The Law of Diminishing Returns, and Yer CD Collection

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

The law of diminishing returns is a concept that I remember from undergrad economics -- after you get to a certain point in producing an item, any productivity gains thereafter decrease (i.e., you're now producing an additional 5 widgets/hour as opposed to 10 additional widgets/hour, and if you expend any more energy in producing widgets you'll only produce less than 5 additional widgets/hour). Or, to be colloquial, you "hit the wall."

I think that this concept applies to music and CDs -- that is, after a point it becomes pointless to get any more music in a particular genre, from a particular recording artist, whatever. I mean, how many remixes of certain popsongs, or bootlegs of certain musicians, does a person really need?

― Tad (llamasfur), Thursday, 23 January 2003 04:08 (twenty-three years ago)

then there are those like Ned, who is something of a Stakhanovite wr2 his music collection ... or certain Deadheads, who will risk death to get that ultrarare boot of the Dead playing in Denver on October 7, 1974.

― Tad (llamasfur), Thursday, 23 January 2003 04:09 (twenty-three years ago)

When I started to worry about very expensive Teenage Fanclub CD single special orders coming was when I realized I'd gone too far. Couldn't care less to be a completist now.

― Bryan (Bryan), Thursday, 23 January 2003 04:45 (twenty-three years ago)

I think everybody has to come to terms with the fact that they'll never own EVERYTHING in their own way.
I keep telling myself I'm going to stop buying Kinks albums. I've a really good greatest hits comp, a couple of albums, and the BBC set from 01. But I still look at the albums and say, "Well, Horace Mann, I wonder what that song sounds like?"
And it eats at me until I buy it. Then I listen to it for about two days straight, and then it goes into general population.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Thursday, 23 January 2003 04:52 (twenty-three years ago)

I still have fever dreams about spending the hundreds for that Spectrum/Stereolab split single because it's the ONLY SPECTRUM RELEASE I DON'T HAVE.

― Chris Barrus (xibalba), Thursday, 23 January 2003 04:58 (twenty-three years ago)

then there are those like Ned, who is something of a Stakhanovite wr2 his music collection

Heh heh heh.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 23 January 2003 05:01 (twenty-three years ago)

Let me see, are you saying something along the lines of the more we try to produced music-induced joy for ourselves that soon we will cross the maximum point and the music will not be as joyful?
If, so then I think the limiting factors are time and money. If I had more money I would be able to buy more music and be able to enjoy it with the more time I have.

I think I am at a point now where money is not an issue, but time is. I have so much stuff I would want to give a closer listen to, but I don't have the time/patience.

― A Nairn (moretap), Thursday, 23 January 2003 06:12 (twenty-three years ago)

I guess I tend to get interested in one genre at a time (although not to the exclusion of others, just as my primary focus). I do see diminishing returns after a point. I think it's a combination of my interests changing and of my having zoomed in on exactly what I was hungry for and having consumed most of the stuff that's going to give me exactly that flavor.

But I don't mind hitting the wall -- that's what sends me bouncing off again in the direction of something else.

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Thursday, 23 January 2003 06:37 (twenty-three years ago)

When I was a late teenager, I had some of the same young music junkie preoccupations. I also had to have every bloody single of certain artists, because I needed that b-side track desperately. As I get older I find I want to branch out more musically. I now feed the monkey a completly different way. I am more likely to purchase Comps and Artists I am not familiar with than pick up an artist I have adored for years. There is a unsettling comfort in already knowing that I am going to like the new Autechre or Flaming Lip's album.
I have also exhausted some artists and genres to the point of nausea

― Hayden (Hayden), Thursday, 23 January 2003 09:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"or certain Deadheads, who will risk death to get that ultrarare boot of the Dead playing in Denver on October 7, 1974."

They were much better on October 6th.

I think the whole obsessive desire to consume more music has two main factors - the desire to hear more stuff and the desire to collect. If the latter is stronger then you've got a problem - you might as well be collecting stamps or something.

When I was younger I had that collecting thing going on (it helped that I was into a much narrower range of music than now so I was focussed on just a few artists) but I hit a point where I realised I didn't HAVE to have every single record that David Bowie ever released. It was a combination of buying the 7" and 12" versions of 'This is not America' even though I knew there was absolutely no difference between the music on the two (no extra tracks, no extended versions, nothing) and the fact that 'Never let me down' was so shite I couldn't bring myself to pay money for it.

