When Paul McCartney announced that the deluxe edition of his forthcoming Archive Collection re-issue of Flowers In The Dirt would have a disc’s worth of bonus material as a digital download only, all hell broke loose amongst his fans.

Social media went troppo, and a number of petitions sprang up to try to have that decision re-considered by Paul and his management team. Leading the charge was Paul Sinclair who operates the very informative and interesting site, Super Deluxe Edition.

Paul Sinclair was eventually approached by Scott Roger, McCartney’s manager, who explained the reasoning behind the digital download idea, and confirmed that despite protests, there would be NO physical disc containing the bonus tracks. You can read the full report of their exchange at Paul’s site.

Along with many thousands of other collectors we’d like to register our disappointment in that decision.

Loyal and serious collectors like physical product, end of story. All officially released content associated with significant re-issues such as this one should be physically included in the box set. Completists and avid collectors are the reason that box sets like this exist in the first place. As Paul McCartney says in this clip promoting Flowers In The Dirt, “You can’t ask for anything more than that, man.”

Four discs in the box, and another CD’s worth of material on a hard drive somewhere else is wrong. It is an “Archive Collection” after all. Yes, many will download those bonus songs and burn them to a cheap recordable disc so that they can have the full collection in one place, but they shouldn’t have to do that. It just doesn’t cut it and cheapens McCartney’s product and his legacy.