Are Queen just greedy bastards?

I've just taken delivery of the new Alice Cooper boxset. It cost me £34 delivered from Amazon and I was staggered at the size of it.
The box itself is a cm deeper than the Queen Rainbow box: 4.5cm as opposed to 3.5cm.
Inside are TWO packages:
A fold-out 3 vinyl set of the live concert and a DVD/BD/2CD book set containing 80 pages of images, the latter holding the discs more nicely than the Queen one.

I understand that there are FIVE members of Queen who want paying (Jim Beach being the 5th) and there will have been a bit of restoration work, but when you compare the costs of this to the costs of the Queen Rainbow sets, it just seems to me that the price the North American continents paid was a much more realistic price than the extortionate rip-off price the Europeans ended up paying.

I know the AC boxset doesn't have reprints of memoribilia, but at £34 as opposed to 5 times that same figure for the Queen stuff (remember the Rainbow vinyls were released seperately at an average cost of £80 and yes, I know there were 4 of them not 3, so we'll call it £60 shall we?), I think Queen have ripped us Europeans off.

actually it's not that five members of Queen want paying - it's that the band plus everyone who worked on the new release want paying. We have to assume that is the case for the Alice Cooper boxed set too, though!

I think when a band releases a product, you have to decide whether it's worth to buy it or not. There's no use buying something that you think is a rip off.

I have no idea what the production costs are for these boxed sets. I know that vinyl is quite expensive to produce but I've no idea why the two LP version can be bought for £35 and the 4 LP version costs £120.

I don't think, by the way, that Queen themselves are setting the price for the product. I think the record company will decide exactly what is released and exactly how it is presented, probably in consultation with the band, and the final price will be calculated (read: dreamed up) by the record company.

This isn't an item that will make the record company a lot of money, I don't think it will sell millions (I mean, that Live at the Rainbow as a release across all formats won't chart that well), and it won't have a massive profit margin. I think the best value boxed set for the collector was probably the complete works back in 1985. I got mine new in 1994, it's an un-numbered vinyl edition that I got from HMV, and I don't care that it has no number and isn't signed. How 14 LPs in a boxed set could cost £50 in 1994 (probably it cost £30 to £50 when it was released, which in '85 was a lot, but actually inflation hasn't been that much since the 1990s comparatively) and how 4 LPs can cost £120 in 2014 is beyond me - even if the vinyl is better quality.

[QUOTE] [b]miraclesteinway wrote:[/b]


I think when a band releases a product, you have to decide whether it's worth to buy it or not. There's no use buying something that you think is a rip off.

[/QUOTE]


Simply stated but a good point!!!

This is a strange thread from the OP who had, in another thread, criticized another person for not wanting to buy Queen Forever :-)

Freddie once said that he was a greedy bitch.

No!

Talking of greedy buggers that queen online shop is very expensive.
I think its called Digital stores.
The new Queen album in the delux version was £15.99 and i have seen it for sale much cheaper than that, around £12.99.
How can the Queen online store rip us fans off?

I think Queen are ALSO greedy bastards, not JUST greedy bastards. They're mainly talented musicians :) But yes, 99% of their releases in the last 20 years are not worth buying, and even if they do release something good, they waste the opportunity to make it GREAT.

They have grown some fins on their backs over the years.

In all honesty, I think this subject would be great for a Thesis.

There are so many factors that need to be taken in consideration to get a true scope of the nature of Queen product post 1991. It is very easy to say greed is the main factor, I think the answer is way more complicated than saying Bri&Rog are greedy. I'm not a very articulate person but I do feel I would need at least 20 pages of this forum to give an honest and detailed answer to that question.

Great question David, I would like to see some healthy debate on this one.

I dont know about that Alice Cooper boxset of its contents, is that as rare as the Rainbow album?
There were as many people involved in the AC than in the Queen album correcting audio, video, etc?

Also, you are forgetting one important thing: Alice Cooper is the only one who receives the money, while Queen have to split the money in 3 live members and Mary Austin or whoever gets Freddie's royalties. Is Mary asking for the same amount of money as Brian, John and Roger? Is she asking for more?

There are lots and lots of reasons behind the price tag and only one of them involves greed...

[QUOTE] [b]pittrek wrote:[/b]

I think Queen are ALSO greedy bastards, not JUST greedy bastards. They're mainly talented musicians :) But yes, 99% of their releases in the last 20 years are not worth buying, and even if they do release something good, they waste the opportunity to make it GREAT.[/QUOTE]

Nahh, that's an overstatement. Many are pointless compilations, of course - but that's the record companies just wanting more product. Let's review this list:

2001 - Freddie box
2002 - Greatest Video Hits 1
2003 - Greatest Video Hits 2
2003 - Wembley DVD (complete show for the first time)
2004 - Live At The Bowl DVD
2006 - ANATO documentary
2007 - Rock Montreal CD/DVD
2011 - albums remastered, great bonus tracks
2011 - Days Of Our Lives documentary, extras
2011 - Wembley DVD (complete first night)
2012 - Budapest CD/DVD/blu-ray
2013 - Roger Taylor box
2014 - Live At The Rainbow box
2014 - Queen Forever

Plus Q+PR stuff and Roger's solo album.

^ we can nitpick at the details, but ever one of these releases contained something that hadn't been previously seen/heard.

This is more than can be said about most of the old bands.

Sure, Pink Floyd and Springsteen have released delicious box sets that no individual Queen release can compare to. But let's not lose perspective. Queen have released a ton of excellent stuff in the past 15 years.

There is no way we can argue that QPL don't give a fuck about the fans. That's just plain not true. They didn't have to do the complete Budapest show on CD or the March disc of the Rainbow release.

If they release some kind of box with a compilation of 1976-79 live footage, then we can safely say they've run the gamut.

[QUOTE] [b]miraclesteinway wrote:[/b]

I think the best value boxed set for the collector was probably the complete works back in 1985. I got mine new in 1994, it's an un-numbered vinyl edition that I got from HMV, and I don't care that it has no number and isn't signed. How 14 LPs in a boxed set could cost £50 in 1994 (probably it cost £30 to £50 when it was released, which in '85 was a lot, but actually inflation hasn't been that much since the 1990s comparatively) and how 4 LPs can cost £120 in 2014 is beyond me - even if the vinyl is better quality. [/QUOTE]

I´m not sure about this but i supose that this box-set should be numbered.
Maybe you have a bootleg edition or other kind of edition, but i would be very surprised if this un-numbered box-set was the original one.

Wizard ya left off

Queen Rocks
Stone Cold Classics
Absolute Greatest
Re releases of what was then WWRY (eagle, image plus recent version titled Rock Montreal)
singles collections 1, 2,
Deep tracks 1-3
greatest hits iii
and. . Well... what else was there?

You can't blame the record company for wanting to earn a few bucks.

But you, as an intelligent human being, should know what you want to buy because is interesting and what not because is oriented to the casuals.