Saturday Deluxe / 28 July 2018

A few months ago I thought I wanted to have the vinyls of Yazoo and a few days ago I learned about this box. Wonderful, it’s a gift for fans who love vinyl!

With the large amount of releases coming out on CD only, it seems a bit of an overreaction on any particular set being vinyl only. There will continue to be sets that are CD only, some that are vinyl only, some that are a mix, and music fans that complain about the formats. I think you’ve hit on it, it’s a business decision. Who knows, maybe there’s a more comprehensive CD box coming in the future.

I also only buy CDs. Having already gone through the process once of swapping vinyl for CDs throughout the eighties and nineties, I am not inclined to do it again. It is disappointing that so many releases are now vinyl or download only, as it means that I am being excluded basically from the market (I despise the whole concept of downloading and streaming). I also find it interesting that many artists still issue promo versions of vinyl only releases on CD. There must be room for the CD format in today’s market and even for limited edition releases on CD if record companies do not want to go the whole hog. I spend close on £100 per week on music, but I can only see that declining if the current trend continues.

I love Yazoo. I’d pay money for this set on CD. I won’t pay money for a digital download unless it’s lossless. I won’t buy it on vinyl, despite the fact that I own three turntables. I don’t pay those ridiculous prices for vinyl unless it’s something I REALLY can’t get any other way. The format has too many downsides, and I absolutely hate the “gamble” of whether or not I’ll end up with a decent pressing. So Yazoo and the record label won’t be getting a penny from me with this release.

I am buying both vinyl and CD sets. However, the problem with CD sets with an exhaustive collection of remixes is that they are basically unlistenable (or listenable for one time. or maybe listenable for you, buy they may drive your family crazy ;) ).

I think the best way is to release all albums and 12″ in their original way, bundled together. So far, I only know of Sisters of Mercy doing this. Also Depeche Mode seems to do something similar, but excluding the album, which is ok too I suppose.

This can then be replicated in both vinyl and CD version released as separate sets, and also with download codes (yes, even for the CDs’, I am lazy).

Would everyone be happy with this? If so records companies, please follow sisters of mercy example, with the addition of CD versions :)

I was a big fan of the CD over 35 years! But I have all the time my vinyl collection in the background.

Since beginning of 2018 I have a subscription at qobuz and I’m really happy with that!

Every friday I “have” the newest “CD’s” and – of course – Box Sets and Super deluxe editions available.

Since then I stopped nearly to buy CD’s! The only reasons to buy CD’s are…

… not available at qobuz. Rarely…
… additional benefit. Rarely…
… “extreme important”. Also rarely but if so I buy the vinyl and hear CD-quality on qobuz.

Apropos Vinyl: I hate mp3 downloads which come with a vinyl. In my eyes a contradiction. When I buy a vinyl I want something special and the best quality. MP 3 is not the best choice!!! So I be glad when I found as a real benefit a CD inside a vinyl cover or a CD-quality download or – best! – a hires-download. MP3 download makes me angry! We have 2018 and MP3 is old school but not friendly-old-school like for example vinyl… (or newly CD…).

After reading all these comments it’s clear to me that people want all formats, including mp3 files. And providing all formats (except cassettes) is important.

It seems we are at a place in time where many formats are being used equally? Except cassettes.

I stopped bying Vinyl in the 80s and will NEVER buy it again. If you want to sell me something, make it available on CD. I do not buy Vinyl or files. Also do not bundle CDs and Vinyl, I have no need for Vinyl and refuse to pay even $1 because it is included.

The world is gettibg stupider, Brexit, Trump, Vinyl resurgence, what more proof do you need ;)

Anyone else here really enjoying their CD box of Springsteen vol.2

;)

I do find it odd the official line is that, ”CDs are too expensive to produce”. So what they are saying is a 4 CD set would retail at more than £75… but we really aren’t as stupid as the label may think.

The reality is that they really do need to wake up to themselves! Charging £75 for a 4 LPs is crazy considering three discs are already available.

Take for example, the awesome SDE curated Curiosity Killed the Cat 4 disc set which is £25 and has everything a fan could ever want!

It’s about time ‘we’ who are only ever referred to as ‘the market’ need to raise our voices and let the industry know how we feel.

I’m still waiting for the Bruce Springsteen vol.2 album collection to be released on CD (domestically USA, not Japan). I said at the time that releasing that set in vinyl only was the start of things to come…

I dont understand why people complain about Yazoo and the box set not made available on CD. If you take a look at the track listing (both albums + remixes + bbc sessions), I guess it’s about 2 hours of music (maybe a few minutes more) so it would likely fit on a double CD and obviously they could’t charge you £84 for it (even if it includes a book, a poster, art prints). And if they released a four cd box set with the same content then I’m sure people would complain and say music could have fit on a double cd and they mafe 4 cds only to inflate the final price!

