The Death of the Record Collection

I was reading our Spotify thread earlier today, right after I heard the announcement that Spotify has submitted their iPhone app to the App store. (via Daring Fireball)

In that thread, a few comments got me thinking:

the next grozart:

If this catches on it means that the idea of a music collection will be considered ridiculous in only a few years. Having every song ever available to stream for free sounds great, but will it replace downloading and format sales once they work out a way to make the quality top-notch? If so does that mean the end of the mix-CD, the end of DJing, the end of using recorded music in a creative way? will it all turn into a big messy jelly of sound with no accounting for quality control whatsoever?

mike t-diva:

Or maybe Spotify will simply mean the end of commodity fetishisation, and all we'll have left are our ears and our judgement?

blueski:

goodbye music collection hello playlist collection

With the advent of illegal downloading and super fast broadband connections, anyone could theoretically obtain any song or album they wanted for free more or less immediately. This made it much easier for anyone to have a broader and deeper understanding and appreciation of music. It also meant that far less status points were attached to someone's owning any record; while having the first pressing of some obscure vinyl that no one else could hear might have had some cache ten years ago, now your little brother or your goofy cousin could download that same record in a minute. Instead of spending years slowly building up a record collection through a significant amount of searching and purchasing, you could easily have the same records as a seasoned collector in however long it took you to type artist names and record titles into Google or a p2p service and download some .rar files. As physical media collections gave way to digital media collections, the idea of a “record collection”—which implied work, as in actually going to obscure record stores and searching for and buying physical discs—started to fade away. Very few people speak of a digital music collection in the same way we once spoke about a physical record collection; there is no status attached to having a set of folders on an external hard drive filled with some FLAC files in it. First strike against “the record collection.”

Now that many of us have moved to consuming digital media only, there are two different options: buying and streaming. Some people illegally download music, yes, but many of us who have switched more or less completely to digital music have decided to continue supporting artists because we think it's a no-brainer that they should be financially compensated for their work. I've been an avid music listener for my whole life, and I've been collecting CDs since I was 15, but I recently started buying records off of iTunes and the Amazon mp3 store just because I don't need any more CDs in my life. It's a much less fulfilling experience overall than going to a record store, I admit, but it's easier to find a lot of records and they take up nothing but hard drive space.
Back to Spotify. Because I live in the US, I can't use Spotify, but if it were made available here I'd instantly sign up for the premium version. For one, all of the music is stored in lossless format on their servers, so the sound quality is equivalent with CDs and far greater than what I get with anything I buy from the Amazon mp3 store or iTunes. Especially now that, once their iPhone app is approved, you would apparently be able to temporarily download songs from their service to your iPod to listen to when you're not connected to the internet. If a service like Spotify were to become more firmly established, I'd gladly move the majority of my music consumption to it. It’d mean that I’d get to listen a wider variety of music.
The shift to digital media for music, for me, has meant that I no longer have any interest in buying CDs, my preferred physical medium for music. Now, I’m definitely looking forward to giving up buying mp3s from iTunes and the Amazon mp3 store for streaming from a service like Spotify. And, honestly, I don’t mind that I won’t have a personal record collection anymore.

I understand that some people will always want to buy and collect physical media, so some people will still continue to have a record collection. But, on the whole, even for many music fans, I think the record collection as it has been traditionally understood is dead. Essentially, I’m with mike t-diva here: “maybe Spotify will simply mean the end of commodity fetishisation, and all we'll have left are our ears and our judgement?” The time in which we were each defined as music fans by what subset of the totality of human musical output we owned is over. Maybe now we’ll be defined as music fans by our knowledge of music. Or how interesting our interpretations of it are. But it will no longer be by ownership, and this is probably a good thing.

What do you all think? Will most people no longer have a "record collection"? Are you planning on giving up your physical media collection?

my initial thought is that "having a record collection" as a concept was really only ever intended for enthusiasts in the first place, and was more of an inconvenient necessity for millions of other people who enjoy music but don't value physical recordings, don't dig deep into catalogs, don't eagerly seek out new stuff, and don't need trivia, history, or metadata for the stuff they enjoy.

People have doll collections, stamp collections, all sorts of idiotic collections. People will always have music collections too. This has been brought up endlessly for the last 5 years or so. THE SKY IS FALLING. Bullshit. Nothing is changing. People will continue to buy and collect music well past our lifetimes. Maybe not as many people but it's still going to happen.

Plus, Spotify isn't available in the US so it's useless for about a kazillion people.

Entire premise is flawed because Spotify or any free streaming service is never going to last without 100% compliance with the RIAA/MPAA etc.

^^^^^^
Exactly. I don't see Spotify lasting more than another 18 months. They'll give it a go in the States, the RIAA will smack them down hard, then the British equivalent will be "hey, maybe we need to shut this down too".

my initial thought is that "having a record collection" as a concept was really only ever intended for enthusiasts in the first place, and was more of an inconvenient necessity for millions of other people who enjoy music but don't value physical recordings, don't dig deep into catalogs, don't eagerly seek out new stuff, and don't need trivia, history, or metadata for the stuff they enjoy.

otm imo

Of course I may be talking out of my ass on the last part, for all I know the BPI (or whatever) has already blessed Spotify. I just don't see it happening for the U.S. ever.

here's my question: where are the CDs, vinyl, etc. gonna go? seems like most people who are getting rid of their collections sell them to stores or put them on eBay, etc. and when stores go out of business, people inevitably buy up their overstock at a discount (or get them for free), even if they ultimately resell them again. at what point are people going to start throwing away their physical music for "record collections" to no longer exist? even if every label in the world went digital tomorrow and stopped manufacturing any physical product, there's billions already floating around that are probably going to keep changing hands for a long time.

http://widnesskips.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/landfill3.jpg

No, they will all be upcycled into cd-chadeliers and melted-vinyl centerpiece bowls.

I have a box full of shit CDs that I can't sell and can't donate. Have no idea what to do with all of them, but I feel horrible just packing them out with the recycling. I seriously doubt its worth eBay or whatever to sell the third Collective Soul album or second 311 album, y'know?

soon "burning some cds" will be understood to involve gasoline and matches, thankfully.

they must be really shit if you can't even donate them!

Certain artists (Hafler Trio, La Monte Young) are really ruthless about preventing illegal downloads, I don't see them compromising with streaming media any time soon.

This whole idea that "all music ever made" will eventually be streamed is really naive imho. Lots of stuff can't even be reissued because of problems with rights or licensing, how will it be streamed?

Well, tbh, haven't tried HARD to donate them. I asked at my local library and they aren't taking any CD donations right now.

I don't think the Celestial Jukebox, which would make available every song ever released, will ever become a reality, but I do think the majority of stuff we all listen to -- especially the majority of stuff already available on CD -- will eventually be released online.

Spotify is supposedly coming to the US later this year. Why wouldn't labels sign on for it? It encourages people to listen to the music they put out legally.

call all destroyer is also OTM about the whole "record collection" only being for enthusiasts thing. I'm interested in those of us who are enthusiasts giving up our collections for streaming media.

never

xxp $$$

Me neither. I like holding stuff.

Spotify is supposedly coming to the US later this year. Why wouldn't labels sign on for it? It encourages people to listen to the music they put out legally.

For the same reason they tried to kill streaming internet radio, because they wanted a disgustingly large share of the money.

i am all for paying artist but the day i pay for a music file or a digital subscription is a cold day in hell

i'm in no hurry to begin culling my collection just yet.
in fact i suspect the dreaded rot will kill my collection before i succumb to the lure of streaming.
as others, i use spotify to check out back catalogue and then decide whether to buy or not.
but linking the computer up to the stereo and dropping the cd format is a way off yet.

An iPod that can receive Pandora. I'd hold that.

megalolz at the idea that capitalism will permit the "death" of commodity fetishization

I never trust people who make the "all music is available on the internet!" argument, because there is still tons of stuff I can't find, just because it never got released on CD or whatever

For the same reason they tried to kill streaming internet radio, because they wanted a disgustingly large share of the money.

Don't you think it's getting to the point where they're going to have to give into shit like Spotify if they don't want to be even more fucked than they already are?

my initial thought is that "having a record collection" as a concept was really only ever intended for enthusiasts in the first place, and was more of an inconvenient necessity for millions of other people who enjoy music but don't value physical recordings, don't dig deep into catalogs, don't eagerly seek out new stuff, and don't need trivia, history, or metadata for the stuff they enjoy.

Very well stated.

I do plan to continue on having a physical "collection" of CDs (never got into vinyl; I'm 24 and it never "clicked" for me, so to speak). That said, I've sold off about 200 CDs in the past 6 months, really thinking about what I actually enjoy and listen to and what prompts repeated listening for my ears and tastes. I'm getting rid of things that, a year ago, would have been unthinkable to sell off. I'm being more selective in what I currently buy, while simultaneously cleaning out the archives a bit. Not sure how far this will go (I still have well over 2,000 CDs and counting) but I'm happy to have cleaned out the bottom 10% of my listening and don't really miss any of it, in retrospect. I liked having it on the shelf for posterity, but it seemed like dead weight now that it's actually out of my possession.

In conclusion - trying to be selective, keeping stuff I really enjoy and letting go of what I don't spin as much. But I see myself continuing forward with the physical artifacts. I have zero interest in digital downloads, illegal or streaming or sanctioned or otherwise.

"Don't you think it's getting to the point where they're going to have to give into shit like Spotify if they don't want to be even more fucked than they already are?"

Nope.

Alex in SF otm - rats going to go down with the ship, etc

On Spotify: "The service has licensing deals with the Big Four record labels (EMI, Warner Music, Sony BMG and Universal) and other smaller players."

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/11/spotify-opens-up-in-the-uk-if-it-can-handle-the-traffic/

spending years slowly building up a record collection through a significant amount of searching and purchasing

actually going to obscure record stores and searching for and buying physical discs

I also really enjoy this part. Much more satisfying than an instantaneous download of something worth looking for. There are many, many records out there that I'm dying to hear, but haven't heard yet because I won't download them and I haven't found them in stores yet. And I'm adamant about keeping it that way - if only for myself. I like mystery and I fucking love the satisfaction of finding something after a few years of hunting and then putting it on for the first time.

Don't you think it's getting to the point where they're going to have to give into shit like Spotify if they don't want to be even more fucked than they already are?

What Alex said above, nope. Never underestimate the RIAA's ability to shoot itself in the foot while sticking to the old business model NO MATTER WHAT.

xxp Yeah that article makes it sound like the wave of the future alright.

They already have licensing deals with the major four record labels.

Did you even read the rest of it?

That's in the UK btw.

Yeah, you're right. I missed that link: http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/01/29/record-labels-pressure-spotify-to-restrict-service/

The changes are being made because record labels have slapped restrictions on Spotify’s service. The issue is to do with the publishing rights associated with compilatoins. A user in one country might be able to listen to a track on one compilation in their country jurisdiction, but to share that track on a playlist with a user in another country could affect the publishing rights.

Have most movie fans given up their collections for Netflix? I know it's a different service, but they're switching a lot of their stuff over to streaming now too.

My guess is that it's probably a similar situation to what we're seeing here: the everyday consumer never had a collection or at least not a big one and doesn't mind using Netflix, whereas huge film geeks probably buy DVDs/Bluray and use Netflix as a supplementary service the same way some people use emusic.

It's not really comparable though since video was up until the advent of the DVD, basically a rental market. Netflix is filling the rental need, not replacing the sell-through market.

The death of the library, and the death of archiving.. is that what this is essentially suggesting?

You're right, Alex.

billstevejim: Yeah, the death of the personal archive/library.

It's not really comparable though since video was up until the advent of the DVD, basically a rental market. Netflix is filling the rental need, not replacing the sell-through market.

OTM about Netflix. By "up until the advent of the DVD," do you mean that DVDs led to collections via purchase, or because they're easy to pirate without visible loss of quality?

I remember lot of moms buying limited edition disney VHS's a lot, but prolly more for TVbabysitter than collector purposes.

In this case I meant the former. DVDs were intended to be a sell-through market, to make their money off people buying them for personal use as much as from video stores buying them to rent to customers. That's why the price of new release DVDs was so cheap compared to new release VHS tapes ($20 vs. $100+).

Some VHS tapes (Disney stuff, misc children's movies, big budget blockbusters like Jurassic Park, Men In Black) were marketed as sell-through items too btw, but most new release VHS tapes were significantly more than that.

we had a collection of VHS tapes before DVDs were omnipresent.

