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How do you prioritize your music purchases?


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I apologize if this type of topic has come up before (I tried searching and didn't find anything).

My question is this:

CDs are arguably on the way out. Maybe they'll still be the dominant form of music in 5 or 10 years, but I think the trend is clear. Much of the Fantasy catalog is OOP, and the recent Blue Note deletion thread bodes ill for that label's reissues. Obviously, used CDs will still be available but probably at increasingly inflated prices. My income is limited (although you'd never know based on my irresponsible purchases), so I'm currently debating on whether to snag up obscure Fantasy titles while they're still relatively cheap, deleted BN titles, cheap Classics, etc. The Andorran labels and their ilk will undoubtedly reissue some stuff, but even those may not be around forever.

How do you prioritize your purchases? Do you just buy what you want to listen to most - probably the most "honorable" way of going about it - or do you buy more...strategically, for want of a better word?

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For CD purchases, I give preference to CDs by artists I have little or none of, while with vinyl purchases, I prioritize albums that have never been on CD, with those albums released on small labels occupying the very top of that list.

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I buy new releases by people I like (or people I think I might like based on reviews, recommendations etc) as they come out; other than that, it's all quite random. I'll hit a phase of interest in a particular performer or genre and pick up things there, again based on recommendations here, in Penguin, AMG and elsewhere. Seeing a good live performance always has an influence, as does a radio or TV documentary.

As I mainly buy downloads I don't have the anxieties of things going OOP. They might get withdrawn at a future date but then again we all might get wiped out by the next bird flu.

Edited by Bev Stapleton
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This might be controversial here but I actually buy mostly on price these days. The reasoning being, the amount of stuff I want on CD is still absolutely enormous compared to the amount of stuff I have, so anything new that looks reasonably decent and is under $6 or so is worth grabbing. So I don't buy often but when I do it's often a big boatload of stuff that's all simultaneously on sale. Working within that criterion of low-priced CDs, the priorities are loose:

-Labels that rarely go on sale so I should scoop them up lest they never go on sale again. For instance, Tower dumped a bunch of those ECM classic digipacks for $5.98 a couple of years ago, so I bought as many as I could because in general you don't see ECM titles for less than $10 (often $15) anywhere.

-Best-of-genre non-jazz albums. Lots of these to be found these days for very cheap, such as at J&R.

-I have a bunch of random "themes" that I've been collecting, generally re-assembling stuff from radio shows I produced in college. I produced a show on Booker Little, so if I ever see a CD with Little on it that's within the target price range I pull the trigger. Other themes: albums recorded at the Village Vanguard, albums with Carl Perkins on piano.

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Having very recently had to recalibrate my spending on music this is an interesting and current question for me. I was very much in the Head Man school and thoroughly enjoyed buying whatever took my fancy. Now I'm looking to reduce from 10-15 CD/LP purchases/month to may 2 or 3.

In this first month I've bought nothing so far because each time I've seen something it's not shouted 'I'm in the top 3 of your to-buy list'.

But priority's looking like it'll pan out as

1. 2nd hand LP not released on CD at too-reasonable-to-miss price

2. new release CD by an artist I'm intrigued about from reviews or sidemen performances and that I have no or maybe one disc by

3. new release CD by artist I like so much I always buy their new-release

4. CD/LP sold at gig I've enjoyed

5. old release CD/LP that's been brought to my attention by reviews/articles/this board which intrigues but I know nothing else about

6. CD re-release

I've taken to writing out the list of titles that I'd have previously simply purchased and it's very interesting to see how some titles just slip down the list as the initial rush of enthusiam passes

Edited by mjazzg
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I used to focus a lot on reissues because I feared things going OOP or having ridiculous prices if I waited. I abandoned that strategy 4-5 years ago after buying a ludicrous number of Mosaics that I never listened to. I always seemed to buy high and sell low. Sure, I could still make back a decent amount of money, but it just wasn't worth it.

I still have two or three dozen Mosaics gathering dust, a few of which haven't even gotten one CD's worth of attention.

These days, I just buy whatever I want to listen to most at the time. If I find cool stuff at retail (a rarity these days, considering my options), then I'll buy a ton of stuff at once. Otherwise, my spending is more measured and focused on exactly what I want.

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