The ebay thing could be part of the pre-sell. That's the beauty of subscriptions - it helps guage interest and locks in commitments. There's also the whole marketing reach of such a site - they probably get about a million hits for every one on this site.

From what David wrote, it seems that the more that are interested, the higher quality the production will be. Hell, if no one was interested in buying the discs I'm sure Pat would still be at the shows plugging in his new toy to the sound board.