The Complete U2: Good idea to buy?

[sigamy]

Is anyone going to buy The Complete U2? It seems like a good deal, but I'm not sure if I'd want an entire U2 library with DRM--and only in 128kbps AAC.

I listened to U2 when everyone else did and I've always wanted to pick up their early stuff (War, Boy) , but I never have.

I think U2 has released about 13 studio albums. If I could find each at $13 that would be $169. You wouldn't have the bonus tracks, but you'd have CD quality and no DRM...but you'd have to store the 13 CDs.

I love the idea of the Digital Box set but to have all of your U2 music tied to iTunes is a bit scarey.

ps--And when the heck is Apple going to offer something above 128kbps?!

[jmelrose]

You're forgetting:

u2's current catalog on itunes = 209 songs, which includes redundancies in the Gr. Hits and other compliations.

Box = 400 songs. There's a huge amount they're not telling us here. I predict the audio of a show from every tour throughout their career, or something of similar magnitude. Bono mentioned demos at the ipod event. Maybe we'll finally get to hear those unreleased Joshua Tree tracks that have 30-second snipplets floating around on the web, or something similar. No u2 die-hard fan won't want this. Plus $150 for 400 songs is.. like, 30 cents a song or something? Apple is going to start a whole new genre of music release. Plus, brilliantly, the band can release the master tracks on CD whenever they wish, as they're already mastered. Probably won't happen for while, but it'll come. The missing liner notes, etc are a bummer, but I wouldn't be shocked to find out they'll have something online, or a PDF or something to fill in that gap.

Gotta have it. Next Tuesday can't come soon enough.

[CrackedButter]

At the UK store, the complete U2 is number 7 as of today, the day of its release...

However, U2's new album is already at number one as well... somebodies buying it.

[G-Prime]

I got it. It is really amazing. If anyone wants to see the pdf file that is included I will e-mail it to you, it list all the songs and tells about each album.

[ClinicalWaste]

Track listing can be found here.

http://www.atu2.com/boxset.pdf

[FelixDerKater]

You have the ability to burn the songs to CD on your own if you would like to.

[kerb]

they haven't got DRM if you burn them :cool:

[MattG]

I bought it and it's great! Lots of stuff I've never heard before. I've been listening to it little by little...it'll take me a while to listen to the whole thing.

[Ryan1524]

you can strip them. i've done it with my first batch of songs from the store. although i only did it for fun sicne i have an iPod. but it's do-able if you need to, or wanna keep a clean collection.