TS: Box sets - "Expanded Greatest Hits" Vs. lots of unreleased extras

I'd say that things like what the Cure and Siouxsie did with their boxes are right up my alley -- a slew of obscurities in one place plus liner notes talking about them and some really good artwork = great! On that level I'm the dedicated fan and then some.

On the other hand, something like the Echo box set -- career overview, all/most of the singles plus the B-sides and a slew of rarities -- was and remains equally attractive to me as a way of representing a band. Actually that collection served as a strong reintroduction to a band that I had enjoyed for years, gave me some new perspectives on their sound and work.

I suppose it all depends -- strikes me that there's no one right answer.

The all-too-prevalent habit of producing box-sets which are 80% (a) and 20% (b) generally just seem to be a cynical way of selling the same box (and at full box-set prices) to both sets of people thereby satisfying only the financial interests of the artist / label and of neither group of consumers.

Yes I know this may appear to contradict what I've been saying about The Cure reissues - but to have consciously co-ordinated the simultaneous creation of a box-set of "B-sides and rarities", together with a series of multi-disc reissues of all of that bands albums with rarities and bonus tracks but which exclude certain relevant tracks; for no other reason than that those tracks "already" appear on the box-set; smacks to me of an hyper-uber-mega-cynical exploitative marketing ploy to deliberately create a need for that box-set for no other reason than to be able to sell it separately for more money.

If you do, none whatsoever.

How often do people buy boxsets from artists they have little or no other material from, though?

I think what I'm trying to say is that box sets are often good gateways for people into canonical artists whom they've always wanted to own but have never gotten around to purchasing; if I was going to introduce Elvis, Zep or The Beatles into my CD collection I would look at box sets before looking at anything else (ditto Echo and James Brown, to switch to different canons).

Incidentally, the Echo box is what I dropped onto my iPod, but when I want to listen to the band I put on the individual expanded remasters. I guess that means I prefer the "expanded greatest hits" model, at least when the band hasn't been cleaned up yet. I'm super psyched about the five disc Band boxed set due next year.