1. Spotify still sounds like a stream, and I don't see anyone who would invest the time/energy/money into creating a record collection bailing in favor of the chance to play "baby's got back" on a whim

2.

Instead of spending years slowly building up a record collection through a significant amount of searching and purchasing, you could easily have the same records as a seasoned collector in however long it took you to type artist names and record titles into Google or a p2p service and download some .rar files.

When ppl see my CD collection they still say "Holy shit" (lol braggin 2009 tell it to your blog asshole stfu etc). But when people go on msg boards that i lurk at and brag about how many gigs of downloaded music they have, it's just embarrassing for them.

3. "Celestial jukebox" LOOOOOOLLLERPOPS

xp Again I am talking specifically about the price of new release VHS tapes.

Personally, I'm getting frustrated at a lot of labels leaning towards the download/vinyl models since I still love CDs

But when people go on msg boards that i lurk at and brag about how many gigs of downloaded music they have, it's just embarrassing for them.

Is there anyone that's impressed by this assertion? Is it a geek thing? Is it an age thing?

I agree with you there, Whiney. As far as physical formats go, I only buy albums on CD.

There will always be people who enjoy having their own personal references for things they enjoy.

"Record collection" means something different now than it did in the 70's.. in that respect, "record collections" have been dead for years.

Spotify still sounds like a stream, and I don't see anyone who would invest the time/energy/money into creating a record collection bailing in favor of the chance to play "baby's got back" on a whim

Haven't actually used Spotify yet, but I imagine the sound quality will eventually improve.

I've also heard plenty of accounts of people using the service to work their way into an artists' catalog. I don't think people just use it to listen to novelty tunes.

Though I bought records initially when I was very young, vinyl was already "dead" for years when I really started collecting it when I was 14 in 1994 due to local punk releases being available only on wax. 15 years later vinyl has died and come back like 3 or 4 times, "deejaying" can mean someone standing there with a laptop, and the idea of the information cloud is promising the end of commotidization of music, yet people seem probably MORE interested by my ever growing record collection NOW. I'm not holding my breath waiting for the end of record collections. In fact, I'm happy that so many idiots think this way because I'll be buying the remnants of their collections at bargain prices for years. Thanks, suckers!!

Everyone's going to hang onto their shit just to spite you now, pipecock.

the weird thing to me is assuming that any kind of streaming service will be as enduring as a physical object. Like, do you really expect any company/service to last as long as a physical object does...? Records don't change over time. Services and service providers do.

listening to music at home on an ipod or a computer is sometimes a little charmless too, i dunno. it's a cliche to talk about the physical experience of playing music, and it seems minor, but shit like that adds up. there's something comfortable about records or, to refer to the kindle thread, books. having even more electronic media around makes me feel a little more stressed out for some reason, more ADD.

like, do you really expect any company/service to last as long as a physical object does...?

Some I do, some I don't. I expect that AT&T will outlive me, bar global disasters. Definitely the terms of service and pricing of a streaming service I'd expect to change in short periods of time, whether because the company wants to make more money or it gets bought by another company ...

Personally, I'm getting frustrated at a lot of labels leaning towards the download/vinyl models since I still love CDs

Same here!

I'm happy that so many idiots think this way because I'll be buying the remnants of their collections at bargain prices for years. Thanks, suckers!!

A big fan of this aspect, myself.

I'll be buying the remnants of their collections at bargain prices for years. Thanks, suckers!!

yeah I think this a lot tbh

I got rid of almost all my cd cases when we moved recently, moved all the cds into big binders & kept a select few booklets

but I still haven't set up the turntable (which had been my only physical-media form of listening for about a year) so in the past month I've been playing cds on the sony radio-cassetteCorder and kinda lovin it

I don't think I can do what J0hn D. It's so hard to find stuff in binders.

Yeah that shit is 6 degrees of stupid

Also, he might as well put up a big sign in his house that says "steal my CD collection"!

what the hell is wrong with you

in re: finding stuff, I almost never say "I want to hear this, let me go find it" (if I need need need something, I have everything backed up digitially) so that's not an issue; I flip open a binder and play the first thing that appeals to me

whiney has a really bizarre idea of how stupid thieves are - even the dumbest criminal on the planet knows a binder full of unsleeved cds is completely worthless

unless there are thieving bands of record geeks running around looking for houses to rob

i have heard dozens of stories of people getting their binders stolen. Also, I see dudes on the street of New York selling shit out stolen binders like every day.

There are dozens of us. Dozens!

http://z.about.com/d/tvcomedies/1/7/U/-/-/-/tobias_funke.jpg

I mean, i'd love to go up to them individually and tell them than John D thinks they're stupid, but i think it's just safer to keep my jewel cases

whiney has a really bizarre idea of how stupid thieves are
I don't know where you live, J0hn, but people will really steal stupid shit. I'd probably have to think about a bit and talk to the bf to refresh my memory, but we've had plenty of wtf moments at some of the obviously stolen shit people have tried to sell us.

pick up any newspaper, every day a story about a home invasion by thieves targeting soft target cd binders

going out on a limb here, but i'd wager J0hn d. has way more valuable stuff in his house to steal than a binder of cd's

his porcelain mountain g0at collection for example

I'm still getting past the mental image of thieves browsing ILM threads looking for things to steal, coming across J0hn's post and shouting "EUREKA! Quick, buy a plane ticket, we got some bindered CDs to steal!"

yeah when a thief sees jewel cases he's like "shit! if these were more conveniently organized, I would boost them, but these cases are inconvenient as fuck. guess this house is unrobbable!"

xp que: hummel or precious moments?

"That's the place to hit, the owner keeps his CDs in BINDERS"
"JACKPOT!" *high-fives*

sarahel: goats come in all sorts of flavors

jewel cases too noisy/bulky

got a hot tip on shelf full of binders, suspect that's the fucking goldmine, we'll all eat good once we unload these sublime frequencies discs without any cover art

yeah when a thief sees jewel cases he's like "shit! if these were more conveniently organized, I would boost them, but these cases are inconvenient as fuck. guess this house is unrobbable!"

No, it would just make them less likely to take them along with any guitars, laptops, or small appliances.

maybe, john d, you shouldn't take the box of empty cd cases outside and place it down on the curb right next to the hoodlums sitting there, let alone explain to them that now your cds are all in a single binder somewhere in your house and whaddya know, it's time for my next tour.

"wow, i hate cover art and pesky jewel cases. but i love music! is there a NYC sidewalk CD dealer who can help me?"

"they call him Spotify"

― Four-TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN! (HI DERE), Monday, July 27, 2009 3:06 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm not saying that because of the post, dipshit. I'm saying that because of the CD binder in general.

so i've heard

i have heard
dozens of stories
of people
getting their binders stolen.

Also, I see dudes on the street
of New York
selling shit out
stolen binders
like every day.

Also, I see dudes on the street of New York selling shit out stolen binders like every day.

Serious question since I've never seen this: Do they reassemble them with jewel cases or do they sell just the CD (sometimes with booklet)? If the latter, how much does something like that go for?

It's so hard to find stuff in binders.

I don't understand this. I have hundreds of DVDs in binders and just like my CDs with jewel cases, they're all in alphabetical order. Very easy to find stuff.

ftr i still love cds too (because as i'm sure i've said i do a lot of music listening in the car and ipod hookups can blow me) but will go to vinyl + download before i go to anything else if cds die. i have a small (< 100) but thoughtfully selected lp collection.

yeah when a thief sees jewel cases he's like "shit! if these were more conveniently organized, I would boost them, but these cases are inconvenient as fuck. guess this house is unrobbable!"

John, you're so stupid sometimes I can't believe you can put chords together.

To go back to the thread idea, I fucking love CDs. I'm not stopping buying them any time soon.

"I was going to grab this vintage gibson, but it hardly weighs anything. those binders on the bookshelf, though...those've gotta be worth money. it's hard to hear with the alarm system going off so loud, but there could be a copy of the crop circle hoax cd in there...I have to risk it, my indie cred is at stake"

will you guys stfu about whether or not cds can be stolen?

All those CD binders for sale on the street must have just grown from the ground! Or came from houses/cars where there was literally nothing more of value!

CD BINDERS: AMERICAS SILENT KILLER

I don't understand this. I have hundreds of DVDs in binders and just like my CDs with jewel cases, they're all in alphabetical order. Very easy to find stuff.

I imagine it is if you make the effort to always put them back properly.

WONT ANYONE THINK OF THE CD BINDERS

what happens if you buy a new DVD, kebin? do you have to take them all out of the pockets and move them over?

chris hansen should do a dateline sting where he posts ads online looking for cd binders full of cds

seriously whiney if your scaredy dream of somebody robbing my house & my huge concern ends up being "oh no my cd collection which I have backed up in two different place" instead of "fuck, it sucks to get robbed & messes with your everyday feeling of safety" then I will rebuild the collection & give it to you

have you never been robbed? I have. I didn't give a shit about what they took, still don't. nobody who gets in here is going to give a shit about blank binders in a side room. they'll take the guitars, because I haven't put cannonballs in the soundholes the way you, I guess, would.

just stopping by to register my outrage at JD's method of media storage. OUTRAGE I TELL YOU

sir i hope you know that i will no longer frequenting any of your chain of mountainous goating establishments.

harummph

whiney can I recommend taping your jewelboxes to the floor, then covering them with dry grass. then they will be safe from robbers. I can set this up for you, I only charge for the at-cost price of the dry grass & the tape.

what happens if you buy a new DVD, kebin? do you have to take them all out of the pockets and move them over?

WONT ANYONE THINK OF THE POCKETS????

lol

what happens if you buy a new DVD, kebin? do you have to take them all out of the pockets and move them over?

Seriously! It just sounds like too much effort, unless you live in a really small place.

sarahel knows whats up

i know, and DVD's are SO HEAVY!!!!!!

my jewel cases are made of platinum btw

you guys really have no idea how theft works, huh?

NO IDEA TELL US O MASTER THIEF

break it down for us

Oh shit, I love watching J0hn D. rile up Whiney.

twitter style

lol @ u guys gettin mad over this

In New York, ppl just grab what they can take in one armload, Mr. Que also you are a dumbass tbh

So, know they are not going to take k3vin k3ller's prize collection of animes if he still had them in cases

OH MY GOD NEW YOERK IS FULL OF PUNKS

THEY JUST TAKE YOUR CD BINDERS BY THE ARMLOAD

HOW DO YOU STAND TO LIVE THERE

STAY STRONG BRO

whiney can you fucking chill? it's a discussion, you're even worse than me with the gettin aggro about shit! people who are worse than jd with the aggro shit need to chill imo

step 1) take down the blinking neon sign that reads "i keep my cds in a binder"
step 2) put your cds in a heavy jukebox with bulletproof glass

lol @ new york superiority complex

"theft is different here"

still will need pics of dudes selling shit out of stolen CD binders cuz i have never seen this.

you cant like own music man

not trying to wind you up btw I got nothing but love for you & have no idea why you're always on my fucking case about shit, move to my town and maybe understand that your experiences aren't actually universally applicable everywhere

jesus j0hn d. how can you ask whiney to chill when you know goddamn well that people in nyc are just walking into apartments in nyc and just taking armloads of whatever they can find, he's gotta be primed for battle

they probably hang an open binder on the inner lining of a raincoat

lol @ new york superiority complex

"theft is different here"

he wasn't saying this happens only in new york, just that it does happen some places and that new york is his point of reference

what happens if you buy a new DVD, kebin? do you have to take them all out of the pockets and move them over?

Yes which sux. But I have to do that with my CDs with jewel cases and my vinyl which sux equally. I really don't understand the difference here.

All those CD binders for sale on the street

Ok I'm seriously not being a jerk here and am asking honestly: the entire BINDER is for sale??

Love, kebin

"psst 3 echobelly cds for $1"

"because I haven't put cannonballs in the soundholes"

this would be the awesomest guitar ever! nautical warfare jamboree!

