The Death of the Record Collection

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