The Davis box set, one of the more audacious and expensive ones on the market this season, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the release of Kind of Blue. The album, featuring such jazz giants as Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley and a young John Coltrane, is considered one of most important recordings in all of American music.
Though over the years the album has been reissued in different configurations - including as a DualDisc, which is a CD on one side and a DVD on the other - the box set is the most complete documentation available of Kind of Blue.
The 12-by-12-inch royal blue slipcase houses two CDs, a DVD and a coffee table book filled with historic photos and perceptive essays about the music and Davis. Also included are memorabilia and - the real treat - a blue vinyl LP inside a reproduction of the original album jacket. It all runs for $109.95.
"The goal was to bring the fan as close to that moment as you possibly can," Block says of the Davis set. "We're always conscious of not just doing a project because we can do it."
Executives at Rhino Entertainment Co., a division of Warner Music Group that has a strong reputation for its imaginatively executed box sets, has ventured into digital territory. Last year, the company released Led Zeppelin's entire discography of 165 tracks online for $99. Though the company doesn't release sales figures, Rhino says the Led Zeppelin digital box set is one of the top 5 biggest-sellers for the Warner Music Group this year.
The digital package for download is cheaper to produce, which means consumers can save money on the music, said Cheryl Pawelski, vice president of Artists & Repertoire at Rhino. "But there's still a great advantage of having a tricked-out box with all the bells and whistles."
To appease the diehard fans who want to hold the music, so to speak, Rhino released last week a Led Zeppelin box set containing mini LP replica CDs of the band's 10 albums issued between 1969 and 1982. The exhaustive box will go for $199.98. To promote it and other box sets, Rhino is launching an aggressive digital campaign, the details of which the company won't divulge.
"We're changing our marketing ways constantly to a lot more direct contact with the consumers," says Kenny Nemes, vice president of marketing at Rhino. "So we're going to high-end clothing stores, boutiques, the Internet, of course. Marketing is tricky these days for everybody."