I have the original LPs and CDs and they sound great so I don’t need that box set. The funny thing is I would probably have bought this as a simple double CD (without all the extras : book, art prints, poster) as the price would have been in the £15-20 range. I think the first album with the peel sessions would fit on CD1 and then you aďd the remixes to the second album on CD2.

I guess they could have left some empty space in the book or the box for 2 CD and then the double CD could be bought separately. Either you only want digital and you buy the double CD or you want everything and then you buy the deluxe vinyl box set and the double cd ir order to have a complete box. Maybe it would cost foo much. After all, it’s just Yazoo, not U2, Coldplay, Radiohead or Depeche Mode. For what it’s worth, Human League released their compilatoon “a very british synthetizer group” as a double CD, 3CD box set and vinyl box set. The price of the 3 CD box set started very high at £78 and then dropped at £45. I guess it didn’t sell well enough…

I like both formats lp and cd, but also use streaming-services and sometimes buy downloads.
Paul, as Im so tempted to get both lp and cd-boxsets of all 3 Lord Of The Rings-soundtracks, would you say that it’s worth it really? Is it really that good on vinyl to pay much more money for almost same performance and arts? Cd:s already should be fine for those great sounscapes but Im so close to ordering both formats? Help me, tell more how you feel of each set and would it really be good to double-dip and get both?

>>Music is, after all, what it’s all about.
Wish some of the industry people would take this to their hearts…
To be honest with recent policies and releases I have a massive doubt that with many releases it is about the music at all these days…

I love cd’s and still buy them. However, I notice a lot of new cd-releases (and I mean new recordings) appear in a simple gatefold/cardboard sleeve, sometimes even without a booklet. The credits are printed on the sleeve and that’s it. So, in that case I don’t see the benefit of buying the physical product; the only thing I have ‘in my hands’ is a small piece of cardboard.
Of course, a lot of good and extensive cd-releases appear with thick booklets and liner-notes, but these are mostly reissues.
Anyone else who had the same feeling/experiences?

I bought a few vinyl records (second hand or new) because I had to. Some songs or albums are still unavailable on CD: Paul Simon’s 12” remixes of “Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes” and “The Boy in the Bubble, Tanita Tikaram’s “Fireflies in the Kitchen” (n the 12” single Cathedral Song), Art Garfunkel’s “The Romance” (on the original album version of Scissors Cut), Sade’s “Wired” (on the 12” remix of Is It a Crime) (And it’s a crime there’s still no deluxe edition of her albums), Soundtrack albums “Up on the Creek”, “Almost Summer”… I can go on.
I don’t pay for vinyl rips on CD’s when the original master-tapes still exists, I can do that at home. Record Companies or artists (depends on who’s in control) should listen more to their music-fans. Without them they got nothing! No job, no income! So why don’t they have some kind of “contact website” where fans can be heard (Alright, something SDE is doing but more). Where fans can have some input (by giving them the opportunity of choosing songs, bonus tracks, design, …) in the making of a rerelease or a best of or a greatest hits or what will be the next single or how the artwork should look like or … . When fans are involved there will be more profit for the artist or record company (Yes mister lawyer at the helm of the company, sad for you but it’s true). Now it’s a one way direction, take it or leave it. And I will leave it when the rerelease is a quick throwing together of a 20th , 30th , 40th or 50th anniversary edition.
Everything evolves but what evolution do we want? An evolution with varied choice or limited choice?

I buy CDs, vinyl stream. digital downloads – all of them as I love music. For something to be exclusive to vinyl, that’s fine by me – normally it’s CDs that get the deluxe treatment. They should have thrown a spanner in the works and issued it on Mini disc and cassette combo ha ha. If you are a fan/collector you will find a way of listening to a release like this. My go to is vinyl – it’s my era and i’m thankful that it’s back in full force after 20 plus years of it being ignored and relegated to bargain bins

I bought a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and threw my computer out the window because I wanted to make something real.

I wanted to make a Yaz record.

I am in the USA and only purchase cd’s. I just read a story from the Chicago Tribune a few days ago about the Best Buy CEO named Hubert Joly. Apparently earlier this year he asked a bunch of people at a gathering: “Who buys cd’s anymore?” Joly is a Bozo in my book. He obviously never reads SDE. Best Buy stopped selling cd’s in store on July 1. The web site is getting bare, too. I hope Best Buy goes out of business.

Long live cd’s!

