Dire Straits - When It Comes To You (Live in Nîmes, France / 1992 / Visualiser)

[Chris W]

Yeah, I didn't suggest anything was a rip off. All these Super Deluxe Editions are limited editions.
So it's not really proving the enduring popularity of Dire Straits when the 78-92 box set sells out.

[superval99]

I thought the CD box set was good value and while I am by no means wealthy I am fortunate enough to be able to make a discretionary purchase of £50 without it making a massive impact. Also, it was a good birthday present for my wife to get me

Would have been nice to get the vinyl set but I am done with MK and DS vinyl until they stop using the GZ plant which is a total lottery quality wise.

Overall DS/MK aren't the worst offenders in this area.

I thought the CD box set was amazing value at £50 and a very nice addition to my collection.   Vinyls are overpriced these days imo.

[Chris W]

The CD version of the live box appears to be sold out on Amazon UK, so using that non scientific benchmark it appears to have sold well.

I probably shouldn't have mentioned the price. £50 was expensive for me. Especially the way musicians are paid these days. Also, as I said, it came out when the news was full of people struggling to heat their homes.
My MAIN point was that a well researched and marketed limited edition having sold out, doesn't really demonstrate that there is a strong general market for more Dire Straits releases.

[ds1984]

Yeah, I didn't suggest anything was a rip off. All these Super Deluxe Editions are limited editions.
So it's not really proving the enduring popularity of Dire Straits when the 78-92 box set sells out.

That means that the project was done accordingly whith the current market state.

I ignore how much profitable it was but selling out means that they did not lost money on it.

Regarding the price itself, maybe some of us did have a biased view as UK is not in the best economic situation : I checked my bill, the box in France did sell in 2023 for only £36. Ouch!

So our view can differ because we have just one world but we live in different ones.

[Rolo]

Professionals want to be paid right?

What the free access to Spotify and YouTube has resulted in is a mountain of mediocre content. It's not me saying it....it's a very common comment by a lot of 'fans'. Why is there no good music any more? There is, it's just hidden behind a tsunami of crap.
I now record drums for people remotely. I've made my own EP records in the past and videos. Yeah, it's cheap and easy to do something basic to a minimum level. It is very hard to do something excellent, even harder to do something that would have stood up 25 years ago.
Even colour grading video to look good is an actual professional career in itself, requiring hours of training and years of experience.
In the On The Night era you had multiple people with vast experience all doing separate jobs - mixing the audio, colour grading the video, editing the video, mixing the video with the audio. To expect one 'fan' to do all that now is......dreaming.

I agree 100% about Spotify/Youtube mediocre content. And I am not talking about the Spotify payments...
I know a bunch of great musicians that not put his music on digital platforms or even put them fisically on the streets because how music is consumed.
This is a lost battle.

The main problem with Spotify content is that anyone can put enything on there. In the past, making demos and showing them to specific people, resulted on a big filter that not exists anymore.
I remember reading EC self-biograpy and the line was: "Music scenario didn't change from my youth to nowadays. 5% of good music and 95% of crap"
The problem is that these 5% is composed by 5% of good music and 95% of crap hahahaha.

Good music is a niche.

When I say that are fans and fans. It's because there are very competent people (with years of experience) that could be, also, a Dire Straits. Those people are not locked on his bedrooms eating cheetos and putting themselves on places that they don't belong. There are real jobs, teams, and real professionalism.

I am not saying that they don't need to be payed. They must be.
Universal Music tercerizes a lot of his jobs. In this "new" scenario, there are content (raw data) that could be worked by this small and very competent teams.
There is a lot of crap, yes. And putting the delusional fan aside, there are things that could be delivered by people who admires somebodies work.

You are saying that I am suposing that just one fan doing all the job. NO.
There are real teams working on real work.

I agree 100% about Spotify/Youtube mediocre content. And I am not talking about the Spotify payments...
I know a bunch of great musicians that not put his music on digital platforms or even put them on the streets because how music is consumed.

[Rolo]

Yeah, I didn't suggest anything was a rip off. All these Super Deluxe Editions are limited editions.
So it's not really proving the enduring popularity of Dire Straits when the 78-92 box set sells out.

100% agree.

[dustyvalentino]

I guess I'm naive but I find it amazing that a musician that played on the bloody thing has to shell out to buy a copy, same goes for The Waterboys release. I'm sure it wasn't part of contracts back in the day etc but you would think that a complimentary copy might be offered as a gesture of goodwill.

[Chris W]

That means that the project was done accordingly whith the current market state.

I ignore how much profitable it was but selling out means that they did not lost money on it.

Yes. The debate is whether it's worth the effort and cost involved to release more material from the OES tour, or videos from John's POV etc...
The limited edition box set was cited as evidence for.
I'm highly sceptical.

[Chris W]

You are saying that I am suposing that just one fan doing all the job. NO.
There are real teams working on real work.

I agree 100% about Spotify/Youtube mediocre content. And I am not talking about the Spotify payments...
I know a bunch of great musicians that not put his music on digital platforms or even put them on the streets because how music is consumed.