In New York, ppl just grab what they can take in one armload

They do this in Oakland too ... unless they have more time to do the deed. But in general, they're more likely to take easily portable shit that they could sell for a few bucks, than more unwieldy items with a comparable resale value.

i know crutis but posting "in new york ppl steal things THIS way" is a good way to make yrself look silly imo.

thank you crut and sarahel for not making me feel like i'm fighting an army with a sword made of a subway footlong

this would be the awesomest guitar ever! nautical warfare jamboree!
patented that as soon as I posted btw so don't try

the point is none of your record collections are worth stealing or even owning really because you all have shit taste in music

if you cut that footlong in two you would have two more easily transportable daggers

"fighting an army with a sword made of a subway footlong"
this is a sword unfit for fighting or eating!

you cant like own music man

― max, Monday, July 27, 2009 3:23 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

just caught this and it deserves a lol tbh

Results 1 - 3 of 3 for "stolen cd binder". (0.59 seconds)

Results 1 - 5 of 5 for "stole my cd binder". (0.65 seconds)

Results 1 - 10 of about 420 for stolen "cd binder". (0.28 seconds)

The Death of the CD Binder

Also, j0hn, I got
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhnfyz37SVo
for you too, but i think out posting styles just rub against each other sometimes :D

music ain't got no owners, son! only listeners!

bah it's too late to make my "leave off the cheese -30 CCs of blood" joke

cosign whiney I am glad I grew up in 2 argumentative houses

totally robbing your house next time I'm in town though & leaving empty binders as my calling card

i think though that this is a totally rational fear, considering the changes that have occurred over the last 5-10 years, and denying the possibility is just incredibly wishful thinking.

oh wait, sorry, thought we were still talking about cd binder thievery.

You are only saying this because you woke up to a strange dude rifling through shit in your bedroom.

jjjusten if you want to buy your cds back I am a v. reasonable dude

all those govt/cop clearinghouse sites where you can buy other people's property (O.P.P.) are FILLED with cd binders. people steal them from cars a lot.

j0hn i dont care about the cds so much but if you still have the binder i kept them in i have really been missing that most of all

Thread went in an interesting direction!

http://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments/oklahoma/23753d1216512869-official-oklahoma-forum-chattin-thread-rip-thread.jpg

looking forward to my e: true hollywood stories interview about JD stealing my shit

ilxor, why do you think this thread never had a chance?

The Ties That Binder: The J0hn D. Files

That beats what I was about to post, A Hell of a Bind: The J0hn D. Story.

The Death of the The Death of a Record Collection thread

Had an entertaining three hour run though, right?

http://pics.livejournal.com/chariqueer/pic/0002k6ey

There were some lols. RIP.

Do you ever stop to consider the fact that one day not only will you be dead and everyone you know will be dead too, but that the planet will probably fall back into the sun and the entire universe w

my initial thought is that "having a record collection" as a concept was really only ever intended for enthusiasts in the first place, and was more of an inconvenient necessity for millions of other people who enjoy music but don't value physical recordings, don't dig deep into catalogs, don't eagerly seek out new stuff, and don't need trivia, history, or metadata for the stuff they enjoy.

I have been to so many houses where the 'record collection' has consisted of a Korn CD stuck in between an Age of Empires II expansion CD and a 100 Best Arcade Games Funpack CD in a rack next to the computer

Get out of J0hn D's house, he's gone through enough today.

also, that Korn CD is scratched to hell

yeah, that's my experience, too -- i don't really know that many people who have a "record collection" in the sense we're talking about here. people have some CDs, they don't actively pursue music in the way that people on this board pursue music. xpost

you guys hang out in sad houses. get out of those houses!

ilxor, why do you think this thread never had a chance?

You'd think by the thread topic and the first few posts it would be interesting. I made a couple thoughtful posts... the thread ended up turning to Spotify and CD binders, though.

Which, I suppose, means it DID have a chance. Right.

The vast majority of my friends have serious music collections (where "serious" = "more than 100 CDs"; avg due to the gonzo freaks is probably around 1K)

A better image:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/picture.php?albumid=65&pictureid=277

I bet you could make a lot of money selling your friends out a binder on a street in NYC, if this thread is to be believed

xpost

I prefer to keep all my friends in their original cases

A better image

... which is the joy of ILX, eh? Years' worth of life left in this thread.

That said, I think my comments here -- Bye bye physical singles -- probably say it all. It's interesting that a lot of the meh-Spotify stuff above is coming from US posters who haven't actually used it: all I'll say is that I was deeply sceptical until I tried it. However: I'd also gone from being Mr Phwoar-Look-At-My-Vinyl to Cap'n Crappy MP3 without actually noticing myself giving a shit, so I accept that for people who -- for whatever reasons -- still like to be able to hold their music in their hands, there's a much bigger bridge to cross.

I also fear Jon's absolutely dead-on about the stupidity of the RIAA. However, it's still very early days for Spotify and if/when this mobile application takes off, the game could yet change. As I've said somewhere else (er, probably the Spotify thread), I think a lot of labels are playing along because they see it as something that, while it might not be making them £££ right now, is very obviously the lesser of two evils when compared with Torrents/P2P/other illegal downloading, and offers the potential for a working business model in the future.

Maybe.

I wish someone would steal my cds. They're all in these:

http://i32.tinypic.com/xogkuh.jpg

That's right, jewel cases and shoulder straps.

ha I had one of those in college, only it was smaller

I wish someone would steal my cds.

are the m0unta1n g04ts planning a tour soon?

mothers, lock up yr CD binders

Kerm I will fully boost your cds this fall and since you have been generous enough to leave them in their cases I will sell them at my merch table

'99 trip hop has held its value, right?

if sold to me, yeah

sweet, we should talk

Dan I can get you the same CDs Kerm's offering at a significant discount if you'll wait til Kerm goes on vacation

leave out the middleman, dan

i'm interested in late 90s trip hop but i only want the cases and booklets...any chance you could put then in a binder, let j0hn steal that and sell it to dan, and sell the cases and booklets to me?

unfortunately I only deal with middlemen :-(

what recession?!

huge lol tbh

interesting that people do the cd binder thing. i tend to do that with hardcover books; take them out of their dust jackets and place them in large soft binders. didn't realize there was a cd equivalent!

wait, waht

...I'm with Dan.

does anybody remember that people did used to do that with 78s and 45s? My dad had a bunch of binders for both formats in the garage when I was little. I would go through the binders for hours looking at the records.

i place all my hardcover books in plastic ziploc bags. i place the dust jackets on my head and turn them into colorful hats. wait, doesn't eveyone do this...

We had a binder of old 78s that I think belonged to my great-grandfather; I don't know what happened to it. I used to love playing those things on 33.

i sew my old vhs tapes into the insides of my pants

as far as storage goes nothing beats:

http://static.flickr.com/110/289056054_7a72ed5870.jpg

i sew my old vhs tapes into the insides of my pants

Once you unwind the spools, I trust.

The man with the betamax slacks

still want this by the way:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3586/3366394723_f63008689e.jpg

Not in MA, you don't!

A friend of mine came round some time ago with her entire record collection on a hard-drive thing and promptly 'gave' me all her music. This was a freaky event in my life on many levels, not least because I'm not familiar with a lot of the artists in the collection. Now I know I'm supposed to weed out the stuff I would like to have nothing to do with, but it's such a daunting task. It's a bit like someone giving you an overwhelming number of gifts and depositing them around your house - you're grateful but it's not quite your home any more.

This might not mean the death of my record collection, but it has certainly distorted it.

just put that shit in a binder, that'll take care of it

Beeps pulled down a box of old 78s I had in the closet that were my mom's records when she was a kid -- basically cardboard, paper, and plastic grooves pressed as a round sandwich.

We put one of them on, a version of "Ring Around the Rosy" and those creepy chorus vocals came up that sound like the soundtrack to one of those black-and-white cartoons where the toys come alive in the night and kill the children. Beeps took the needle off the record and requested to go downstairs to be closer to Dora.

that kid is never going to want a record collection

I have a box full of shit CDs that I can't sell and can't donate. Have no idea what to do with all of them, but I feel horrible just packing them out with the recycling. I seriously doubt its worth eBay or whatever to sell the third Collective Soul album or second 311 album, y'know?

Same here. :-((

RIP

go to a used record store and dump them for $.50 each or something

i used to work in a used record/cd store. we'd buy anything as long as it wasn't scratched up real bad. u prob wouldn't get $.50 for them (more like $.10 - $.25, b/c they'll prob sell them for $1 or less) but it'd be something. or u could drop those off at a salvation army or something

Wow Scott, never saw that but have had mental images of basically exactly that (except with 12" capabilities). Looks like I know what my next car will be.

Now I know I'm supposed to weed out the stuff I would like to have nothing to do with, but it's such a daunting task.

why bother?

like "oh i really gotta fix these 30000 id3 tags..." uh...?

bit like the kindle thread, this

how many ppl have the same audio-emitting capabilities on their computer as they do on their hi fi or equivalent? i mean, in my case it's cheap pc speakers vs cheap LG stereo, but i know v few ppl with anything more on their pc than cheap pc speakers + cheap sub

the long-term vision is still that music does and should not exist as a series of recorded/manufactured/divorced-from-reality performances, but i don't really know how that's going to play out. possibly the 20th-21st centuries will be looked back on as this age of crazy where all art forms turned up in mass-produced artifact form

in the short term i can't decide whether missing record collections is progressive or not

the move against it predates spotify, though: i think moving from 2% of all recorded music ever available on demand to 20% of all recorded music ever available etc isn't really the key point. (kind of curious, now, what the actual number there is.) but years now i've known people who evaluate ppl's music by listening to two tracks off their myspace on one-watt laptop speakers. not saying they're THE ENEMY or anything. just saying.

just sorta quickly and offhandedly, I think a lot of people tend to go from 'death of the record collection' to 'revitalization of performance-based music'/'less emphasis on recorded media' thing too quickly. or at least I read too many articles that suggest that the real future of music is going to be concerts (and what, merch?) and I think, oh boy, I'm screwed then... can't do my music live at all.
probably too much not-conducive-to-being-reproduced-live music that people make/listen to/love for people to stop making/listening to/loving recorded music.
but yeah, no one's going to get rich selling it.
I also don't know what I'm talking about.

I have spent countless hours editing metadata in iTunes. When someone asks me for some music I just dupe my entire drive for them. It would take me too long to filter according to their tastes and they should be grateful that i'm giving them something for free that i've spent enormous amounts of money and time compiling, adding artwork etc. If someone gives you a shitload of music, don't complain that it's going to take you too long to go through. Trust that it took them longer to get it to the point where they shared with you than it will take you to go through and find what you like and don't like.

Well, only if "they" are exactly the same as "you" in terms of tagging etc. Or you end up with a shitload of half-assed, untagged, badly ripped shite that you end up binning.

I'm pretty sure if I got thousands of mp3s in one go, I'd never know where to start and wouldn't listen to any of them. Just don't know how to approach that.

i don't know anyone where i would be excited to be "given" their entire record collection on a hard drive.

I'm pretty sure if I got thousands of mp3s in one go, I'd never know where to start and wouldn't listen to any of them. Just don't know how to approach that.

shuffle ftw

I hope none of the songs have long intros.

skip next ftw

ok we're not all hackers

turn on computer ftw

It's kind of sad that people don't even care about getting a terrabyte worth of music. Before I built up my collection over 20+ years, I would have sold my soul for that kind of gift. Someone needs to send out a music gremlin to reclaim those collection from undeserving fuckwits!

I know! Me too! Not quite sure what call all destroyer is saying but I just want to know how I can be brotherlovesdub's bud. More entire drives please!

why is getting that much music "good" in comparison to, i don't know, carefully building a collection over years of stuff that has personal meaning to you?

ILX baffled that technological developments in production and distribution lead to changes in consumption and behaviour. Film at 11.

huh no one else would feel at all overwhelmed by that?

why is getting that much music "good" in comparison to, i don't know, carefully building a collection over years of stuff that has personal meaning to you?

Because you will likely have heard everything you've built up carefully over the years as you've acquired it, making it highly unlikely that you will discover some random new piece of music in it that knocks your socks off?

Stop being unrealistic, Dan, the world doesn't work that way.

that's why you keep collecting?

i guess my perspective is that i would rather hear one record at the right time--when i read a good review of it, or it gets highly recommended to me by a friend, or there's a cool ilm thread about it, than hear 100 records because someone was nice enough to put them into well-labeled folders.

Getting tons of music is great. But at my own pace.
Boy, modern times!

i dunno, yeah i just wouldn't want that much stuff, just like if someone wanted to give me that much physical stuff

I used to go through CD stores and buy as many albums I could find for $100 where my only criterion was "be less than $10 and be by someone I've never heard before or only know one song by".

WHY HASN'T ANYONE SUGGESTED THE OBVIOUS:

Tape your CD collection on some average grade TDKs and keep them at your aunt's house on the farm!