This may have already been stated in the 50 plus responses below: Doesn’t a vinyl only release encourage paid downloads or paying for only selected tracks, and most importantly: illegal downloading? I suppose those who download illegally probably download illegally even if the release is available on CD. Vinyl only will encourage “needle drop” downloads.

Vinyl is great. But releases also need to be released on CD, because as far as I can see, CD’s are still wanted by many people. I’ve always assumed that digital downloads have always come from the original copy off the CD’s.

I have something like 2000 sets of CDs [from single CDs, double CD sets, box sets, etc.]. I have some vinyl but I’m not running out to change my collection over – especially when I have no turntable!

It’s not complicated. If there is a physical digital release (CD), then they can have my money. If not, I’ll pirate it. It’s that simple. They either want to make money from digital, or they don’t. I suppose they’re saying that the monies from streaming is good enough. I do not stream, and I don’t want to stream.

Note to industry: I’ve been buying music for 50 years. I want to continue to buy music. I want PHYSICAL music. I’ve been and done Vinyl, and have ZERO INTEREST in going back to it. CD is my poison of choice. You either give me the option to PAY for my music, or I join the hordes who pirate your product.

As a fan I think it’s sad everyone is disappointed with the first Yazoo release in eight and ten years!

I feel the first three discs are being used to created a bloated package to bump up the price to pay for the licensing costs of disc 4.

I am sure anyone at the label who had passion for Yazoo is long gone many years ago and that this is the ‘amazing idea’ of a marketing kid just out of university!

Why don’t music companies get creative with CDs and try to keep it alive? I believe one of the main attractions of buying vinyl records (if not the only one) is the awesome/big artwork and (sometimes) the inner sleeves / lyrics sheets that come with it, I am sure we can release CDs also in a similar package size with all of the great (big, vinyl record sleeve type) artwork, I believe Disney has already launched that packaging for blu-rays (similar to the LD packages of yore) and they look awesome to me: http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/big-sleeve-edition/44360/disney-big-sleeve-edition-images#19 I buy a ton of vinyl and I love the sound etc but I also love CDs especially the box-sets and any kind of special packaging ; have a ton of albums of the artists I love on both CD and Vinyl and am also nuts for keeping Apple Music as well which I use to sample albums before I buy them and also since most of the new-ish cars do not have a CD player anymore :( IMHO vinyl sales are all good but the industry is basically killing it with overpricing and at the same time trying to purposely/forcefully kill the CD forma while they at it which doesn’t make sense to me either.

One of the reasons I have not bought any of the Ramones Super Deluxe reissues, is that I do not want the vinyl. As much as I sometimes regret it, I got rid of my vinyl in the 1990s. I’m not going back. I don’t want downloads either. I can’t stomach paying almost the same price for a download as I would pay for a physical CD. It’s ridiculous. There is nothing to manufacture. It is a digital file that can be reproduced, at no cost, indefinitely I will not be gouged, so blatantly. I still want CDs.

Hopefully they actually have a good business case for not releasing this in CD format. Profit margin, resources, licensing, etc, because it doesn’t seem likely that you can make the case that it won’t sell.

I grew up with vinyl and enjoy the whole vinyl thing, the artwork, the fact you can see what’s happening and understand the simple process of mic, cut groove, needle, speaker.
But….. I buy on cd so I can afford more new music each year. We need some honesty here, record companies should say they need to make profit x rather than bullshit excuses or if I’m being very generous maybe it’s harder to bootleg an LP than a CD!
So is the digital download for the Yazoo set cd quality or better? This should be the minimum you get with your vinyl for that price as ripping the LPs is time consuming and lower quality.
In some ways now is a great time to buy cds, they’ve never been cheaper new and that’s probably the real reason in this case not to issue them.
All we need is a choice and not to be excluded by level of disposable income.

Without the renewed interest in vinyl locally, I am fairly certain that the last three remaining used record stores in my area would have closed as many had done before. One local store just had a store-wide CD sale to celebrate their 30th Anniversary. Sadly, I don’t think this video does much to argue the case that CDs are still relevant…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILfnvBFrUu0

CD And 5.1 surround fan myself and prefer physical rather than download.
A vinyl box set leaves me cold. And mixed format sets are a definite no no.
So this stays on the shelf for me.

One of the main reasons vinyl is so expensive…hipsters are using them as diner plates !

I’ve never paid for a download, use no streaming service (except maybe a couple of listens on YouTube/bandcamp to see if I like something) and haven’t bought vinyl since 1991 yet I still spend most of my disposable income on music. Suddenly I don’t matter because “no one wants CDs”!?!

