any band as their record company tries to milk those last precious dollars from a group that either has split up or is on the verge of doing so. One of those exceptions just happens to be my fave band of all time. Depeche Mode.
Over the course of their career, Depeche Mode have released "People Are People" [0] in 1984, "The Singles 81-85" [1] in 1985, a repackaged "The Singles 81-85" in 1998, and "The Singles 86-98' also in 1998. Over the 13 year span beginning in 1991 and ending in 2004 Mute Records also released the complete CD singles as 6 box sets. So any fan worth their salt already has all the album tracks, the singles, the remixes, and the b-sides.
So fast forward to today and what do we see? Another best of. This time "The Best Of, Volume 1". But there's more. Over at the iTunes Music Store you can purchase all 644 tracks of The Complete Depeche Mode billed as the definitive digital box set [2] that is exclusively on iTunes [3].
So I'm a little unsure as to the exact target audience for these new collections. Hardcore fans already have these songs so have no need to buy them again. Casual listeners might be enticed but may already have the other collections so have no need to buy them again. New listeners who never bought a DM song before perhaps? Hmm, yeah maybe for "The Best Of Volume 1" but not the 644 track collection.
The decision to release these new collections baffles me to be honest. Maybe DM are going for the record of "band that is still actively recording with most best-of's, compiliations, and box sets". Yeah, maybe that's it ;-)
[0] US only compilation.
[1] Renamed "Catching up with..." in the US.
[2] Typically a box set requires, you know, a box but I'll let this one go ;-)
[3] Pet peeve of mine. They mean "The iTunes Music Store" which is something completely different than iTunes.