To jbaent and other fans.
Yes i agree, but i think the collectors are all different people with different aims,pleasures and necessities.
For some group of collectors it is good enough to have all the recorded DS and MK stuff stored and archived on HDD on the PC, or easily made as as a CD-R Disc.
Some other fans, like me, are more interested to have the original physically sound-carriers, like the vinyls, singles, maxi-singles, cds, cd-singles, dvds, videos and so on. So there are different necessities the fans have, in case of collecting the musical work of MK and DS.
I prefer those sound-carriers, which offers a long life-span, which a cheap CD-R cannot offer. In some time, those CD-Rs or DVD-Rs are loosing their audio and video-quality and they are not playable perfectly.
So i personally don´t buy those so called CD-R or ACETATE-CD-R Promos. That is money wasting for that type of sound-carrier. But that is also my personal opinion.
I have records in my collection which are more than 120 years old, and they are still good playable, on a wind-up gramophone.
Yes, i also have lots of live-recordings by MK and DS on my HDD on my PC, indeed, but sometime i make a CD-R Set for my own with some preferred recordings, to listen to it with my High-End-Hifi-System. Those live-recordings are traded with some other fellow fans. That is a good method. With three very goodsounding concerts a German Vinyl-manufacturer made some direct-cut vinyl-record-sets as one of a kind editions for me, to play it on my hi-fi-systems. To store or to archive a lot of audio or video-data it will be adäquate to have it on HDD or PC, no question.
PS: On the other hand, i personally don´t feel ripped off, in case of buying an adäquate DS or MK bootleg-live-album as Vinyl or as genuine CD-Album. The offered price is the one side, and the soundquality of the recorded material is the other side. But i personally don´t buy so called "artificial" items, which are fake or rip-off-articles, like some doubtful Promo CDs, those Israeli-Promo-Picture-Discs or the Mexican-Radio-Station-promos, which are clear fake articles.
At the moment you have the chance to buy "Master-Tape-Reels" from Dire Straits and other artists, wich are offered by a Russian trader. Such items are also fake, very well made, no question, but not genuine master-tape-reels from the studios, the music-publishers or by the artists.