Jeez.

and I'm not worried about hearing music that blows me away... that happens like clockwork anyway.

oh wait and half the time it *is* something that's been sitting around for years but I just never really heard!

i mean i've def been there where someone whose taste i really respect is like "yeah browse my slsk folders" or something and there's 100s of well-regarded artists that i've never actually listened to, but i only end up taking like 2 or 3 things. cause i need some context, or a better reason than "it was there."

uh because I bought too much music too fast

xpost

derail -- Lala dot com is good for turning cds that you don't know what to do with into cds that are better for you... I turned some around but stopped keeping up at some point

my vinyl collection is still expanding at a good clip. not sure how far it will go

huh no one else would feel at all overwhelmed by that?

Too right! I went through a spell last year where I was inundated with MP3 CDs from two or three different friends and I still haven't finished listening to all of it ... it's just too much to take in at once.

I'm always on the lookout for music I've not heard, old or new, via whatever source. I review one album a week on average; I download 50 tracks a month from eMusic; I have on my phone and computer a list of stuff I want to hear, which I add to pretty much every day. (Spotify has been a total game-changer for this kind of thing, btw.) But to suddenly find myself with 100+ albums, as I did last year, some of which are by artists I'd never heard of ... yeh, that was overwhelming. Just a total overload.

There's a load of stuff from these CDs here on my desktop in various folders ... look, here's a Dixie Dregs album that I'm sure is great, but which I just don't have any desire to hear right now. Here's a Le Hammond Inferno album that I'm sure absolutely rules, but ... well, it was a passive arrival that got sidelined given all the active music-hunting I was doing.

Ultimately: I just don't have the time to listen to thousands of songs acquired in one go. It's not that I'm ungrateful, just ... busy.

(Actually, I really do want to hear that LHI album right now. Need to review this Paul Banks solo thing first. Very good, by the way.)

here's a Dixie Dregs album that I'm sure is great

Well...

The other thing -- and perhaps this makes me really old-fashioned, but hey -- I like to listen to albums in their entirety. Repeatedly.

xpost Hahahah

Out of interest to myself, if nobody else: so far this year I've added 2178 new items to iTunes.

Last year (total): 2789.

2007: 1986.

By ILM standards, that might well be fuck all. But for me -- especially given the new-found joys of Spotify -- it really is more than enough. Seriously, getting half my year's listening in one fell swoop is rather a terrifying idea.

I have never owned a "hi-fi or equivalent" other than a car stereo. all my music playback systems have been about the same sound quality level as my computer speakers

Curtis, come and visit me. I will open your ears. I will cobble together a hi-fi for you from old bits laying around my office & backroom.

i'd never browse through a huge shared folder and queue up a bunch of random stuff "because it was there" because it'd take forever to transfer, but if you bring over an external drive full of stuff, sure we can put it all on the server. I'm sure as shit not going to feel compelled to listen to all of it, ever.

the idea that a someone with their own "hi-fi" can't figure out how to get a mp3 to play on it is pretty lol40.. wtf?

i turn down the bass all the way in the truck because i listen to most music on laptop speakers, btw.

playing Drive By Truckers mp3s off a cdr in the xbox hooked to the home theater is pretty good times too though.

i don't get the "overwhelmed" feeling. listen to it at your own pace. there's no expiration date. it's there if you want it. there's no imposition on your time. it's like if a radio station you liked gave you access to their whole collection, would you be like "ugh no thanks, who has the time to listen to all that! i need personal context and meaning!" or would you go "whoa cool, now i have a ton of stuff to listen to whenever i feel the desire to check out something new. i bet there's some real gems in there!".

it just feels like mental clutter to me. that's all.

I'm with whomever said there are very few people whose entire collection of music I would be interested in.

And I'd be surprised if any of those people are going to be handing the "keys" to their entire collection.

it just feels like mental clutter to me. that's all.

understood. that's a consequence of wanting to personally maintain the concept of "record collection", right? the need to know and have a handle on every piece of music that you have access to. i don't think there's anything wrong with that, but i think there's a happy medium between having no "collection" whatsover, just tapping into the music ether willy nilly, and feeling so overwhelmed that you'd turn down access to a bunch of new (to you) music.

understood. that's a consequence of wanting to personally maintain the concept of "record collection", right? the need to know and have a handle on every piece of music that you have access to. i don't think there's anything wrong with that,

ah yeah i get what you're saying, it is clutter to me because i have some nagging feeling i should really make an effort to listen to everything i "have"

but anyway i dunno maybe i'm just not made for the future or whatever, it's too late for me!

yes i feel enough pressure due to the 50-record backlog sitting on top of my shelves....

"the idea that a someone with their own "hi-fi" can't figure out how to get a mp3 to play on it is pretty lol40.. wtf"

btw i meant this, more, as a counter-argument to the spotify thing, not the broader issue of availability: the idea that now you can stream all this music it's the final nail in the coffin

i can get from the spotify stream to the cd player in another room, but not ... conveniently. (if i could get it on a phone, yeah, that's a much shorter wire /: )

if i got a shit ton of new music, i'd be compelled to listen to it on shuffle until all tracks were rated, so you and i are in the same camp. but i'd still take the music, and if it took me months to get through it all, that's fine. my outlook might be different if i didn't have minimum 8 hours of listening time per weekday.

yeah i have like 2 or 3.

if someone offered me their hard drive full of music, tbh i'd probably pass. if someone offered me their physical record collection, i'd totally take it up (prob after a quick glance tho)

why is getting that much music "good" in comparison to, i don't know, carefully building a collection over years of stuff that has personal meaning to you?

My answers to this are solar systems away from Dan's; random new music knocks my socks off on a weekly basis. Nevertheless, they should be self-evident to anyone who's clocked countless hours in record stores:

1. Cuz I want to hear x record RIGHT NOW!

2. Cuz I'm sick of looking for x record for years. I already have the context for mountains of records (see call all destroyer above). Now I want them to be there! Anywhere!!

3. Cuz looking through mountains of records can get frustrating/boring/finger blackening*, esp. when you can't find x record you've been looking for for years. (* Don't really care about this; just being cranky.)

4. Cuz 69.89% of record store employees are mean and/or socially underdeveloped. Dude just stared at me dumbfounded and a bit terrified when I said "hello" to him.

5. Cuz if the record store owner with whom you've established a good trading relationship is gone one day, then one of their underlings will act all tough and important and give you a shitty trade.

6. Cuz I spent $30 (a lot for me) for a Miles bootleg on CD that never worked. This was at a non-annual/seasonal record convention so I couldn't go back and beat dude's ass in with said CD.

7. Cuz most bootlegs suck. They should be free. My wisest record convention move was passing up a triple vinyl Prince: Small Club 2nd Show That Night for $65. It sucks.

8. Cuz most of the records (that I'd never heard of before) in Chuck Eddy's Stairway to Hell suck. They should be free.

9. Cuz people take too long looking at records, sometimes on purpose. Dude, you just passed up Godz 2. You KNOW I want it! Move the fuck over now! (P.S. Terrible, terrible record.)

10. Um, dude, can you pull that Insect Trust record out of your flooded ass basement sometime soon?? I've been asking for it for like a DECADE!! Plus I bought all your flood-damaged West End 12"s already. You owe it to me!

In other words, brotherlovesdub, please be my friend.

how is any of that an argument for getting a large amount of music all at once

After around 6 or 7 years of not buying any music and downloading it all, i bought myself a new turntable 18 months ago which re-ignited my love of vinyl.. my collection was around 1000 lps, and i've spent the last year buying huge amounts of (used) vinyl - last trip to london i snagged around 50 lp's in one day...... (mostly bargain bin stuff)..

My collection is nearing 1500 lps now and i hardly download a thing these days..

i thought we did record store neurosis recently on another thread.

9. Cuz people take too long looking at records, sometimes on purpose. Dude, you just passed up Godz 2. You KNOW I want it! Move the fuck over now! (P.S. Terrible, terrible record.)

RONG!

how is any of that an argument for getting a large amount of music all at once

Cuz it eliminates all the record store hassle I listed above. Plus maybe, just maybe brotherlovesdub has that Pete Fowler single I've been looking for on his hard drive that's he's going to give me. I got PLENTY of context for it; now I just want to hear the fucker!

Clearly, I'm that crybaby Howdy Doody punk throwing a temper tantrum in that cartoon on the back of some of the Killed By Death comps.

my outlook might be different if i didn't have minimum 8 hours of listening time per weekday

*Jealous*

Serious question, though: when you say i'd be compelled to listen to it on shuffle until all tracks were rated, how many listens-per-track do you think that'd take you?

I think one of the biggest deal-breakers with the hard drive of music is that it would just be a less fun supplement to what I do anyway? Like a lot of people are saying, we *already* get way too much music all the time (and are alternately underwhelmed/overwhelmed/just whelmed by it) so a mystery hard drive on top of all that just seems kinda like something that I would definitely put waaay on the backburner. I wouldn't turn it down, but it just doesn't seem as fun (and clearly a record collector's idea of fun is NOT FUN for most people but hey). Record collectors not into the death of record collections? Non-record collectors kinda ok with it?

Yeah I love music and like listening to a massive variety and knowing a little about a lot, but I don't care at all about collecting anything other than access. I couldn't care less about liner notes. So as said upthread people who like to collect and hold and own all that stuff get to reap the benefits of all the rest of us trying to divest and declutter.

I couldn't care less about liner notes.

Sad. :(

but if we all cared about the same stuff this place would be even boringer

caring about stuff is no problem, but imo not caring about stuff is a pretty big one.

Yeah lack of liners is one drawback to the gimme your hard drive pleasekthxbye scenario. But even there, the more adventurous files include them as pdfs.

i'm glad there are liner notes out there for people who are into liner notes.

how many listens-per-track do you think that'd take you?

just one. the ratings aren't set in stone. if i hear a track again and don't agree with my own rating of it, it's just as easy to change it.

Oh, absolutely -- but again, it just highlights the differences between us all in the way we listen to music, I guess. Perhaps it's a throwback to when I was so skint I'd go to a record fair and only be able to afford one 7", but I'm conditioned now to need multiple listens before I can really make my mind up. (Not that this has stopped me shooting my mouth off on ILM, and subsequently thinking, bollocks, wish I hadn't said that: the most recent example being the last SunnO))).)

It definitely has changed the way I listen to new music. Must. Rate. I find myself slightly tortured trying to decide whether something is a 3 or a 4, then I snap out of it and realize it's both! neither! If you view it merely as a handy organizational tool rather than a FINAL JUDGMENT on a work of art, it's great.

i could probably download all the music i desire over the next few hours but i dunno, i'd rather just relax and not worry about it and pick up physical copies when the chance permits rather than deal with a glowing screen for any longer than i really have to. i spent a lot of time downloading stuff and in the end i don't listen to much of it, since having so much music is maybe having too much music.

What happens if I sell all my CDs and Spotify goes bust? No music! :(

I'm personally going to keep all my CDs - in 20 years they'll be as retro-cool as 8tracks and vinyl.

that's why i give them my library xml file and the other metadata folders for iTunes. all you have to do is launch iTunes and hold down Option, then select my library and voila.

I was thinking about you and your metadata, and wishing everybody else paid the same attention, when I added those Le Hammond Inferno files earlier on. No fields filled in except the track names ... which were mostly wrong. Grah.

haven't read the whole thread (sorry, at work). but since i wrote my comment at the top of the thread (as next grozart), i've had a chance to check out spotify and yeah it's really good. i don't have it at home because my "music" pc isn't attached to the net and i refuse to play things through crappy laptop speakers...

but as i say, i did attend a house party where instead of playing cds they just had spotify running and people got to pick the tunes they wanted, which i thought was great. of course you did get the same stereo-hogs you always get at parties, but it was a great way to run things.

the only problem was when i got round to choosing songs, i had nothing to work with. i was presented with a blank screen and for the life of me i couldn't think of anything to put on.

that said, i do understand there are ways to share playlists and stuff, so that's probably a mitigating factor.

it is interesting though, to think that in five years i've managed to sell off or get rid of 90% of my CD collection, and soon my HD full of music that I've lovingly compiled and categorised since the age of ten will soon be completely redundant. CDs won't have the same resale value as vinyl and MP3s aren't worth anything at all, so i can't see why having a music collection that isn't on vinyl would be worth anyone's while.

Couple random thoughts here:

Lately, I've been very happy with artists/labels who do the buy the vinyl, get a free download deal. I think this is a great compromise as it satisfies my need to collect, but I can still dump it on the iPod.

