The Death of the Record Collection

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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.