since it brought up im abt to explain how i see the whole depeche mode box sets anton book money greedy thing idk who will read this but I like analysing things so let’s go

so about the box sets. Let’s get the obvious things out of the way. Vinyl is expensive these days because everyone listens to digital. Yes you hipsters may not thing that bc all ur friends have record players but

The average music listener doesn’t use vinyl records anymore. My mom who is in her 50s was shocked when I wanted to buy records bc she thinks they’re not modern anymore. So the price of LPs is high because there’s less demand thus higher production costs thus

higher market prices. A normal vinyl record costs around 20 bucks. The dm box sets have what . 3 LPs in them? And they’re remastered old singles, and they include booklets n more exclusive stuff. It makes sense for them to be expensive

then we have the fact that they’re not targeted towards ur average dm fan. Yes u people on twt are used to everyone liking all of their music and being obsessed w them but the average dm fan listens to their most famous albums in the car n maybe calls Dave sexy sometimes.

The boxes are targeted towards collectors. And dm aren’t the ones who came up w the idea of collector edition music boxes. Look at classic rock bands, look at other older popular bands, hell modern bands have box sets worth hundreds of dollars.

Someone along the line figured out they can exploit the collectors and die hard fans for money if they create “exclusive limited edition” things . Dm aren’t the first to come up w that idea . They r just following the standard of the industry . N they still need

2 pay the people who manufactured all the boxes lol they didn’t just pop out of thin air.

I believe that they keep releasing box set after box set since it’s been 40 years since the formation of the band and they wanted to make some exclusive super expensive way of commemorating their journey n that’s why they’re re releasing singles

However the thing I want to criticise is that they come off as greedy bc the only interaction they have w their fans that give them $ is via the release of these expensive sets. There’s a disconnect between the fans and the band bc we regular poor ppl can’t afford to

get these exclusive new things. Duran Duran, for example, have expensive merch too, but throughout quarantine they did live streams and qnas, they showed that they care for their fans whereas dm just . Show off their new boxes that 98% of the fan base can’t afford lmao

so in conclusion I can understand the pricing of their box sets and I can understand why they’re releasing them but I’m disappointed in the fact that they don’t seem as connected to their fans as they once were