this is a ballsy (yeah, yeah), landmark release. too bad it's freaking $275!!! for some reason, i can justify spending $100 for a 6-CD dust-to-digital or miles davis outtakes comp, but almost 3x as much for a terre thaemlitz box-set?

no doubt, you get a lot of equity with this purchase, and the money goes direct to the artist, which is excellent... but realistically speaking, there's a point of diminishing returns, and $275 is steep. why not separate some of the wheat from the chaff for a more modest price? clearly terre's not in it for the money. after all, ONLY $275 for the entire catalog of an artist who's been in the game for over 15 years... it's a defiant, sad artistic sentiment, which deserves much respect.

that said, if this were a mille-plateaux archives, i'd definitely dip into the savings, but this is a friggin' recession.

also, lols @ the terre thaemlitz issue of wire magazine in high fidelity, the quintessentially crap, rolling stones magazine of a movie.

Pretty intense undertaking...I guess its one for the most hardcore fans out there. Anyone else I'd imagine would probably want something more 'sorted'.

With regards to the 'future' of of music distribution and profit, check out mycontent.com.

The site isn't up yet but the idea seems for artists to basically be able to sell their content at whatever price they choose. Pretty interesting stuff. Hope they can pull it off.

A bold move from a bold artist.

Reminds me of the data discs of collaborative work that Pete Namlook has done and released on his Fax Recordings. I especially like the Move D Pete Namlook collection of datadiscs.

Thanks so much for sharing all your amazing artistic endeavours, Miss Thaemlitz!

@ Ballyhoo:

"too bad it's freaking $275!!! for some reason, i can justify spending $100 for a 6-CD dust-to-digital or miles davis outtakes comp, but almost 3x as much for a terre thaemlitz box-set?"

Two specific points:

- the discs are not industrially pressed, but done one-by-one.

- Miles Davis is dead, and therefore can receive no income from his recordings (at least as far as I'm aware)

And more generally:

Cost isn't value... but does cost give some indication of value? It's a loose fit at best.

I feel that there's a very calculative mentality at work in buying and selling music these days:

X tracks, Y dollars = Z (potential jollies) - deficiencies in quality and depreciation in 'freshness' over time.

Also, it's funny the way people will pay 50, 100, 200, 300 bucks to see a two hour performance by someone like David Byrne and Leonard Cohen, yet they'll balk at paying a fraction of that to young artists for whom even ten thousand dollars might make the difference between continuing to focus on developing their expression and having to go back to working at McBurger Wax.

...but, on the other hand, it's a tough sell to convince a consumer that a jewel-case CD is 'worth' 30+ dollars when you can 'make' the same CD at home for a buck.

...and it's also hard to justify paying to download files from certain sites when the pirates offer higher quality files with exhaustive scans of the liner notes etc, 'so I've heard'...

...meanwhile, Kompakt mp3 was running a special promo on mp3s 'X% off, while stocks last...' (perhaps a German joke?)

...if anyone's interested on some more on distro (physical, digital, past, future, etc), Terre has also written a really interesting opinion piece on her site, here:
www.comatonse.com/writings/ipodisraping.html
Sound is time

Time is money

Moments are the elements of profit

...

...more info from Terre here, too:
www.comatonse.com/writings/utopiaofsound.html

no way i can buy that , id go to burning man first!