My first excitement when hearing of DVDs was not quality or movies or multimedia... but quantity. I imagined being able to buy the whole back catalog of Metallica on one disc.

I don't know what this monster digital boxset is going to cost but it will include every U2 song "and some unreleased tracks". I doubt it will include EVERYTHING. Ask any collector and he'll name 100 tracks that were never officially released and another 100 that were officially released but won't be in this set.

Still... I think U2 are on the path we'll eventually see for established bands. We'll have those bands that sell single songs. The one hit wonders. And we'll see bands selling their entire back catalog for "cheap".

More likely are band subscriptions. You like a band, you subscribe to their music to get everything they've done and everything they will do for a cost per month or per year. ARIA charts will show who has the most subscriptions.

Ideas like this mess with my music collecting head. In 1996 I got into Powderfinger and started collecting everything. All of their CD singles, their videos and their albums. Just recently (almost 10 years later) I've decided they suck. Two albums I don't like has pushed me off the collecting path. Part of the reason I stayed with them so long was the slow collecting of singles and enjoyment of b-sides as I discovered them. It kept me going between albums.

The idea of getting 10 years of collecting effort in minutes hurts my head. You hear about it happening today in IRC channels. Kids deciding they like Metallica, downloading a package of all of their tracks, a month later they decide they suck and want more.

Imagine if these kids spent $20, $10? even $5 on the Metallica back catalog in digital format instead of just pirating it?

Would they have?