When will your music collection be complete?

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.