I was recently given a $10 gift certificate for iTunes and it posed me with a real challenge: I had a real hard time picking an album that wasn't so great that I needed to have a physical copy of it, but that was good enough to justify spending $10 to download. I finally chose the new Dirty Projectors, which seems like a just-right choice.

i've never had any sort of record collection. except about 1000 classical music cds, but only for learning and uni. most classical music just doesn't transfer well to other formats.

until audiogalaxy/napster i just copied everything onto cassette/vhs(!) from a family friend who was a pretty serious collector.

i think a lot of critics, writers and you guys will have an interesting role to play as tastemakers. personally, i can usually tell if a few people on here really like something, i should check it out. some writing on the internet makes for fantastic 'liner notes' to compliment the music. so music still has this great community/shared thing, it's just on a smaller scale.

i guess my shopping/crate digging equivalent is those times, perhaps once a week, when i'll spend the night on the net hunting down new stuff. to me, that's more exciting than browsing the racks at a record shop. i get to sample everything and its a great feeling when i finally find what i might not have known i wanted.

i don't use spotify though, too much freedom, like dog latin said, i can never think of anything interesting when confronted with that much freedom. i organise my mp3 collection by month these days. if i can't remember the name of something i'll usually remember roughly when i heard it. i also love the random function. skipping through a library of stuff, coming across something and thinking "wow where the fuck did this come from, this is ace."

i do love dance music on vinyl, there's something engrained in the culture there. so anything that i think i'd want to play out in a dj sense, i'll buy. but i'm not a collector, i'd rather have a small collection out of which i can make a good set and then just let that grow and shrink as and when my tastes change.

sometimes i feel a bit guilty about getting so much for free. but really, i couldn't give a fuck about the majority of musician's getting paid for their recordings. i've said this before on here - most of the musicians i know that actually put in a 40+ hour week are pretty good at what they do and get paid well for it. they might teach, get arts based funding, play lots of shows, do corporate functions, session work, play in an orchestra, sell cds/merch/downloads/records, dj on the side, busk, produce/engineer for other people, do workshops etc. there's a good living to be made in a combination of those there.

it's hard work doing a bunch of stuff like that, but hey, you're getting paid to do music for a living, the thing you love, don't complain. i get the feeling the folk that do complain make an album, record it, tour it and expect to be raking it in. shit has only and will only ever be like that for a select few, work towards it, sure, but don't expect it.

painting comparisons always seem to fail, but painters don't spend 2 months on a painting, put a picture of it on flickr and expect to be paid 2.99 for it. for me its the same with music, you're always getting a fake no matter what format. i'd happily pay a tenner to hear/see something as the artist intended though. like a listening party with an incredible sound system, or y'know, a gig.

anyway just some of my thoughts

death of the music magazine link on death of the record collection thread:

http://www.slate.com/id/2223381/pagenum/all/

i didn't know that blender went out of business! shows how much i pay attention to things.

i blame ilm

>>but as i say, i did attend a house party where instead of playing cds they just had spotify running and people got to pick the tunes they wanted, which i thought was >>great. of course you did get the same stereo-hogs you always get at parties, but it was a great way to run things.

Sounds like a tupperware party. Seriously, the host should get a commission. Which makes for a good etiquette question - should the guests change the hosts' music? Personally, I like going to a party and listening to someone else's music for a change.

until they start playing the postal service

*obv i have no idea what the oh no lol pedestrian taste band is anymore

it is a joy to visit a friend's house who doesn't even own a computer, has a fantastic jazz, funk, downtempo, deep house collection, makes a great brew, a lovely dog, some nice plants, a generous nature and a lot of weed. man, saying that, when i grow up i want to be that guy.

some people who host parties have crap music taste, or are two busy running around making people aren't throwing up all over the stairwell walls to want to worry about changing cds on the stereo.

making sure people aren't throwing up...

fuck my writing is plummeting to new depths.

at my wedding reception i had iTunes DJ set up and since all my friends are dorks, they all had iPhones that could connect via Remote to my library and request songs/vote for other requests etc. it worked out great.

i've never had any sort of record collection. except about 1000 classical music cds

okay lol

hee hee

I bought some CDs and records today.

did you take an autogyro to the store?

some people who host parties have crap music taste, or are two busy running around making people aren't throwing up all over the stairwell walls to want to worry about changing cds on the stereo

Well, you wouldn't go to that party to hear music, and if you did, it wouldn't be a major tragedy.

i don't go to parties to hear music though...

i go there to throw up in the stairwell.

sometimes i feel a bit guilty about getting so much for free. but really, i couldn't give a fuck about the majority of musician's getting paid for their recordings. i've said this before on here - most of the musicians i know that actually put in a 40+ hour week are pretty good at what they do and get paid well for it. they might teach, get arts based funding, play lots of shows, do corporate functions, session work, play in an orchestra, sell cds/merch/downloads/records, dj on the side, busk, produce/engineer for other people, do workshops etc. there's a good living to be made in a combination of those there.

would like to point out my huge objection to this, but also really really dont want to derail this thread with that because weve talked around it a billion gazillion times already.

Well yeah, it's pretty much been well established that modern society thinks that musicians are slaves.

lol there's a good kind of shitty living to be made in a combination of those there.

It's established that modern society thinks that if musicians aren't slaves already, they should be. "LOL now they have to work for a living like me, boo fucking hoo". Anybody who says 'it's good that live performances are the main revenue source' can fuck themselves. Going to gigs sucks and so does playing them. Anyway, music is now worthless so in a few years we won't even be talking about it.

xp

Well yeah, it's pretty much been well established that modern society thinks that musicians are slaves.

no way! they enjoy their work, therefore people shouldn't feel bad about not paying for it! no person who enjoys his work should be paid jack shit imo

hey jjusten:

dude is it cool if i hold off on paying for getting my bass head repaired until i have busked for enough money....also i have applied for an arts grant. *fingers crossed* : )

xp good thing i don't enjoy my work!

Well yeah, it's pretty much been well established that modern society thinks that musicians are slaves.

not to be a broken record on this subject but pre-modern and relatively ancient societies pretty much felt the same way

SERIOUSLY LOCK THREAD NOW

m@tt otm

not to be a broken record on this subject but pre-modern and relatively ancient societies pretty much felt the same way

OH WELL THAT'S OKAY THEN

xpost: come on guys, you really want to watch Shakey and me have the same argument again; I'll even through in my "punk sux" challops as seasoning

many ancient societies also thought it was cool to just throw the contents of your chamberpot out the window. as a musician I demand that when I empty my chamberpot onto the street below, someone pay me for my performance

I like how everyone's suggestion for making money in a post-album-selling world is like: live shows (which is a BIG MONEY MAKER!!!! and always feasible for everyone) or, like, sell tons of merch, ie. something that does not relate to your presumed music-making skill.
(although I think the real answer is probably licensing/making music for things that pay royalties, like films/ads/games whatever else)

"I call this one 'A Good Morning's Effort', you uncultured bastards"

let's go back to talking about binders pls.

no problems with them since I increased the fiber in my diet

wtf why did I type "through" instead of "throw"

video game companies have about 1 zillion major label bands hustling them for soundtrack placement for every one song slot available.

sometimes record companies even PAY to have songs placed, and most newer bands get jack shit or nothing to be in a game...yeah like the beatles or something like that will

rock band downloads you could actually make money on though

I find the life of the professional jingle writer fascinating, actually!

Buckner & Garcia were jingle writers before they did Pac-Man Fever!

basically the new success in the music industry is either be Buckner & Garcia or Insane Clown Posse

hmmm... I wonder if I've got a Barry Manilow "State Farm Insurance" song in me

YOU CAN DO IT : )

http://thedailyelephant.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/tony-little-gazelle.jpg

i was just in a conversation with someone who knew the dude who wrote the "national american university" jingle -- everybody was like, wow awesome, i wanna punch that guy in the throat

na-tion-al a-mer-i-can universiteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwVtkuQacp8&feature=related

I recorded this commercial and would watch in endlessly.

sometimes record companies even PAY to have songs placed, and most newer bands get jack shit or nothing to be in a game...yeah like the beatles or something like that will

yup.

I am resisting the urge to post e-mails I've received from "Promotional companies" who want ME to pay THEM to put my band's song(s) on a comp CD to be shopped around for videogame/tv show/ad placement. Yes, please take my money so I can maybe one day see a few cents for my music being used in a diaper commercial. fucking people, sometimes I hate them.

lol Dan you think nobody can hear the backwards-masked "wicked clown"s in that ad but I can

the only reasons for me to maintain a collection of music as digital files:

1) so i can mess with that shit in editing software, make mixes etc. (not sure if this is something that could ever work as well just online but maybe, eventually)

2) seeming inability of apps like spotify to include all the things you want to hear (partly due to the tedious draconian licensing crap but also obscureness/actual unavailability of some material)

3) DJing...you wouldn't want to rely on a streaming service alone for this - i've yet to use a laptop, ipod or similar for the purpose either but would)

i doubt i'll possess any CDs (and probably no vinyl either, tho that stuff does have more sentimental and aesthetic value) 5-10 years from now if not sooner

harder to say whether amount of music on hard drives will now start to slowly shrink

nina meyers!

ah hi dere why lol at that? i studied classical music. buy a cd, buy/copy a score, that was my "collecting". or was that some sort of OIC thinks he's a serious musician because he's studied it. fair enough. whatever.

"Going to gigs sucks and so does playing them" does not compute.

eh, anyway, the way i see it there's no way selling your own recordings on its own is going to make you any money anymore. i'd rather find solutions than moan about how greedy people are and how fucked up the music industry is. i'd rather busk for a day than work a bar job. at least with the busking i have to arrange some tunes, practice, learn something that can inform my own work. i'd rather teach guitar to 15 kids a week than sit at a shitty office job. i guess that's just me.

maybe i spent too long reading big george in sound on sound and took the "work your fucking ass off or just give up" attitude of my music business lectures too seriously.

anyway, back to people selling their cds and records.

That was a lol at "I don't have a music collection aside from this pile of 1000 CDs", which most (if not all) people would look at and say "hmm, that bears an uncanny resemblance to a large collection of music".

john if you can remember one show me a thread where you make your point about all of this, i'd be interested in it. TMG are aiit.

yeah, doh, i guess i don't see it like that. they live with my books, it not so much for pleasure as much as knowing stuff for essays and stuff.

Spent 3 hours yesterday digging through dusty records in some diddleshit town in western PA and pulled out 36 awesome 12"s (some of which are pretty hard to find and obscure, some just classics) for $50. Also spent some time talking to the guy working about weird dub, burritos, and Red Hot Chili Peppers tattoos. Why would I give all this up to stream shit to my phone?!?!

I can get behind streaming music but streaming shit is a step too far

we all have those days... I just try to leave the phone out of it.

I've spent months ripping my collection to flac and am almost done. I've only trimmed a little fat, selling about 8% of the CDs. I have over 7,000 albums on the NAS at home and backed up at work. It's awesome being able to access anything in my collection virtually 24-7. And when the 2TB SDXC cards finally come out, I will pretty much have it all with me almost all the time. Perhaps someday it'll be embedded in our skin.

the 2TB SDXC cards

^ this is genuinely mind-boggling for me.

The problem I have with ever-growing disk space is that it will feed a compulsion to upgrade all of my mp3s to the highest possible compression rate and soon I'll find that I just don't have enough disk space.

I admit this is probably not a reasonable problem to have...

soooooooo glad i don't have to worry about something like compression rates!!

i mean, i have enough to worry about.

It's awesome being able to access anything in my collection virtually 24-7.

I can do that too. With my records. they're on shelves. Though I've moved some of them upstairs to the bedroom 'cos there's a record player there too.

^^^for realz

continually upgrading my music to some other format is fucking pointless and irritating. vinyl is vinyl and will always be vinyl.

wow you guys carry around shelves of records on your backs at all times, very impressive. where do you keep the turntable? fannypack?

fuck a vinyl record. wax cylinders 4ever

The problem I have with ever-growing disk space is that it will feed a compulsion to upgrade all of my mp3s to the highest possible compression rate and soon I'll find that I just don't have enough disk space.

I admit this is probably not a reasonable problem to have...