I'm saying that back in the day, teams of experienced professionals worked on 'On The Night' and 'Alchemy Live'.
Would you see something as good or better after giving that raw material to DS fans? I'm highly sceptical.
It would be interesting to know how long Guy spent working on the box set remixes. I'm gonna guess many months.

[quizzaciously]

Thanks for your inputs, Rolo, it's refreshing to see at least some people sometimes agreeing with me

I like this "5% of good music and 95% of crap" quote as much as I like another famous quote/axiom, "There's two types of music — good music and bad music."

This "today's music is crap" debate propelled by the likes of Rick Beato and other "boomer" journalists is highly misleading, I think, because good music has always been a victim of survivorship bias. You may think most of today's music is crap, Spotify sucks, and most YouTube videos are lousy, well, in fact, it's always been true, now you just can see all this crap unfiltered. Which is... Even better, in a way?

People who grew up with better filters and a higher chance of good content getting to them think young folks today can't distinguish between talent and mediocrity. One of the most important things about upbringing and learning is the ability to see both sides of life, so in a way, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I mean, my Spotify and YouTube feed consists of amazing creators and contemporary music, I don't know about you.

You can always detect talent no matter what, and there is tons of good music nowadays, and I'm happy to have such a large ocean to go fishing for good stuff.

[Chris W]

I guess I'm naive but I find it amazing that a musician that played on the bloody thing has to shell out to buy a copy, same goes for The Waterboys release.

Paul McCartney's office contacted me asking for my address before sending me the limited edition reissue of 'Flowers In The Dirt'. At another time they also sent me the very nice 'singles collection'. That was classy.
No one from Mark's team offered me 78/92 box set. Nor did they offer it to Chris White.
I fell out with Mike Scott after I left The Waterboys, so I wasn't surprised not to be offered a copy.

[Chris W]

This "today's music is crap" debate propelled by the likes of Rick Beato and other "boomer" journalists is highly misleading, I think, because good music has always been a victim of survivorship bias. You may think most of today's music is crap, Spotify sucks, and most YouTube videos are lousy, well, in fact, it's always been true, now you just can see all this crap unfiltered.

Actually I've always been of this view. There is the SAME amount of great music out there, arguably even better music.
The difference is that there was much less released music back in the day, and it was all curated. Record labels didn't sign anyone who was writing songs. And radio stations never played all releases.
So I do not think ALL music today is crap, nor ALL musicians. It's just harder to find because it isn't being curated by record labels and radio stations.
I'm only reflecting the view of ordinary consumers - which I think Beato is also doing. if you go on music forums, people very often claim all current music is crap. They think that because there is an overwhelming amount of mediocre content they have to navigate through in order to find the good stuff.
Before, all you had to do was visit your favourite independent record store, or listen to your favourite radio station, or turn on The Old Grey Whistle Test.
The first time I ever heard 'Sultans Of Swing' and the day I first heard of the band 'Dire Straits' was on UK pop radio.

[Robson]

"The first time I ever heard 'Sultans Of Swing' and the day I first heard of the band 'Dire Straits' was on UK pop radio"

Great times when a radio presenter decided what song to play. Now computers do it with a playlist. Rotation, repetition and so on. 

[quizzaciously]

You are saying that I am suposing that just one fan doing all the job. NO.
There are real teams working on real work.

I agree 100% about Spotify/Youtube mediocre content. And I am not talking about the Spotify payments...
I know a bunch of great musicians that not put his music on digital platforms or even put them on the streets because how music is consumed.

I'm saying that back in the day, teams of experienced professionals worked on 'On The Night' and 'Alchemy Live'.
Would you see something as good or better after giving that raw material to DS fans? I'm highly sceptical.
It would be interesting to know how long Guy spent working on the box set remixes. I'm gonna guess many months.

Yeah, but the term "raw material" is extremely vague. In this example, raw material simply means "uncut video tracks" that have already been colour-graded, shot on location, and with already mixed audio because I highly doubt you can find truly raw material for any of these things. Even some of The Beatles' original masters ended up thrown away into a bin by Abbey Road Studio's janitor, let alone On The Night masters and tapes.

With this definition of raw material, I think it's pretty safe to assume you don't need to be a Hollywood-level professional to stitch it together.

One of my favourite pictures is the one with a table full of crap like video cameras, photo cameras, music players, books, alarm clocks, phones, flashlights, gaming consoles, notebooks, radios, calculators, newspapers, audio recorders, TVs, navigators, compasses and photo albums, and one smartphone on another empty table that replaced it all.

Teams of experienced professionals used to work on great many things, even elevators used to have lift attendants, but progress is progress.

[Love Expresso]

I guess I'm naive but I find it amazing that a musician that played on the bloody thing has to shell out to buy a copy, same goes for The Waterboys release. I'm sure it wasn't part of contracts back in the day etc but you would think that a complimentary copy might be offered as a gesture of goodwill.

Indeed. Everyone who's name is credited on an album should automatically get a copy, I am serious. Imagine guys like Richard or Glen working on thousands of albums. I would expect them to have at least one copy of every album they have worked on. It sure enough would not ruin a record company or an artist to give away 20 or 30 copies to the people involved. Better deserved than music journalists....

LE