I’ve long favored this metaphor and I will use it again: vinyl is the cool, hip, charismatic older sibling who’s nonetheless high maintenance and a bit of a pain to manage. Streaming is the hard working and high achieving youngest sibling who’s always getting the job done but completely devoid of personality and interest.

CDs are the unloved middle child: not as cool as vinyl, yet not as high maintenance either. They are more interesting than streaming, but not quite as practical either.

For me, I’ll continue to prefer the “compromise” between aesthetic/collector value and practicality that CDs offer.

The John Peel session version of Don’t Go is available to stream as a single now. I see it on Apple Music and it may be on other services too. It’s a very good version.

Never understood why record labels choose to bury a viable format. I always thought a business was about selling … anyway thanks for starting the fight and that great website

Well said SDE Paul. I’m so fed up reading the general “physical media is dead” all over the place, not just CD. The music and TV / movie product world has its own hoards of fake news purveyors. Just hecause their local store has shut down or is deserted, they spread this nonsense about nobody buying CDs etc any more.

its ok saying cds are boring but whats more boring than black vinyl for the price it should be coloured and the remixes on side 2 sound like new mixes not period pieces from the 80s.

I resisted switching to CD’s for many years until in 1993 when I couldn’t get a vinyl copy of Kate Bush’s The Red Shoes. I have since re-bought my entire record collection on CD – some albums many times (eg The Human League’s Dare originally on vinyl and then 3 different CD versions).

I’ll be god-damned buggered if I go back to buying vinyl again. It’s bulls**t vinyl snobbery all this nonsense – and I’ll bet my life one day soon CD’s will again be ‘cool with the kids’ – after cassettes have their ‘revival’.

It’s all just a ploy to get us to spend our money.

Oh – and Yazoo? ONE good album and a couple of decent singles.

if anyone from mute records read this “for pieces” article about the vinyl box and all the most negative posts about it, they can’t be happy with that bad promotion.
SDE is a powerful website now – real music fans from all over the world share here their thoughts and wishes. artists should better realize that.
it is enough time to change some things for the real yazoo fans,
for those the box is actually made for.

As it’s been said, they cannot charge too much for a cd set while vinyl had no bullshit-price threshhold. Alison’s explanation stinks. She should have kept quiet. By the way i wonder how many long for vinyl reissue in this day and age as we all know most sound crap compared to the originals and the sleeves are mistly xeroxed copies. Thank you Yazoo fans for boycotting this

I have the In Your Room CD set. If this new set was on CD, the new tracks wouldn’t justify the purchase. However, I’m such a fan that I would probably get it.

By the way this Yazoo no cd policy already started in 2008 in addition to the In Your Room box when Mute released two remix ep’s (Reconnected EP and Nobodys Duary) which also only was available on vinyl and digital.

The problem that the music business must take into account, if anything is issued on vinyl and download files only, people will download for free, guilt free as well. If a cd format is issued they might buy the cd. No cd makes no money to the artist or label much more likely.

I think you are right Paul, that it is the profit margin on the vinyl along with the trendy factor that means no CD set. What I find the most annoying though, is that artists who have had thier sales sustained by CD for twenty five plus years, until streaming and the vinyl resurgence, are quick to neglect the CD format. As RJS says, CD manufacture costs next to nothing.

Elvis Costello has a new album out in October. There is a pre -sale on his website but only for US fans only. Loads of over priced bundles full of absolute tat but containing signed CDs or vinyl. Cheapest option started at $111. Dearest was a signed test press at $290. All signed items already gone. I wonder how many of these over priced bundles of tat they will sell without the lure of a signed piece of music included? And where is the UK pre order link?

I buy CDs and some vinyl. I’m pretty picky about what I buy on vinyl because it’s so expensive, and tend to just stick to RSD stuff and other choice items. It’s annoying when vinyl releases don’t come with download codes because it’s such a faff to record them, which is something that is so easy to do with CDs. So I end up buying an expensive download (hopefully WAV) that comes with an expensive piece of plastic, I will rarely, if ever, play. Whoever came up with that selling point is a genius!
In relation to this particular release, I picked up the In Your Room box set a little while ago and I’m glad I did as it’s a bit more expensive now. So I won’t be getting this anyway :)

I already have the ‘In Your Room’ box set so for me it’s the BBC tracks and Remixes that I wouldn’t mind being released on CD. So a cheaply manufactured 2CD set would suffice for me and when I say cheap, I mean I don’t need a 20 page booklet or flash digipak cover.

In recent years Placebo reissued their first five studio albums exclusively on vinyl. Means that the remasters aren’t available in any other format than vinyl LP, there was not even a digital download coming with the records. Despite the choice I think they sold pretty well. So who knows, maybe Mute have done their maths right?