Advice Sought on Disposing of Recordings

[Mystery]

I’m posting this under a new user name. I’m a ‘regular’ here, but interested in disassociating myself from myself…if you know what I mean. I’ve thought about posting this on some day OTHER than the one where Allen Lowe started the “Depressing…” thread, but it’s time for me to do it. Besides, it isn’t really depressing; consider this ‘surplus stuff’/’non-financial motivation’.

In summary, I’ve grown old enough, and my collection large enough that I no longer have any reason to keep it all. I’ve never sold or given anything away before (aside from a few items to friends), so I find myself in need of some guidance on a few, fundamental questions. Feel free to post here, or send me a PM.

Background:

• I have no potential heirs or friends who would be interested in my recorded music after I depart. For those I leave behind, the music would be mostly burden. They have no idea of how to dispose of it and might feel bad taking it all to the refuse site, knowing how much of my life was spent gathering it.

• My collection is a mix of CDs and LPs, with about 10% “other” – 78s, 45s, etc. The non-jazz portion is not as troubling to deal with. The jazz stuff is about half out-of-print/hard-to-find, and half common or of such a condition as to be limited desirability among collectors. (No jewel boxes for the LPs.)

• I like money, but don’t desperately need it. I’d be up for giving away part of my collection to a worthy party: one who would foster the growth of the jazz community.

• I’m not ready to part with everything; I ain’t dead yet, so I’m figuring on disposing of, say, 7500 items out of about 11000.

Where I could use guidance:

Psychological: How do I get over a lifelong practice of keeping it all? How do I learn to say goodbye to even those limited-interest items? I wouldn’t consider myself a pack rat; music’s all I keep. But this is a new thing for me.

Actual Disposal: Bulk sale? Item-by-item? Something in-between? eBay auction(s)? Amazon/Half set-price sale? Local record store, provided I can find one? As noted above, I’m not averse to making a buck, but I don’t want to spend heaps of time managing sales and dealing with disgruntled buyers – buyers with unrealistic expectations.

Donations: From what I’ve heard conjecturally, if I’m interested in supporting a non-profit or educational facility, I’d be better off selling, then donating the money. Sounds like a lot of work.

Any thoughts GENUINELY appreciated.

[Mystery]

Quick addition on motivation:

It pains me to think that, if I don't put my recordings into the hands of people who want them, they're never going to find their way into such hands after I'm gone.

[papsrus]

This really is no small problem -- passing on or disbursing collections of music in a way that ensures people will enjoy what we've enjoyed. Some folks might say, "As long as I enjoyed it, I don't care." But we do spend a great deal of time involved in music and it is highly personal, more-so than, say, books, I think.

Anyways, selling collections piecemeal to board members or on eBay or amazon seems to be the best way to ensure that it will be enjoyed. Giving it away seems much less certain. You don't know what will happen to it then.

[Hot Ptah]

"Some call me Mister Ra

Some call me Mister Ree

You can call me Mr. Mystery"

I have bought a lot of jazz CDs and LPs from three different people who were in your position and disposed of their large collections on ebay in the past few years. If you PM me, I will tell you how to email them. My impression is that they found it to be a lot of work, but that they enjoyed aspects of it. They would probably not mind discussing their experiences with you.

I have thought about what I would do with my collection as well, when I am a bit older, and I made some informal inquiries. I found that schools at all levels, and libraries, don't want it. Charities don't want it. No one wants it!

Used music store owners have told me that when a large collection comes to them, the "game" is to get the owner, or if the owner is dead, the family, to pay THEM, the music store, to cart it away from their property. The music stores try to pay nothing for the collection, or a pittance at most.

It's not an easy situation. I have thought that this was a business opportunity for someone on this board, to set up a business to sell other member's collections when they died or just wanted to sell them.

Also, I wonder how many used music stores have been initially established to sell off one large collection. That is another option, with its own headaches, I am sure.

Edited July 23, 2008 by Hot Ptah

[.:.impossible]

Chances are I don't have any of the albums you are looking to get rid of, and would more than likely enjoy them as much or more than you did... I would be willing to pay $x for a stack of LPs, chosen at random by you.

I know this doesn't solve your problem, but I'd be glad to help!

[AndrewHill]

This is probably not the best solution, but I've seen Half Price Books take in large cd/lp collections in the past, not nearly as large as yours but probably near a 1000 units or so. My understanding is that they will pay at least a $1 a cd, and although that's not very good for a cd or two, it can add up if its a collection of cd's in the 1000's. And the cd's you sell will most likely find their way to the fans of this music who search high and low in used bins for jazz.

[ejp626]

This is probably not the best solution, but I've seen Half Price Books take in large cd/lp collections in the past, not nearly as large as yours but probably near a 1000 units or so. My understanding is that they will pay at least a $1 a cd, and although that's not very good for a cd or two, it can add up if its a collection of cd's in the 1000's. And the cd's you sell will most likely find their way to the fans of this music who search high and low in used bins for jazz.

There is a real time/convenience factor as well. Early on in my various sales, I might sell 10-15 to the same person, but lately it is down to 4-5. While your collection is surely more interesting than mine, you are still likely to be making on the order of 500-1000 separate transactions. That's a lot of trips to the post office.

[Christiern]

When I sold 18000 LPs to my old (now departed) friend, Karl Knudsen, it was to make room for the CD--which were coming in daily. I knew that many of the LPs would eventually be replaced by CDs, but I decided to hold onto about 300 albums--the ones I had either produced or written notes for, and those containing music I might not want to take a hiatus from.

