The Death of the Record 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.

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.