ABBA / The Singles 7-inch vinyl box

Got it for £115 on Amazon, a reasonable price. Around £160 now.

Single 34, (Happy New Year), has a previously unreleased version of Andante Andante as its B-Side. This ‘Alternative Version’ has a much more complex & beautiful backing track than the version that we previously had. To hear the ‘New’ version you can find it on YouTube. Bear in mind that there are ‘Alternative Versions’ of several other ABBA Songs, that Benny & Bjorn have yet to let us have. Including ‘The Winner Takes It All’, I’m told. It is such a shame that we cannot have them.

It will cost between £220-£300 for the set it is over the top for the price

The duplication of a few tracks is because the singles are from different countries that released different A-Sides. To reproduce the artwork they had to include the original b-side. I agree though that Estoy Sonando’s b-side should be As Good As New. They perhaps couldn’t get the artwork for that country’s release.

While it is disappointing, the price point of £2 per single as somebody hoped for is unrealistic, I think. The standard price for 7″ singles in the early 90s was around £2 – and sometimes more.

But yes, this is massive exploitation of the same catalogue. Boring. Something new please, like archive material or surround mixes.

Apparently it was 3 ABBA Fans who chose the Tracks for this Box Set.
Which makes it even more silly that any Tracks were duplicated. Because
the Fans know better, & should not have duplicated any Tracks. Only they
know why they did so. Like virtually all ABBA Fans, I’ll be ignoring this Box Set. It is both flawed & superfluous – as well as being over-priced.

And there was I really hoping that this year we’d finally see some of the “Just..” unreleased stuff finally surface in their full (non edited) form, such as Just Like That and Just A Notion.

You won’t get much change out of £200. Some non-UK sites are listing it as the equivalent of £235 or £189.50.

This ABBA Singles Box Set will cost around 200 Euros, which is 164 UK Pounds, 276 USA Dollars, & 309 Australian Dollars. In other words it is very expensive. At that price the least we could have expected would be that each Track was different. Universal should not have stuck rigidly to the A & B Sides Theme, at those times when a Track would be duplicated. So we really should not be seeing ‘Watch Out’ being repeated as the B-Side of the English & German language versions of ‘Waterloo’. And it is extremely silly that we get ‘Does Your Mother Know’ as the A-Side of Single 27, only for it to also be used as the B-Side of Single 29 – ‘Estoy Sonando’, (the Spanish version of ‘I Have A Dream’). They put ‘Does Your Mother Know’ on its B-Side in one Country only – Argentina. Elsewhere, some Countries made ‘As Good As New’ the B-Side. Other Countries made the Spanish ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’, (‘Conociéndome, Conociéndote’), the B-Side. Either of which would have added an extra Track to the Box Set, rather than repeating ‘Does Your Mother Know’. With 2 Tracks repeated in the Box Set, & CD3 in the ‘Deluxe Gold’ having some awful/weak ABBA B-Sides on it, I’m really not impressed by some of Universal’s decisions regarding some ABBA releases. It is as if someone, who hardly knows ABBA Music, is deciding what goes on ABBA releases. It is sad that the Fans are not given any say in these things. Except in Japan, where the Fans Voted for the Tracks on the ’40/40′ Double CD, & came up with a lot of strong ABBA Tracks. I doubt if many ABBA Fans will be buying the over-priced Singles Box Set. You can only sell the same old Songs, (or ‘S.O.S., as I call them), to the same Fans, so many times before even the most loyal ABBA Fans feel they are being exploited, & refuse to buy any more.

“How many people have a record player these days?” – well I have 5 plus a Dansette that needs a little bit of tlc to bring it back to life.
I laughed at the people who got rid of their record players a few years ago – you simply cannot beat playing a 7 inch single … don’t get me wrong, I love the way mp3’s have freed up my music collection and made it accessible, but just playing vinyl is special :D

a great set – 40 singles – so a reasonable price would be £80, no doubt it will be silly money, so expect it to be £200!

Bugger this. How many people have a record player these days? How about reissuing the 3 hit compilations? I know loads of fans who’d love to have full remasters of those, as opposed to a dumb anniversary/whatever edition of ABBA Gold….

Kindof a repeat incident, like much of Abba’s output since 1982. Still, I’d want this. Just hope it won’t be a three digit price.

what’s the use… ?

Quite interested. Expecting this to be very pricey though :(