― Moodles, Wednesday, July 29, 2009 5:39 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

Skip the upgrade and just get everything in FLAC

i have all the episodes of npr on dat, if nyone is interested emaul me

2 TB SDXC cards = blaaaahweoawrhga84etg!

It's going to come down to cataloging.
Some OCD metal dude is going to make the definitive metal playlist, nicely foldered and tagged with good bitrate/sound quality, and it will start to get copied and traded around, people will tweak it to their own tastes, add new releases, maybe some popular alternate versions will emerge. Ditto for other genres.
Serious question:
Every junglist track pre 2005 (arbitrary cutoff) = how many bytes?

Really, the Hip-Hop card (volumes I and II), the blues card (Big Dave's BBQ Version), the punk card, etc.......

2 freaking Terabytes on an SD card........

John Cage's 4 years and 33 days of silence, available now on a 2TB card

I heard you had an SDXC of every relevant pre-war blues track from 1910-1939

do flacs fit in regular sized CD binders

Yeah, I have that Cage piece, but at a low bitrate, anyone have a FLAC?

With 2 Freaking Terabytes, you could even fit in the semi-relevant ones.....

no fooling, every blues track from 1910-1939 = how many bytes?

I've only looked at the start of this thread, so maybe this point already made. Basically, I am struck by how one of my record collector friend heavily fetishises and collects vinyl and only vinyl. He is part of some retro muso scene where these people collect olde vinyl records and play them at discos. How quaint. Anyway, I reckon that maybe in general record collecting might well die off, but you will still get people who collect vinyl records, in the same way that other people collect stamps.

hey cracklebox, would you say that your 1000 cd uncollection is a fairly comprehensive overview of classical music?
like; most of the major works of the major composers?

because 800MB x 1000 CDs = 800 000MB = not even HALF of an SDXC card.
an SDXC card the size of your thumbnail.

that is some scifi madness there. you can play that card in your FLYING CAR.

....."look what i found between the sofa cushions, classical music! all of it."

2 f r e a k i n g t e r a b y t e s . . . . . .

do flacs fit in regular sized CD binders

― tylerw, Wednesday, July 29, 2009 10:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

You might as well put up a big sign on your house that says "steal all the music in existence"!

Then we'd really be screwed...

800MB x 1000 CDs = 800 000MB = not even HALF of an SDXC card....
= uncompressed digital audio; not mp3s, not FLAC = gggaonbvap984tl!!

I don't want all music ever to take up no space; wtf do you keep on your shelves once yr books are on a Kindle and yr music's on a memory stick? Porcelain dogs? No fucking way.

You take down the shelves and put up some cool art.

That's pretty much my plan, anyway!

I have cool art up too!

i keep my porcelain dogs in binders but shit is padlocked so don't even think about it kleptos

Expect a visit from ASPCA.

Is there a records collectors thread on ilm? Using this one now... Record collectors of ilm: how often do you consider selling all your records?

I've collected for abt seven-eight years and have enjoyed it, learned a lot from it, but feel a bit like maybe letting it go now. Not sure I wanna keep spending the money, and feel like a static collection is kinda like... death. Otoh I enjoy some of the memories connected to the records and am not comfortable letting go of those... Anyway, dunno what to do, will prob give it a year or so. But rn feel like spotify and a bit of piracy is maybe all I need.

I barely buy records at all anymore - I just don't have the $$$ - and periodically I'll cull my collection but no way would I get rid of it at this point (25+ years on), I listen to it all the time

Love records but too many cheeky £1 charmers that have been smoking behind the bikesheds for the last 10-15 years are now lording it up silly prices, those lads might just have to find themselves a new home

Have sold off hundreds of records at local record markets, once a year past four years, it's been good, feel like I have a nice and trimmed collection.

When I started collecting I made it a point to not listen to mp3s, I know the two are not mutually exclusive but for some reason I wanted to try using only physical media. Which I've now done for quite a few years. Then last week I bought a chromecast audio and hooked it to my stereo with spotify connect - and now I feel like that's maybe the way I prefer playing music on my stereo. I'll probably have to give it at least a year before I know how I like it... But not entirely sure I enjoy the needle drop enough to not just spotify everything.

I hate spotify so, not an issue!

Hehe, too easyhttps://www.hifiklubben.dk/

Lol did not mean to cp that link stupid ipad

Record collectors of ilm: how often do you consider selling all your records?

15 years ago i moved from up north to down south.
at the time i decided to get rid of some of my unloved vinyl.
worst mistake ever.
yes, most of it i have been able to replace on cd, but there are certain things, that i still wake up in the middle of night while screaming 'WHY!' (eg. Drinking Gasoline 2*12 by Cabaret Voltaire, Seven Songs by 23 Skidoo).
i have never ever got rid of anything, vinyl or cd, since. despite the fact i now use a NAS drive/sonos.
i don't need the money or space anymore, so fuck it.
even if the archive is worthless i care not, i am like gollum and his ring, its precious, and that's the way it is.

I have sold records in the past and regretted it almost every time. Even when I got stupid money for it, I later wished I had it. If you desperately need the money for food or shelter, then do what you have to do. Otherwise, if you're like me, you'll regret getting rid of them.

the fracturing of the streaming services market - and possibly its eventual collapse - should be reason enough for people not to liquidate their collections unless they absolutely have to or want to for some good reason...

^^^

this idea that all music will be available from some online service is sorta silly

"in perpetuity" should've been in there somewhere

another example : it took me 15 years to find a kind soul to help me replace my CHAKK album/extra ltd 12" groove given the album has never had a reissue.
bottom line : never ever ever get rid of vinyl/cds.
yeah yeah re space, yeah yeah re convenience, yeah yeah re old fucker.
but i would rather be wrong, very very wrong, as opposed to never being able to play my CHAKK album again.

Great inputs! I guess even if I stop playing them as much as I used to, they still look great and improve room acoustics. And I prob don't want to regret letting go of any of the rare/sentimental ones...

hear my cry niels.

even with your CA amp, (the diss in that hi-fi thread made my eyebrows rise a lot), your currently unloved music still has a future ..

getting rid of music you don't want any more - go for it. I just donated about 100 CDs that aren't valuable and I know I'll never listen to again in order to create some space. Dumping or not buying music you like just because it's available on Spotify doesn't make much sense though. And that last sentence describes pretty much everyone I know...

"I've collected for abt seven-eight years and have enjoyed it, learned a lot from it, but feel a bit like maybe letting it go now. Not sure I wanna keep spending the money"

as someone with a store, i'm kinda waiting for the avalanche of very heavy almost new "vinyl is back" collections to start coming through the door. i can't give you 30 dollars for that RSD release though. i know, i know, that's what you paid for it.

not speaking about niels specifically. just feel like eventually a lot of people will find spotify more soothing and less of a money drain.

I do have that thought of selling it all sometimes, when i think about the ridiculousness of having all of these records. I guess it's not that many but I've been buying them since the late 80s and I keep thinking that I should just do everything digitally and get some cash for stuff that is now ridiculously overpriced. Then some Sunday morning I pull out something I hadn't heard in awhile and that feeling subsides.

I do purge stuff once a year with little-to-no regret, as I get lots of credit at a local store. I don't buy as much new stuff nowadays so I can make that credit last a long time and it feels like a self-sustaining hobby.

Yeah,I'm in purge mode as I can sell stuff I played loads but won't play again, and that pays for 'new' things.

(not always brand new, mostly old but unheard)

Its on discogs, not priced cheap to shift if I sort-of want to keep it.

dont do it Mark G !

you will regret it ..

even those birdland 7" ..

it's hard to know

i've purged shit that i later regretted a ton, a few that i even re-purchased years later

plenty of others that i'm glad are gone and that felt like a burden to see on my shelf

Same here macos. If I'm thinking of getting rid of something, I usually think about "How easy/hard would it be to reacquire this if I change my mind?"

i sell 100s of my LPs a year and probably only regret two or three sales ever. it's nice not having stuff.

If I ask myself how hard it would be to replace, I figure I shouldn't be selling it. But I'm resigned to having too much stuff.

mark e, its funny there are a few things I sold that I should 'regret' but I don't really. Two spring to mind, the first orange juice and undertones, but they all still exist out there..

well we live in an age where if you really want to hear something, it is impossibly easy to find it again

with some important exceptions, of course, like if you collect 78 rpm records from central asia

Even then, eventually..

Nothing wrong with rotating records, doesnt have to be static

A lot of stuff is hard to get again though, especially with prices going through roof for many things

if you collect 78 rpm records from central asia that is indeed the sort of thing we are interested in and by & large sharity is over. i've been buying again cos i can't find OOP stuff to DL anywhere online
i think people got tired of sharity not cos of the fear of being busted (bin to the year 3000) but cos of the neverending slew of stuff which could /would need sharing maintaining a blogspot will elucidate its own pointlessness and the ephemerality of existence (partic when predicated on hey here's a cool ltd ed dictaphone cassette from 1984 featuring takehisa kosugi's mum doing the hoovering)

well we live in an age where if you really want to hear something, it is impossibly easy to find it again

A tiny fraction of the last hundred years' recorded music can be found on the internet.

<i>ephemerality</i>

is a positive!

xpost yes, but finding a copy is quite easy.

just feel like eventually a lot of people will find spotify more soothing and less of a money drain.

or they owning a physical product but start realising that used CDs are cheap and plentiful and kinda wacky and retro and you can get lots of titles that you can't find easily on vinyl and they're a little more resilient than LPs and all that shit and the whole cycle starts all over again

or they *like* owning

scott: are you afraid of going out of business if vinyl revival loses momentum or is your store more based around lifetime collectors?

i don't know if anything to this effect has been said yet, but, as a "millennial", my "record collection" is digital. i'm an album guy, too.
i hate physical copies of music, and i am very anti-vinyl (anti-surface noise unless i'm looking for something kitschy). i own a bit of vinyl though.

my record collection is made of a collection of 2500 digital albums with perfect id3 tags, and "album art".
i have it backed-up three times, and i plan to leave it to my niece in the event of my death.

"scott: are you afraid of going out of business if vinyl revival loses momentum or is your store more based around lifetime collectors?"

no, i'm not afraid. i just do what i do. it's a niche. people come to me. not a lot of people, but people. i know how to sell records. less young people though than like 3 or 4 or 5 years ago. that has been noticeable. definitely some level of fad behavior for awhile. but out of any fad there will always be a small amount of people who get hooked.

i like and sell old records though. i never cared about the rsd/new 180 gram/etc stuff. people come to me for old stuff.

Periodic purging appeals to me because it requires honesty about the personal value of a recording and make you a curator as opposed to an accumulator. Sure, occasionally you might change your mind but that's OK. A refined collection also makes it easier to pick something at random and really enjoy it (though I get that it's fun to be surprised when crate digging in your own stuff).

of course, now 12" electronic records from 2001 are "old"...

I get your point though. The appeal of $25, 180g represses of stuff (maybe OK sounding, maybe shit) from the 70s escapes me.

also: even though i hate vinyl, i'd still shop at mr. seward's place anyway, were it anywhere near me, just because :D

nothing beats having a store if you feel like purging. sometimes i feel like that's half the reason i have a store. cuz i'm really good at accumulating stuff. feels good to let it go sometimes.

i just bought some good DVDs. i still like DVDs and CDs. i sell them pretty good. there are so few places to buy them now! some people don't have netflix.

i wonder if this has been said:
even though i hate physical copies of music, film, etc. i will always buy them, once in a while, as long as they're produced - they're just cool to have. it's a pain in the ass to digitize everything, though.
i just prefer soft media, and it seems more sustainable. hard copies seem like a waste of resources and time. but, as long as they're still produced, i'll still buy them sometimes - they're kind of neat to see and hold.

xp scott that makes sense... old records rule!

well we live in an age where if you really want to hear something, it is impossibly easy to find it again

A tiny fraction of the last hundred years' recorded music can be found on the internet.

― let no-one live rent free in your butt (sic), Friday, November 13, 2015 1:27 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is very true. you'd be surprised what you can find on torrent sites, however, and perhaps i'm just being snobby and presumptuous in assuming that the sort of stuff most people here are looking for would be the kind of thing that wouldn't be all that hard to find. in other words, the majority of recorded music is not digitized, but the vast majority of music that the vast majority of people are looking for /has/ been digitized and is not hard to find. i would say that i have a lot of friends who are 'music snobs,' and with the exception of my friends who collect 78s, i'd say that the number of mentions per year of music that is actually /hard to find/ can probably be counted on one hand.

i assume we're talking about OOP records. i wouldn't torrent something that's in print; i'd just buy it again in one format or another. but i don't have much trouble torrenting a record that no record label has any interest in monetizing.

to be honest, the presence of torrent sites has allowed me to clear out a significant chunk of my LPs. (of course, i could just transfer them myself, but that would require much nicer equipment not to mention a huge amount of time.) and i really need the space.