Now the desire to collect is still a part of it but much more important is the desire to hear more stuff, and in such a range of genres that I don't think it'll ever be exhausted. I've probably got around 80 or 100 jazz albums for instance, but I know I've barely scraped the surface.

As with A Nairn the time thing is my biggest limiting factor but that still hasn't stopped me recently.

― James Ball (James Ball), Thursday, 23 January 2003 09:52 (twenty-three years ago)

I hit the wall about 18 months ago. I feel free now, it's great.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 23 January 2003 10:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I spend more time finding albums from bands I don't know than searching for every frigging CD from one band alone. (Though I thought many times in spending $300 on the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Earphoria” promo…)

― JP Almeida (JP Almeida), Thursday, 23 January 2003 14:03 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm increasingly in a state where silence is all I need to hear for long stretches at a time. It's actually kinda nice.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 23 January 2003 14:18 (twenty-three years ago)

Almost the instant I stopped writing about music as part of my day job (about a year and a half ago), I started looking over my CDs and thinking, "This . . . I'm probably never going to listen to/need this anymore." I am no longer compelled by completism, nor some sense that I'll need every album I have ever owned for "research" purposes, nor that I'll suddenly be called upon to fill in at the local radio station, nor that my credentials as . . . something, I dunno, a music geek will be compromised. For example--and perhaps this speaks most to the topic at hand--I got rid of a lot of buzzed-about CDs full of tiny abstract electronic noises and kept only those CDs of tiny abstract electronic noises I find myself returning to over and over again. Same with free improv. Same with indie-rock. And so on.

In short, now that my investiture in my collection is purely a matter of my own listening pleasure, it's a much more tidy and concentrated affair, and I still have more music than I could easily listen to all the way through under real-life conditions in a year's time. I don't know if I reached the point of dimishing returns, but I definitely discovered that I owned CDs for all sorts reasons unrelated to actually listening to them. (I kept all my vinyl, which survived its own winnowing process years ago.)

That said, not having to listen to popular or semi-popular music for my livelihood, I've spent most of the time after I stopped being a full-time crit obsessing over classical music. I'd never really had the time to pay it full attention, and I more than made up. Oddly enough, I seem to have hit something of a wall there; I'm still hunting down pieces I've heard and liked, and good recordings of same, but my obsession is definitely dwindling to mere interest. I am chagrined to recognize the feeling from past bouts of obsessing over, say, albums of tiny abstract electronic noises. And so it begins again.

― Lee G (Lee G), Thursday, 23 January 2003 15:02 (twenty-three years ago)

I dunno, the great thing about artistry is that you can always get totally socked in the jaw tomorrow by something you never saw coming.

Remember, diminishing returns only applies to purely economic situations. It doesn't apply to utility.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Thursday, 23 January 2003 16:43 (twenty-three years ago)

Precisely why I'm not a fan of box sets and applaud artists who release 40-minute CDs. The rise of the CD has given too many bands an excuse to fill their releases with what should have been outtakes. There's something to be said for brevity.
And whatever happened to the 2:30 pop song?

― Jim M (jmcgaw), Thursday, 23 January 2003 21:59 (twenty-three years ago)

I've never been a completist, preferring to accumlate music that excites me at the moment, but I think there is a saturation point. I'm at the same juncture as A Nairn and James Ball. I have more music than time, but I still feel compelled to pick up an album if it inspires or provokes me somehow.
Recently, and for the first time in my life, I've begun culling the herd, getting rid of the sick and the elderly. I think by reducing my collection to manageable proportions, I'll be able to enjoy music more.
I don't know if anybody else has suffered this, but for a time, I felt obligated to listen to albums in my collection that I no longer had a connection with. It's kind of hard to explain, but it seemed that if it was there, I needed listen to it. The reduction of the collection to my essentials should take care of this sick tendency. I hope.

― Bruce Urquhart (Bruce Urquhart), Thursday, 23 January 2003 22:11 (twenty-three years ago)

There's a gap between still wanting more Willie Nelson/Lee Perry/Fall records and obsessively needing to collect everything. I'm still in camp one despite having huge amounts by them, but far from camp two.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 24 January 2003 21:32 (twenty-three years ago)

Collecting generally isn't my thing, I'd rather listen to the same songs I love over and over and buy something different than buy something that sounds similar to the same songs. Generally two or three albums by one artist will do, then I move on.

― Maria (Maria), Friday, 24 January 2003 22:27 (twenty-three years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.