It worked, I strongly urge that you hold onto favorites--we all have a few of those.

I also would make sure that the place you choose to give away your records is--if not with a private person--one where young people can have access to them. Huge collections are often not generally accessible, so much that is donated to them ends up collecting dust. Dedicated college radio stations are worth looking into.

[medjuck]

Used music store owners have told me that when a large collection comes to them, the "game" is to get the owner, or if the owner is dead, the family, to pay THEM, the music store, to cart it away from their property. The music stores try to pay nothing for the collection, or a pittance at most.

I was under the impression that places like Atomic Records in Burbank, and presumably our friends at Dusty Groves, still pay for collections.

[JSngry]

If selling does not appeal, consider donating to a library, musical school, or community arts center if you can find one that actually wants the collection. It's a tax break for you, and a chance to put the music into "greater circulation".

[Mystery]

Anyone have any idea whether libraries (etc.) still want additional LPs?

And to Hot Ptah - glad you picked up on the Sun Ra reference. I was pretty sure someone would.

Thanks to all who've responded. Good things to think about.

[Ted O'Reilly]

The 'better' your collection, the more 'social value' you'd put on it, you would wish it to go to the widest possible audience: an archive, a library, a college.

Unfortunately, they're understaffed, and given their standards/needs, would want it all documented and properly annotated before accepting it into their collections. I don't know about your collection, but none of that has been done to MY discs, tapes, LPs, books and ephemera. Universities etc. aren't likely to take it off my hands, however much they might like to have it. They simply don't have the people to safeguard it, and make it widely usable and available.

I have several close friends with good, large collections facing the same concern. The local 'jazz' stations are NOT a destination given its programming, which ignores the bulk of these collectors' interests. And knowing how too many of those operations work, within a month or two the CDs would end up being stolen from the library by someone anyway.

[kh1958]

Used music store owners have told me that when a large collection comes to them, the "game" is to get the owner, or if the owner is dead, the family, to pay THEM, the music store, to cart it away from their property. The music stores try to pay nothing for the collection, or a pittance at most.

I was under the impression that places like Atomic Records in Burbank, and presumably our friends at Dusty Groves, still pay for collections.

The Jazz Record Center and Academy in New York as well.

[Noj]

I'd also be happy to help out in the way .:.impossible describes.

[Dave James]

I used to DJ at KMHD, a local station affiliated with the broadcasting school at Mt. Hood Community College. I've thought that at some point, donating a lot of what I have to them would be a good thing to do. At least this would give the music a fair chance of actually being heard, as opposed to just sitting on a shelf somewhere. What I would have to overcome is the fact that I left the station over a matter of what I'll call artistic integrity (playlist management) that has left me still a bit bitter even after all these years. If the guy I tangled with wasn't still there, this wouldn't be an issue, but he is. Nonetheless, the idea of getting your recordings into hands that will put them to active use is the point I'm trying to make.

Up over and out.

[papsrus]

OK, just thinking out loud (well, sorta) ... what if Organissimo or some related entity were established to take care of this very problem. It would pay a lump sum for shipments of CDs and/or records in bulk for resale in any way it sees fit (to board members, through amazon, eBay, an independent online reseller, whatever). The money generated would be used to establish a slush fund to take care of board members who are having a temporary rough time financially. Then these board members wouldn't have to sell their CD and record collections.

(sort of a self-defeating solution, but ... I'm just spit-ballin' ...)

Course, the slush fund could also fund the band, Christmas parties, world tours, whatever ...

[JSngry]

Or if you have a favorite philanthropic concern, you can sell the collection to some Japanese collector who is able & willing to shell out mad buckage for the lot, and then donate the proceedings thusly.

[Chuck Nessa]

Who killed Chauncey?

[.:.impossible]

*asshat* i love it.

[BeBop]

Used music store owners have told me that when a large collection comes to them, the "game" is to get the owner, or if the owner is dead, the family, to pay THEM, the music store, to cart it away from their property. The music stores try to pay nothing for the collection, or a pittance at most.

I was under the impression that places like Atomic Records in Burbank, and presumably our friends at Dusty Groves, still pay for collections.

The Jazz Record Center and Academy in New York as well.

Yes, Fred Cohen at JRC.

[kh1958]

This is probably not the best solution, but I've seen Half Price Books take in large cd/lp collections in the past, not nearly as large as yours but probably near a 1000 units or so. My understanding is that they will pay at least a $1 a cd, and although that's not very good for a cd or two, it can add up if its a collection of cd's in the 1000's. And the cd's you sell will most likely find their way to the fans of this music who search high and low in used bins for jazz.

I suggest the HPB on Northwest Highway in Dallas, but only if you stop at my house before going there.

Actually, I suspect HPB pays among the lowest prices obtainable.

[JSngry]

Tejas, would you still endorse Recycled in Denton?

No dealings other than as a retail customer. Their vinyl prices seem high, though, and in my experience, that does not translate to a linearly equivalent buy price.

Truthfully, I've told LTB to "sell to Japan, no cherrypicking allowed" when I go, if that's still a viable market.

[Patrick]

I had the thought, mentioned above, of donating to a university library. The local public library, quite frankly, probably isn't interested. The vinyl would quickly deteriorate there. Valuable stuff likely would get ripped off, etc.. Don't know how you'd feel about donating to a research university. