When will your music collection be complete?

Well first off, let me ask Matt H. if in fact that's when he stopped, based on the previous post to this. :-D

Reviving this thread -- I had a couple of similar candidates I found in the archives but this one works -- to ask how people are thinking about it these, given this thread is 13 years old and much has changed.

Some here might remember that a few years back I offloaded a huge amount of my CDs to my old radio station KUCI to fill in holes in their archives or just to use for fundraising sales. I'd ripped everything to a hard drive by then and have consistently backed it up to bigger drives over time -- there's a further backup at my folks' place, as well as online via Amazon. A slew of CDs I kept in binders, things I didn't want to let go but I otherwise didn't need to have as is. After my move last year and some further adjustments since, I picked up a nice handmade CD rack here in the city from a local business that I specifically wanted to have as a sole holder for the remaining collection -- only things that didn't fit (outsized handmade/unusual CD packaging, boxsets, etc.) would be kept separate, and by having an artificial 'limit,' it meant that if I wanted to add anything more to a physical collection, I'd have to get rid of or otherwise pack away things I already have.

And so far that's worked very well! I've been spending a fair amount of the year haunting Discogs, Amazon Marketplace and a couple of other spots (including plenty of store credit at Amoeba if they had something there too) 'fine-turning' the collection, specifically concentrating on two things. First, a massive Saint Etienne dive (all the remastered CDs, fan club stuff, etc.), the associated S.E./Bob Stanley-overseen compilations and series (the band's various comp mixes starting with _The Trip_ entry and the Mario's Cafe one, _Dream Babes_, the work Stanley and Wiggs did with the Eclipse reissue label, etc.) That's pretty much done, and on the other hand I wanted to finally fill out a whole slew of compilation series I had where I had some of the releases but not all of them. Things like the remastered _Nuggets_ boxes on Rhino, for instance, but also the AIP _Pebbles_ CDs, more specific garage-psych regional/country comp series, and things where there were only, say, two-part comps but I just had one and not the other. That's now pretty much done too, a couple more orders and while there are some series that just keep going on, I've called time for now as I've hit the rack's limit. I also picked up a lot of interesting box sets earlier in the year in all sorts of areas; the ones that are in 'book'/hardback form I've put on a dedicated shelf in my bookcase, while the ones that had separate large booklets while the CDs themselves have just a cover image page I've packed away in binders as well, keeping the booklets in the bookcase too. What remains in the rack are box set/comps where the individual disc booklets themselves have the detailed liner notes, so it makes more sense to have them all to immediate hand that way.

So it's all somewhat obsessive and artificially driven, of course, and really is just more of a way to ensure that when I look at the rack for any reason nothing leaps out as 'missing' or 'wrong.' But it was also reflective of having not only a little extra cash to hand to do this, but because the market is so easy to shop around with now, to find the best price on something or get it free via store credit if possible; even with some CDs now going for some crazy high prices because they were produced in much shorter runs, especially after the turn of the century, the overall amount was much less than it would have been even at the boom times. I certainly don't think I'm flat out done with buying CDs anymore, that won't change, but I have a feeling this might be the last concentrated building up of the collection I've kept to a particular limit. We'll see what's next.

I'm right there with you on St. Etienne collecting. I have some doubles, so let me know what you're looking for ;)

I am only collecting my core favorites now and i'm nearly done with those. New Order, The Smiths, Durutti Column, Orb, Underworld, The Cure, Stereolab, Cocteau Twins, Studio / D. Lissvik related releases. I still need Elecrtronic's Get The Message UK remix 12", but then i'm done. My only danger zone is going to be Reggae / Dub. I have about 30 LPs and 100+ CDs, but i'm tempted to get some of those nicer LP reissues and also backfill my Blood & Fire LP collection. It's my joy though, so I don't feel bad about it. I could be a car person.

I'll never be done as long as there are Morricone and Jandek LPs I don't own, so that's pretty much the rest of my life taken care of since I will probably never find them all.

I have around 70 of the Nonesuch Explorer series, I might get all of those before I die.

i can't believe i've been hanging out with ned raggett for 13 years.

I still buy a *few* CDs each year, if reliable sources say I might love 'em, and if they're not on Spotify or YouTube (or promos). If I do indeed love 'em, loath to lose 'em to space-saving considerations, because rips can lose sonic quality over the years, though I do backup my backups etc., re non-essentials----speaking of which, what monster hard drives are yall using nowadays---? (I'm really more into jump drives these days, but)

I'm actually buying more CDs lately, what with the rise of budget multi-disc/one-artist compilations (8 Hank Mobley albums for $20! Who can argue with that?), those Original Album Series boxes, etc., etc. Plus, I'm getting weirdly paranoid about what I'm gonna do if/when my iPod classic finally gives up the ghost, since so much of my collection is non-physical (1.5 TB Western Digital hard drive, btw, to answer dow's question - this is the one I have, but they don't make it anymore, so I think I'm gonna buy a newer model soon and back everything up to that).

i only have physical room for about 500 more records, so i'm increasingly selective. cds you can kinda stick anywhere, so i'm less selective about those.

buying habits are somewhat informed by the relative price of cds to records, too.

i am currently just over 63K tracks in my digital archive
(dow : stored on a WD MyCloud 4TB NAS drive.)
i have decided that once i reach the sonos limit of 65K tracks, then thats it i will stop buying cds.
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yeah right .. and i blame magpie aka zoverstocks for my never ending addiction.

there's always something awesome to buy that i haven't heard yet

I'm right there with you on St. Etienne collecting. I have some doubles, so let me know what you're looking for ;)

Haha, thanks -- I'm all good, snagged them all some months back.

i can't believe i've been hanging out with ned raggett for 13 years.

It's true!

I'm actually buying more CDs lately, what with the rise of budget multi-disc/one-artist compilations (8 Hank Mobley albums for $20! Who can argue with that?)

I very much enjoy that those exist -- seeing it across genres increasingly. It must be a bit of a kick to the artists when they see that that's happening but at the same time I suspect a number of them realize this can be a way to actually make some little money as opposed to none.

there's always something awesome to buy that i haven't heard yet

Too true.

in terms of collecting for the sake of collecting (or collecting records as visual art objects), i would like to get all the records on border community with the "windmill" sleeves (not sure if they're still doing this)

https://zauberius.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/r-171075-1375457976-9311-jpeg.jpg

http://images.junostatic.com/full/CS1304722-02A-BIG.jpg

https://assets.boomkat.com/spree/products/203791/large/original.jpg

kind of reminds me of collecting all the o'reilly media books. which i suppose some people do.

i'm not a vinyl collector, so that's one avenue out. i've been collecting songs since i started taping things off the radio 35 years ago, though, and i don't suppose i'll ever quite stop -- the OCD-ness of it comforts me -- but i am slowing down.

i suppose i 'have' (mostly digitally) most of the past stuff i want? one always learns of new things, but there's no white whale i feel like i'm missing. i'm open to new music but don't really seek it out or have an avenue in which to hear it much. i guess that's okay; i'm old and there remains plenty of music in my life

I think I'm all done! At one point I had something like 450 CDs kicking around but those were sold off for a pittance a while back, just got to be too much of a pain lugging them around.

Of course now we live in the future and anyone with internet access has, frankly, too much good music available instantly and for free at any time of day all day long. I do pick up vinyl from the thrift store sometimes, because it's fun! How can I resist a mint copy of Loretta Lynn's "Fist City" for fifty cents?

I remember being in my tiny 6' x 5' room in Red Hook and starting this thread : )
Can't remember what prompted it tho

because rips can lose sonic quality over the years

wait, what?

this is news to me, please explain!

Well there's data rot and all.

As for the original question, I had it in my head that after I moved this last time, I'd limit myself to 75 albums (CDs, LPs) a year, mostly because of increasingly limited space. Well, I've been here a little over 6 months and have already accumulated three 30ct boxes full of CDs and over 100 records.

I will explain: Because I came up in the era of the $18.99 CD, the fact that I can get those very same CDs now for pennies on the dollar is a novelty I don't expect will ever wear off. Like, dusty piles of CDs sitting in a Goodwill will never look like "junk" to me (even though, to 99.9% of the western world, that's exactly what it is). I am a big sucker for the dollar CD bin, mostly because a lot of the things I'm interested in are the things the average store owner doesn't know the value of (and, based on what they look like, wouldn't even bother checking it on Discogs. Most recent example: found the La Monte Young Blues Band Just Stompin' 2xCD for 50 cents).

I recognize this as a sort of sickness, of course, and in my defense I am very 'minimalist' in all other facets of my life: I don't' keep books, own no DVDs, and all my clothes could fit in a suitcase. Like mookieproof upthread, I am comforted (this is the right word) by the the OCD-ness of this hobby. I'll come home from some basement library sale with 20 CDs and take great enjoyment in adding them to my Dicogs collection (and sometimes, even actually listening to them!)

PS I am reading about 'data rot' for the first time ever and it is seriously ruining my day. I'll get you for this one, Ned Raggett!!

I slowed down for a few years on buying CDs, but the last few I have gotten nearly as much as ever because of so many multi-CD collections happening and finding some new hard rock that I liked. Recently I had to update my music collection hard drive to a 5TB drive as my original 2TB drive was almost full and there are lots of CDs still to rip. Few years back I started ripping as uncompressed wav files, which is part of the size of the music collection. I got a couple backups.

I came across these a few months back too, which is you want to chase your space saving dream are either a dream or a nightmare.

http://shop.spacesavingsleeves.com/addtocart.sc

"data rot" is 95% superstitious nonsense

5% bit flips caused by cosmic rays

there have to be people who have a zillion CDrs that don't play anymore.

All my old CDRs kept doing fine whether playing or ripping them. The trick is careful storage from what I can tell.

"data rot" is 95% superstitious nonsense

I think you meant to say: what rot

i think it's just a problem i have because i insist on trying to play CDRs in my CD player instead of a computer. i think they play better in computers. this is anecdotal...

My computer won't play CD-Rs or DVD-Rs anymore (old), but no prob w any pre-corded. I sure hope digital rot is mostly xpost nonsense, but have read and noticed that mp3s are pretty flimsy; np w flac or wav so far, Have also read that some of the older CDs are just fading away, but haven't played any of my early 90s in a while.

Anybody use portable digital players, pref w radios? Thinking about getting one for the great outdoors this fall.

By "radios", I mean "tuners", nothing too bulky.

i'm glad i don't have to worry about computer stuff. i have 0 terabytes of music on my computer. i've never downloaded an album! or burned a CD for that matter. maybe i've already said that on this thread. i am a braggart like that. that would be like negative-bragging though. neg-brag.

last week someone in the store was going on and on about transferring vinyl to computer and using this and that and wanting to digitize their collection and they were having all this trouble and they asked me what i did and i kinda stammered: uh, i just listen to records....

oh, cd-rs and dvd-rs will go crap, depending on storage conditions and the quality of the media in the first place- i've had a number of them go off. pressed cds won't last forever, but will last a great deal longer than cd-r media on average- the ones that i've known to have gone off so far were poorly pressed in the first place. but that's simple media degradation, not "bit rot". and yes, many drives will over time fail to read, particularly cd-r media- my last car but one had that issue.

hard drives fail. in the past i've run across the "bad sector" problem, but not lately- i think, though cannot say for sure, that this problem was more acute with older methods of hard drive formatting, which is the kind of problem that would take out an individual file. good to have unique data (i don't think of commercially available music as "unique data") backed up to multiple media, in multiple locations (cloud storage makes this easy at a certain cost to data security).

most forms of media these days are simply not designed to provide long-term storage solutions (longer than a couple decades or so). the pace of technological change right now makes this seem not terribly important.

the idea that mp3s are more likely to "degrade" than lossless media, on the other hand, is pure applesauce. once they are converted they are no more likely to become corrupted than any other file.

i understand the certain pride that comes in not having a digital music collection- i'm that way about streaming. we have so many different media consumption methods at our disposal that we have the luxury of irrational attachment to one or more of them.

i think digital/streaming/spotify/etc makes TOTAL sense for the vast majority of the population. it's very handy. i, personally, am not a fan of streaming/computer sound. i have no problem with CDs though. i listen to tons of CDs. i also only listen to music at home or at work so the whole handy on-the-go quality of digital/MP3/etc is lost on me.

My music collection will be complete when I run out of music that I like to listen to.

i think digital/streaming/spotify/etc makes TOTAL sense for the vast majority of the population. it's very handy. i, personally, am not a fan of streaming/computer sound. i have no problem with CDs though. i listen to tons of CDs. i also only listen to music at home or at work so the whole handy on-the-go quality of digital/MP3/etc is lost on me.

― scott seward

see, i find this weird, because cds are digital! there's no "computer sound" that's distinct from "cd sound", there's just better quality and lesser quality components.

my personal obstinacy about streaming isn't for sound quality issues, it's just paranoia about "the cloud".

CDs - good ones anyway - sound way better to me than Spotify/Soundcloud/MP3s/etc. Spotify, in particular, has a cloying claustrophobic sound that reminds me of digital radio on cable television. i get ear fatigue from it after an hour or so. i can listen to CDs all day long. having said that, i don't listen to stuff like that on my stereo. i don't hook my computer up to my receiver. which would obviously make a difference. so i've only heard computer sound on laptop speakers/computer speakers/television speakers.

CDs - good ones anyway - sound way better to me than Spotify/Soundcloud/MP3s/etc. Spotify, in particular, has a cloying claustrophobic sound that reminds me of digital radio on cable television. i get ear fatigue from it after an hour or so. i can listen to CDs all day long. having said that, i don't listen to stuff like that on my stereo. i don't hook my computer up to my receiver. which would obviously make a difference. so i've only heard computer sound on laptop speakers/computer speakers/television speakers.

― scott seward

a lot of the fatigue is down to mastering/"loudness wars" stuff, which is not exclusive to mp3s or streaming. stuff like radiohead and flylo are mastered with very little dynamic range and thus more prone to cause "ear fatigue" in some people (i'm one of them).

the really important thing if you're thinking of hooking your computer into your receiver is having a good dac. most computers (and phones, etc) don't put very much effort into the dac.

I got to say for as much crap some old CDs get for poor quality, when you A/B and old pressing to a later remaster you might be surprised which one actually sounds better. The early CDs all have a ton of head room, so you do have to run whatever playback device back a bit hotter to keep the levels equalized, but when you do that, you will find some dynamics that are definitely squeezed by hotter digital mastering.

The one that recently I really noticed this on was comparing the old 1988 CD of The Who's "My Generation" in comparison to the deluxe remaster from 2012. The later CD is way hotter, but it sounds pretty harsh by comparison. There was some odd mix differences some track or something like that too, but older master sounded better to me.

CDs are maddeningly case by case as far as different pressings go. it's annoying. but the good ones can be great. i bought a couple thousand 80's classical CDs and there are some dawn-of-CD-era examples that sound so amazing. mostly pressed in japan and germany. they can hold their own with anything since. it makes sense though. classical producers knew how to make great digital recordings long before CDs came around.

(i think dvd audio should be the standard for music in 2016. but it isn't. it's so intense when done right. the avant garde and modern classical and edm and other niche stuff that most people never hear is so far beyond most normal/popular stuff sound-wise and i think it's a shame really. great sound should be common. i still can't get over how shitty the last adele album sounded on cd.)

I've been selling LPs on Discogs for a while, that's been chugging along reasonably well. I have everything on the 'collection', its reasonably easy to add them to 'Inventory', and so on.

Recently, started to list CDs in the same way, I don't anticipate a ton of money/sales, but you never know.

The 'random' button on the Discogs collection is something, I thought it would be a good way t get some of these played.

Started well, Dave Clarke's Archive one, then Shonen Knife's Baka Guy, then Konono#1..

Then it got a bit 'not that one' I.e. CD singles, or 'too familiar' (eg psycho candy), or too rubbish..

Then it seemed to produce the same suggestions over and over. Psycho candy came up three times, I know I own a few copies, yeah, but it was always the newspaper freebie version.

So, yep a good idea, wish it worked!

he avant garde and modern classical and edm and other niche stuff that most people never hear is so far beyond most normal/popular stuff sound-wise and i think it's a shame really. great sound should be common.

Hi Scott, please suggest some great-sounding avant and other niche stuff to check out! I'm rut-prone (ouch).

Kinda like Ned here. Reduction seems key. I've moved three times the last ten years, and every single time turned out to be a decisive moment of narrowing down my collection (i.e. keeping records of artists of who I would like to own everything). The collector in me has waned, I think, and I think this is a good thing. I now "only" want to own the complete discographies of Scott Walker/Walker Brothers, Hood, Elliott Smith, Cocteau Twins, the Caretaker and MBV. It's quite arbitrary, as there is so much music around and in between those that I love and would like to own. But those have stuck with me, and it's nice to have at least some anchor points to browse for at flea markets and at record fairs?

Otherwise I'm pretty much done with 'collecting' discogs: I have only unloaded myself of records and CDs the last couple of years, and that felt like a huge relief tbh. No pressure. I own the compete discog of loads of other artists (Source Direct, SP3 and related (pretty much), Mogwai, Disco Inferno, Michael Mayer, Stars of the Lid, Kranky-artists, not having collected them consciously but just bought them along the way) but feel like I could sell those without regretting it. And I probably will, or give them away to friends. Soon probably, as a move to another house is on the way.

Bottom line: I have learned to find delight in 'tightening' the collection, narrowing it down. Something I never thought would happen, but there you go.

I've slowed down the past few years. Went from about buying about 125-150 albums a year to about 25-30 a year. I basically stream an album for months and months before deciding to buy it, a practice which has saved me a lot of money.

I need to regulate my purchase speed but artificial scarcity and ridiculous prices has me scared to let a release sit 2 months before deciding to buy it. Now I'll preorder, listen to it for weeks on Spotify before the vinyl shows up and then be on to the next thing by the time the record arrives.