'music snobs' = people who listen to pop music that didn't chart

This is an interesting thread, and not just for the early, important work on the growing crisis of CD binder vulnerability. I have a love/hate relationship with my vinyl collection (515 albums), which I started in high school in the late 90s, working from a handful of my parents' things and just grabbing stuff along the way. There are definitely waves of acquisition and periodic purging - usually when I'm about to move and I try to be honest with myself about what I've meant to listen to and like, and what I actually have. There are very, very few things I've ever purged that I've ever missed in the slightest.

But more generally the 'hate' side of love/hate has to do with the weight and space of the things, and more importantly the vague sense, as I scan across looking for something to listen to, that everything is over-familiar. Naturally with a long-accumulated collection, new additions are in a slim minority versus things you've had forever, and I can start to sort of hate myself by way of the really square-seeming sides of the collection, and marvel at how little I have that was released since I turned 25 or 26. That certainly reflects the easy availability of music online, and the ease of checking something out and determining thoroughly that I don't want to own it, versus being able to conveniently check out a track or two in the early 2000s. But that's how it goes, and the thing is that the old musty parts of the collection also feel like old friends and it's comforting to know they're there, and to pull them out and put them on once in a real blue moon. There's often the temptation to just say fuck it and purge anything I haven't felt any desire to put on in the last, oh, two years... but the thing is if I make myself a little queue of such records and make myself listen to them, they usually end up becoming keepers - "Oh, this is pretty good! I should listen to this more!" This is something I find I can do with a record collection that just wouldn't happen with streaming. I really relate to dog latin's post way upthread, about the "blank screen" problem of being told you can now listen to anything you want to pick out. I think it'd be easy for my listening to end up being less varied.

One thing that's great about a record collection that the disposability of digital files makes it hard for me to see happening there: the sort of tree-ring aspect of my own listening life written across the music I've chosen to acquire. Oh, there's where I got into indie rock in college, there's that three-month period when I discovered Hall & Oates and got all their albums. Recently I've been checking out jazz in a very impulse-buy "I like this cover and I don't know who Lee Morgan is and it's $3" approach, aided by a really good store opening up across the street from me. It locks together with my need right now for music I can put on while trying to get serious reading done, so I'm pretty sure in ten years these records will feel of a piece with this time in my life.

So before this just turns into a long "aesthetic pleasures of vinyl" type post, I guess what I'm trying to say is that my record collection's not dying at all - actually, it's going into another one of these tree-ring growth spurts after a long period of excessive Spotifying and not having a record store on my regular walking circuit. Honestly, my biggest problem right now is that the section Pe-Sl is on the bottom left shelf, up against the wall and sort of awkwardly related to the bedside lamp so I'm less likely to browse through there. Not sure if "The Death of Pearl Jam through The Slits" has the same ring to it though.

i'm slowly working my way toward a collection - this is what i'm hoping for anyway - where no matter what record i take off the shelf i can look at it and say: man, what a great record. this means i am keeping most of my jazz and getting rid of a lot of other stuff.

basically i get rid of a lot of the albums i kept for one song or whatever. and the stuff i look at and go uhhhhh...?????...guess i'll have to play this to figure out why i kept it...

i'm looking for a lack of confusion and some unity. no matter what i pick to play it will be something really good. i don't feel the need to be an archivist or librarian anymore. i'm not keeping stuff for "future research" or whatever. although i would still love to do a book on the best dollar bin records.

That's interesting, and weirdly tempting. It would shrink my collection dramatically. But I'm so fond of listening to merely adequate and mediocre records. Not just to find the diamonds in the rough but just, y'know, I can dig on some damned ordinary 70s pop-rock albums, if the tunes are mildly catchy. I have near-complete runs of Billy Joel, Elton John, and Paul McCartney, of which only a small minority would past the "man what a great record" test. This does contribute to the sense of the collection being weighed-down with wince-inducing square crap when I'm browsing in an uninspired mood, but I dunno, it'd feel weird not to have that stuff around to toss on.

The last couple of times I've hung out with an old friend of mine she's done the record-picking out of my collection, and it's been fun because she inevitably picks stuff I haven't put on in ages and it's great not only hearing it again, but hearing it partially through her ears. Feel like I wouldn't get that with a digital collection, though I guess there's no real reason you couldn't, if your folders were all organized and stuff...? My brain tunes out and gives up scrolling through an iPod or iTunes library in a way that it doesn't scanning across a box of records though, for whatever reason. For one thing the latter makes it very natural to grab a few things that you want to come back to and set them aside, which is also cool for managing my own listening. In the last year, for the first time I'm keeping an active "queue" shelf of shit I want to listen to sometime in the near future, which works really well for me.

(again, this is where the store comes in handy. i can listen to not-great or even great stuff all day long and i don't have to take it home with me...)

i've been listening to great country records all week. i don't collect country, but i do enjoy it. out of 200+ records i bought i'm keeping...three? i think.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xat1/v/t1.0-9/12247110_10154335164612137_3775956363028149473_n.jpg?oh=08a8051fed7911e9db97e02d43077d51&oe=56B03D9F

that johnny horton record is amazing in case you've never heard it. rockabilly country from johnny.

LONNIE 'FAP' WILSON

'music snobs' = people who listen to pop music that didn't chart

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Friday, November 13, 2015 9:38 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was using the phrase affectionately/ironically :)

I like this cover and I don't know who Lee Morgan is and it's $3"

If you dont get waaaaaay more than 3 dollars of pleasure from lee morgan, spmething has gone very wrong

yeah that one's definitely paid for itself already. "the cooker." will look for more of him next time i pop in there.

Hadn't realized I last posted on this thread six years back. Time does fly.

I still very much actively seek out and purchase music; the majority of what I make from freelancing tends to go back to that pursuit -- such has been the case since I started that, really. But my 'collecting' as such goes to the virtual -- thus, my Bandcamp page details what I am adding to on that front:

https://bandcamp.com/NedRaggett

It's not everything I'm listening to or buying, but it is where the majority of ,y purchasing happens.

The other day, someone on Twitter made a comment I thought appropriate: streaming services is the DRM dream of the labels/providers made manifest. If something goes, it's gone, since you paid for access, not ownership. The point about it being cheaper to legally stream can't be handwaved, but the flipside is obvious. Combined with the fact that -- drawing on my own experience with the Lee Jackson tribute project -- Bandcamp gets the money to you pretty damn seamlessly, I feel clear about getting artists something directly upfront versus royalties that may never happen which also allows me to own a copy directly at the fidelity I want/need. That it is not physically there beyond one's hard drive is a bridge I've long crossed, and as memory cheapens further and further and multiple backups become the norm -- a backup drive was left, intentionally, with my parents well to the south of the Bay, then there's a cloud backup via Amazon -- I'm not too fussed.

Meanwhile I'm looking to consolidate what CDs I have left in their original cases into one large rack via a local bookcase business that does very good work, and what collecting I'm doing there is filling in some gaps. I've got two complete runs of labels that released all or most of their work on CD -- Camera Obscura and Strange Attractors Audio House -- and am looking to complete a number of compilation runs where I had some but not all of the releases (Pebbles, Ethiopiques, Back from the Grave, Dream Babes, etc.). Scrounging the CD clearance section at Amoeba takes care of the rest; so much work just ends up there now by default, and it's easy enough to pass everything along once it's ripped.

Beyond that there's a small clutch of vinyl and cassettes I have that mostly consist of either gifts to me from the artists or was directly purchased from them at shows. Ended up selling about half the cassettes I did have recently to Aquarius and got a good rate for them; I only ever played them once to rip them in turn if there wasn't a download already available.

i got 500+ LPs, never gonna get rid of it. even though it's mostly crappy thrift store exotica records. if there is ever some disaster that wipes out digital music i'll be sitting pretty.

in answer to the thread revival question, I have a "sell pile" but in general am less and less interested in selling. I completely gave up putting stuff on eBay years ago, I only sell at shows. Part of this was because I sold a lot of stuff between 1996 and 2005, much of which I regret (and is now much more expensive).

It's funny, for whatever reason I'm cool with a whole corner of my room being taken up with cubic shelves of five hundred records stacked up to my height, but those two dense, forlorn CD binders still sitting, rarely-touched over on the shelf have started driving me nuts. On a major purge right now, towards at least getting it down to just one binder. It's weird cuz I switched so hard to vinyl in the early 2000s that almost everything in here that I might consider ripping to my computer is from the 90s (aka high school), and it's a fine line between embarrassing-but-still-makes-me-happy-to-put-it-on, and just-embarrassing. I can understand why the boomers were so stoked for CDs - a major format shift is a great excuse to just chuck everything and spare yourself the mirror view of an earlier life.

Anyway, the one binder is just about big enough for anything where the actual physical CD has sentimental value (friends' bands, friends' mixes) or anything I really would like handy for, like, road trips or something (???). So, well, I guess my CD collection's not dead, but it's pretty much over.

spotify has made almost all my cd's and records redundant except for like "hounds of love" and YMO

oh and that new MBV album

After the zombie apocalypse destroys the power grid, I'll still be rocking my CDs via a portable CD player and triple A batteries.

u enjoy

yeah fuck paying musicians lmao

at least half of my record collection is stuff i'd like to get rid of. too lazy, though. need to buy lp mailers.

there will always be records i want, that's for sure. CDs too.

I still buy CDs, about 25-30 a year, on average. Every year I think, "this is going to be the last year artists' bother releasing the CD versions of their albums", but every year I'm wrong. I hope to be wrong many years hence forth.

Lately I have space, and a stereo in a living room, and an impulse to start buying music more like I used to. But if record collections have a problem these days, it's partly an existential one: what are they FOR? Every rubric for purchasing things winds up feeling slightly silly. Buying copies of any new music I enjoy feels sensible but also bunkerish and no-fun, like I'm just symbolically backing up my streaming habits in case the internet explodes. (A hard drive would do this much better, and when it comes to supporting new acts it often feels less weird to buy their t-shirts and merch than token vinyl copies.) Picking up things I already care about that aren't accessible online only goes so far. The most tempting thing, weirdly, has been a preservationist approach — collecting from a very specific historical niche I care about, so I'll have a little archive of it when I'm elderly and nobody cares about keeping it around online — but I always wind up deep in Discogs realizing I'm just not a collector type; as soon as something costs twice as much as a record normally would, I'm probably done.

It's strange: I have the *desire* to get things. The cultural habit is still somewhere in there, and I enjoy it, and I feel good about putting money into record stores and small labels. It's just hard to articulate reasoning for this, beyond cultural muscle memory — and the most fun version of it is, for me (i.e., building a miniature vinyl museum of 1984-1996 indie rock for my kids to be confused by when I die), is totally backward-looking and supports a collector-ish ecosystem, not a new-music one. Any time I think about this for more than a few minutes — or spot a 7-inch on sale for $150 — it's hard not to feel like I should just donate anything in my wallet to a food bank and listen to whatever my phone tells me to.

what are they FOR

compensating musicians

seems weird to assume everything will be on the internet forever imo

nabisco!!!!!!

it's why i still buy criterion blu-rays despite subscribing to the criterion channel -- i don't assume i'll have constant access to certain films i love, and prefer to not be *allowed* to periodically watch them.

same goes for Spotify of course, i realize someday the other shoe could drop and it'll be gone.

building a miniature vinyl museum of 1984-1996 indie rock for my kids to be confused by when I die

sub "kids" with "nephews" for me, and skew dates and genre a bit, but this hits home

also, yeah, the cloud is ephemeral, I just joined Criterion and bought my first two (Female Trouble and Hedwig)

the whole "on demand" internet/streaming services angle is largely a myth imo - so many things turn out to not actually be available when I want to stream them. The only reliable on demand service is to actually own stuff.

I literally cannot afford to buy more than a couple of records every year

similar to social media in a way -- there are plenty of ppl i'm sure who are relying exclusively on Facebook as the pipeline to others. it's an impossible statistic to track but i wonder how many folks have friends only connected through there, not even knowing their phone number or email address.

oh tons for me, everyone from college except a few (less than 10)

i think that's almost exclusively the case for me w/college and high school folks

Every rubric for purchasing things winds up feeling slightly silly.

