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Big box sets
Usually I resist buying Big Box Sets. I never did much with my 9-CD box of Stax music, for instance. The Mar-Keys are good but rarely my first choice in the morning. Otis Redding I already knew.
But surely nominal values should not matter (...tell that to those guys are arguing whether Pluto should be a "planet," a "pluton," or a mid-sized boulder.) Why is buying a Big Box Set different from buying a bunch of individual CDs over time?
There is a neuroeconomics critique of Big Box Sets. So much of the pleasure of a purchase lies in the anticipation of the buy rather than the having. The anticipatory pleasure of a Big Box Set, no matter how large, is not so much greater than the anticipatory pleasure from a single CD. Yet once you own a large box it sits around. You can't listen to the CDs all at once. They start to feel "stale," and then you go out and want that anticipatory fix again. Bryan Caplan aside, the anticipatory pleasure of "listening to the seventh CD in the box" is somehow not the same. So you buy some more CDs. The Big Box Set sits dormant.
If it is a really big box, you can't even look forward to the pleasure of "finishing it off," and consigning it to the basement where probably it belongs.
I have just bought Miles Davis's 20-CD box "Live at Montreaux", used I might add. These CDs override all of the strictures against Big Box Sets.
This is fortunate because in my future lies the eight-CD Miles Davis Live at the Plugged Nickel and the 6-CD Miles Davis and Gil Evans.
The Music of Islam is another worthwhile 20-CD set. And I would like to buy a 20-CD box of Fela Kuti, if they put one out.
Here is my previous post How Quickly Should I Go Through My Stock of Battlestar Galactica?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 24, 2006 at 07:13 AM in Music | Permalink
Comments
Readers might find the lyrics to the Barenaked Ladies song "Box Set" an intriguing comparison-and-contrast to this post.
Posted by: KipEsquire at Aug 24, 2006 8:38:31 AM
Box sets are just inventory to be added to the thousands of songs on my i-pod. Shuffle and enjoy.
The best benefit of larger sets is the sense that you have acquired most of the key titles in a performer's catalog.
Just my opinion.
Posted by: Dave at Aug 24, 2006 8:55:18 AM
The Complete Plugged Nickel is my favorite live music recording of all-time. Six of the cds are currently in my car cd-changer. I've never heard more creative solos from Wayne Shorter and the rhythm section of Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams totally in sync with eatch other and Miles and Wayne.
Posted by: GGB at Aug 24, 2006 9:53:06 AM
Buying a box set is like acquiring a full set of a certain brand of trading cards (before inserts of course)...
Posted by: David Malmstrom at Aug 24, 2006 11:11:03 AM
The set of Jelly Roll Morton playing, singing, and talking to Alan Lomax is a part of American history that you yanks really all ought to own.
Posted by: dearieme at Aug 24, 2006 11:47:18 AM
I'm with you on the nominal values thing. Does the planet count matter to anyone besides fourth-graders?
Posted by: Lee at Aug 24, 2006 12:01:22 PM
I'm right there with GGB about the "Live at
the Plugged Nickel" sets. I bought the LPs
originally on vinyl, then the CDs. So I
haven't (and won't, I think) buy the Big Box,
but we'll see. The group was as inventive
and exciting during those sets as ever.
Posted by: Donald A. Coffin at Aug 24, 2006 12:02:25 PM
if you don't have the 5 CD keith jarrett at the blue note, get it. one of the few box sets i have that i listen to all of the discs (may have something to do with the small size of the set, but still great music).
i also don't think it's just about the anticipation. it's that having something comprehensive is better in theory than in fact. unless it's our favorite artist, we really don't want to hear many of the outtakes and lesser quality material. and, with jazz, it's even more of a problem, because of how much material some one like davis produced. not matter how much i love miles, i don't love everything he recorded. so you want the box set more to pledge allegiance to miles than to actually listen to all of it.
Posted by: dj superflat at Aug 24, 2006 12:47:48 PM
Hee, hee -- I got the "Plugged Nickel" box set when for some odd reason Amazon was selling it for about $10, some years back. Error got corrected in about two hours -- just after I'd called all my friends.
Posted by: Sanjay Krishnaswamy at Aug 24, 2006 2:48:23 PM
I first heard Fela Kuti in a bar in Sicily. It was amazing, but I'm not sure which albums to buy. What do you recommend?
Posted by: will mcbride at Aug 24, 2006 6:40:15 PM
ahhhhhh!
i was just about to buy the Talking Heads Brick as reward for finishing my phd. now......
Posted by: mwt at Aug 25, 2006 10:51:00 AM
20 cd set of Fela? That's overkill. As a recomendation, I think it's called Army Arrangement. I saw him in NYC and he played 3 songs over the course of 4 hours or something like that. Yes the songs were long, but he spent a lot of time railing about not getting paid by the promotoer. Also, Don Moye (i think that's his name) from the Art Ensemble of Chicago joined for a jam. Pretty cool stuff.
Posted by: john at Aug 25, 2006 12:28:43 PM
"Live! with Ginger Baker" is a very good Fela Kuti album.
Posted by: Kit Taylor at Aug 26, 2006 7:55:05 AM
the last three Miles Davis box sets I bought all had derogatory references in the liner notes to the diminishing general quality of Miles Davis box sets.
Posted by: dsquared at Aug 26, 2006 4:24:46 PM
I that for a lot of people buying the box set can be a status thing
mainly just to say that, "this is something that I own". I have friends
who cluter their rooms and houses with box sets of not just CD's but
movies, and book collections just because they are aesthetically pleasing.
Posted by: Michael Honea at Aug 29, 2006 9:19:23 PM
Does anyone happen to know whether the Miles davis "On The Corner" box set will see a release in the longbox format. Call me anal, but I've all the other sets in this format, and would like to complete my collection.
Did the Seven Steps set ever get a longbox release? I can't seem to find it anywhere.
Posted by: Jamie Stephenson at Dec 20, 2007 8:12:35 AM
Posted by: at Oct 13, 2008 11:03:46 PM
