So is it likely to be worth the money? What’s going to be in the package?
For a start there's absolutely no doubt that over a forty-five year career Young would have accumulated a mass of material, and there's no way that all of it will be in an audio format - we're probably looking at some combination of audio, film, photograph, text and other material that won't fit into any one conventional format. And, as additional material surfaces you’ll be able to download it and incorporate it into the original package.
I would expect that the first parcel is likely to contain the smallest quantity of actual data. The last time we heard The Archives are comin’ it was going to be eight CDs, two DVDs and the box would contain slots where you’d be able to insert the snippets from the project - CD releases Live at the Fillmore East 1970 and Live at Massey Hall 1971 - which have already appeared and may (or may not) be reprised when the main body of the project is released.
Since the change to Bluray, I’m guessing that you’ll get everything that’s already been officially released in the package, plus everything else that’s sitting in the musical section of Neil’s basement, with the material that was originally going to be on the two DVDs slotted in where it belongs., since Bluray will allow the project to integrate audio and visual content that would previously have required separate disks.
If you haven’t seen it already, check out the preview at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgSpVU50-m4
I’d expect the project will totally replace all your previously collected Neil Young material, with everything sorted into the correct chronological sequence and accessible in a variety of formats. So that, for instance you could have everything recorded for, say Harvest arranged in chronological sequence with a couple of options on an interactive menu, with, maybe, the opportunity to compile your own alternative version of the album by picking and choosing from the various alternative takes.
Or, once the Digital Rights Management issues have been tackled, you’d be able to do that using whatever tools you have in your computer set-up.