Sound quality. It's not even a question for me. Streaming audio (in the way I'm able to stream) sounds crappy, CDs sound great.

(I stream a lot at work, but if I love something, I'll buy it so I can really listen to it.)

ppl naturally drift away and move apart from one another so Facebook is basically a life support system for your dead social ties and it would probably be good to pull the plug in many cases but there's a stigma in doing so of course.

just do it, facebook is a blight on society

If the sole point is to compensate musicians, I'm doing better when I buy merch, or add an extra $5 to the choose-your-own-price field on Bandcamp. And I agree that we're likely to be hit with huge shifts in what's available to stream, but if I were trying to preserve my favorite things that way, I should probably be stocking a massive hard drive with all the random curated playlists I listen to. That impermanence is daunting — the services allow you to get attached to such a breadth of stuff that you couldn't really hope to back it all up physically. Is that really the purpose of a collection, something defensive, a kind of Noah's Ark for when the digital flood comes? Picking the records, two by two, that you can save?

It is probably also kinda relevant that I have almost no time at home to sit and listen to music, making vinyl in particular feel very fetishistic and symbolic. My sustained listening happens on a commuter train. I should also admit that I am kind of hoping ILX will convince me that yeah, building an archive of Simple Machines seven-inches is actually very important preservation work, and 22nd-century historians will thank me for it

no time at home to sit and listen to music

I would simply change my life rather than changing my record-buying habits

personally I've just never cottoned to streaming, it just isn't how I like to engage with music. I want to listen to what I want when I want it and often repeatedly and exhaustively and deeply. A fair chunk is commuter listening but there's also listening at home and road trips etc. For me ownership - whether of MP3s or records - enables all that. I maintain a hard drive/cloud storage and regularly cull my LPs/buy new ones (albeit not nearly as many as I did in my cheap-vinyl + no kids heyday). I dunno at this point I don't foresee ever changing until I have to move into an old folks home or whatever.

the thing about breadth is relevant if that's what you're into - but that's definitely *not* what I'm into. I'm not interested in keeping tabs on "what's new" anymore either (there's too much to even try! also huge chunks of it are awful!)

I like taking deep dives into specific things, and when I get into something I just start acquiring what I really like and hold onto it and develop a relationship w it.

I am probably competing with you for that exact kind of vinyl- late 80s early 90s indie pop... maybe you're the person that scooped up that cheap Cat's Miaow 10" I didn't get in time. Good luck getting that Fat Tulips record that has been sitting on the shelf in Hoboken since October- it's mine now!

I also rarely get around to spinning records; indeed "fetishistic and symbolic", I am invested in the hunt and I love the artifact of the ~vintage~ physical representation of that particular genre of music. With newer vinyl it's mostly artists that CommendNYC stock (experimental/ambient/electronic) and it feels meaningful to support them by acquiring their music in the ideal format. There's something artsy about their choice in cover art and material and inclusions, so feels similar to buying screen prints from illustrators I enjoy.

New indie rock on the other hand feels like novelty. The album art and overall look & feel generally brings to mind an ad in a magazine vs. that DIY assembled labor of love you get from early 90s 45s from the likes of Sarah or early Slumberland etc. So often times that kind of stuff feels more like clutter. Plus the music itself is so readily digital. Maybe cause the production is so clean and modern... just an overall aesthetic that associates with digital consumption in my head?

I think it's fine to have the hobby and to acquire meaningful artifacts as long as you have a real connection to it. It's harder to feel that way about mass produced new stock flooding Urban Outfitters bins.

xposts

"But if record collections have a problem these days, it's partly an existential one: what are they FOR?"

I still avidly buy physical, so for me it comes down to:

1) Surround sound on SACD or Blu-ray. I don't understand why there was little uptake of surround sound among download providers. Even when a label offers surround sound on the physical release, generally the only download format they offer is two-channel stereo.

2) Liner notes. Some labels are now offering their booklets for download (even without purchasing the audio files), but not all. There are a lot of insightful commentaries on musical pieces that are found only on the actual printed paper, nowhere on the internet.

3) The artwork, of course, for which I buy the vinyl release and I torrent FLACs to get the actual music. The vinyl serves for interior decoration, I line my hallway with vinyl releases, there are some easy DIY projects on the web for doing this.

Points one and two are mainly relevant for classical music listeners. Point one will also apply to rock obsessives – it’s great to have certain King Crimson and Pink Floyd releases in surround sound.

i've been much more judicious in what i acquire on vinyl, probably bc over time i've found better resources for determining if a particular pressing or reissue is worth my time. for example the Stereolab reissues in the past year have been incredible, as are the Blue Note Tone Poet/Blue Note 80 reissues. and uh sorry vv much in character here but the U2 reissues/recent releases on vinyl have been actually exceptionally good.

On the flipside there are some bands I enjoy like Pearl Jam who for all their pro vinyl rhapsodizing don’t have especially good pressings

Françoise Hardy’s reissues on light in the attic were fantastic as are her reissues on Parlophone

Anyway I do think it is often a losing and endless game trying to keep up with acquiring vinyl due to budget and space constraints

Evan, yes, that is exactly why collecting that era makes intuitive sense to me — the whole vibe and aesthetic revolved around these sort of scrappy, cherished, labor-of-love documents. There is definitely Cat's Miaow vinyl in my discogs wantlist, but this is what I mean about now being a good collector: I can't justify the price when there are CD comps and, you know, actual needs in the world. (I'm not kidding about pretty much constantly thinking "I could buy this record or give $20 to a food bank.") The people paying $100 for the "Popkiss" 7-inch are in a league I will never be able to compete with.

I still do believe well mastered vinyl on a good turntable is the best.

though, as omar says, there's a lot of shit vinyl being pressed now.

still, the new Purple Mountains for example sounds amazing

all this said, I've recently subscribed to Qobuz, which does 24-bit streaming, from Chromecast audio into a DAC and, dang, it's pretty damn close to really good vinyl, very very very close to the point I wonder if I could tell

Spotify I use walking around on headphones or in the car, but the sound quality is a joke esp after I heard Tidal and (now) Qobuz

that kind of collector mentality I've never gotten into or had the financial resources to even consider engaging in - as long as I own it in some format, that's good enough for me

xps

I’m guessing Spotify still has that audio watermark problem on all UMG stuff?

By the way I've also had anxiety about whether I calibrated my player correctly and/or whether my equipment is in good shape (especially the health of the needle), and I don't have a ton of confidence in my speakers and amp, so I worry the format as a means of "better audio quality" isn't really relevant to me until I make some adjustments and necessary upgrades. There's a lot of guilt and shame when the spotify stream of an album sounds crisper than playing the vinyl (which degrades slightly every time it's played).

I don’t really want to hook my laptop up to my stereo every time I want to listen to something. I don’t really want to buy some internet-of-things bullshit

the whole vinyl degrades with each play is massively overstated, it was definitely a thing with old ceramic needles, but modern needles are so much better designed

I have a bunch of records that were pressed in the 50s that sound great

the degradation of vinyl isn’t noticeable useless you’re playing it hundreds of times on a lousy needle

xp

fuck aligning a cartridge forever tho!

I am so sad that the Needle Doctor closed, they would install a cartridge you bought in store 😭😭😭

I spend too much money on vinyl but I've never been tempted to pay $100 for Sarah singles or anything like that. In 2015 I tried to buy a Field Mice 10" for $45 and they accidentally sent me the Emma's House single. I said screw it and kept it. I do love Emma's House. Now that single has climbed up to an average price of $85+, and I'm mystified by everything in my collection that has spiked because I never spend that kind of money on a single item. Always wonder how the person in the "Highest" category in the statistics section feels especially when the For Sale section has listings coming in below the median value.

OK good to keep that in mind on the needle degrading front, thanks. Plus I did realign my cartridge so that part of it I feel good about right now. The speakers and amp though... not so sure.

xposts

I am so sad that the Needle Doctor closed, they would install a cartridge you bought in store 😭😭😭

fuck aligning a cartridge forever tho!

― brimstead

high five, my man

The people paying $100 for the "Popkiss" 7-inch are in a league I will never be able to compete with.

― ን (nabisco), Thursday, March 5, 2020 1:54 PM (forty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Meant to paste this with my response about Field Mice and big spenders

super sympathetic to all the reservations about physical media and weird justifications i make to continue with what is mostly just a deeply ingrained consumer reflex

best reason for me is that being offline is cool and healthy

sometimes it's nice to know your listening isn't being tracked and figured into an algorithm for a huge tech company

something defensive, a kind of Noah's Ark for when the digital flood comes? Picking the records, two by two, that you can save?

I mean, for me, actually, yeah! People have been thinking "this is how the music industry is always gonna be" since the days of Edison. Incredible to me that people automatically assume the digital/streaming ecosystem is going to remain intact & the same over the next 10 years or even 5. The earth might not get hit with a solar flare or EMP shockwave that obliterates the internet, but just because record companies, tech companies, and ISPs have created favorable conditions for most people to affordably consume a variety of music via streaming doesnt mean that those conditions are automatically set in stone.

a good friend of mine recently told me his tweeters had blown as everything sounded really shit.
he only ever listens to his vinyl.
he is not that tech savvy, and so i was concerned that the issue was not his speakers.
after a lot of emails back and forth, we decided to test this out.
i sent him a specific album in 320 that i knew would test this out.
after talking him through dropping the files onto a cd-r (yeah yeah), word came back that after he found a cd player in his attic, the album sounded absolutely fantastic, and clearly there was nothing wrong with the speakers.
record players are a lot of work.
i went through a phase of stressing re the degradation of my vinyl that i played as a teenager as i rarely changed my needle (had no knowledge of such things when i was 15).
and i was right to stress.
a lot of it sounds like shit when i put it on now.
thankfully most of the stuff i really loved i have replaced with their silver disc equivalents.

friend from back home has a $22k turntable+amps+speakers setup. obv sounds good but how he and my other bff listen to stuff sucks the joy out of it imo.
major drawbacks are:
the space where the speakers sound amazing is really tiny, basically only the middle seat on the couch. and if you're off the couch, it sounds v pedestrian.
not only can you only listen to stuff he has on vinyl, but he only buys the highest quality pressings. which means there's a lot of great albums we'd all want to listen to on that setup but can't.

I’m actually surprised by how durable my old vinyl has proved to be - many of my LPs sound fantastic after multiple teenage plays on a shitty all-in-one system with a coin taped to the headshell

(some have needed a real good clean though... and I’ve also read that a finer stylus profile is better at digging past lightly trashed grooves and accessing the music)

but yeah some records that I thought were completely (sonically) fucked in the 80s/90s have come up really nice on a decent system in 2020

totally agree that not having your listening fed into “the algorithm” is a big part of the appeal, so too the related feeling of not having your leisure activity tracked by marketing teams (and worse)

what do you use to clean ? trying to work out whether its worth buying a fancy cleaner

what's all this about aligning needles? mine just screws the cartridge into the arm and is held in place by, uh, magnets I think

a lot of my old records still sound awesome. I don't think they necessarily sound better than digital but they do sound...different

Bandcamp's lossless download options and lack of an algorithm is a feature not a bug.

very otm, big Bandcamp fan here

building a miniature vinyl museum of 1984-1996 indie rock for my kids to be confused by when I die

Thank you so much for articulating my hobby, Nabisco.

yeah also big bandcamp user, they definitely massage the physical media glands with the way their UI works and presents “your collection”

what do you use to clean ?

for cheap and cheerful second-hand purchases I use an old discwasher brush (not the new one which sucks) and some home brew fluid

for anything “special” I use this stuff called record revirginiser which is like a fancy version of the old wood glue method - it takes a bit of use to master but I’ve had records that have been cleaned in a proper RCM that still crackled and popped, and this stuff has improved them outta sight - I guess it works out to a couple of bucks a record but for that’s worth it to have my old copy of Low sounding pretty good

what's all this about aligning needles? mine just screws the cartridge into the arm and is held in place by, uh, magnets I think

I'm kind of tired of collecting physical music. I have fucking way too many records and CDs. My record player is fucked and getting it fixed will cost a lot. I bought a Linn lp12 off eBay with a work bonus years ago and it did me well but now there's a loose connection in the tone arm and I just can't be fucked with it. What's the point of it all. I guess my wife dying taught me that. She loved collecting things. Postcards, Victorian photos, music. Now what do I do with it. It's just stuff. everywhere.

I bought a record tonight! Why? I guess because I thought the band was cool

Plus vinyl these days mostly sucks shit. So many shite pressings