Labels Targeting Hardcore Fans With Super-Deluxe Box Sets

As CD sales continue to slip, artists and record labels hope they've found a cure for slumping numbers by appealing to consumers with a taste for rock fetish objects: super-deluxe box sets. From Neil Young's comprehensive (and $250) 10-disc collection Archives Vol. 1 to a $60 version of Dave Matthews Band's new Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King (complete with 14 lithographs) to the 45-disc Beacon Box capturing the Allman Brothers' entire run at New York's Beacon Theatre, deluxe box sets have seen a recent resurgence, with a new target audience in mind — the hardcore fan.

The new issue of Rolling Stone explores some of the biggest — and priciest — super-deluxe boxes coming out this year, what they mean to the record industry and why store owners are still nervous about stocking these massive sets in these hard economic times. But despite the recession, there are consumers out there willing to splurge on the extra product. The $200 reissue of Pearl Jam's Ten sold out its entire 10,000 run, and earlier this year the Beastie Boys sold a fabric-covered vinyl Check Your Head for $100. "I know this sounds corny, but you're talking about a record that someone's had a long-term relationship with," the Beasties' Mike D tells RS. "People don't mind spending a bit more money to get a more in-depth version that record."

Also on the horizon: The $495 repackaging of the Pixies discography called Minotaur, a mind-blowing 77-disc collection dedicated to Miles Davis and, of course, Neil Young's Archives 2 in 2010. For much more on the super-deluxe bonanza and the rebirth of the box set, check out the new issue of Rolling Stone, on stands now.

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter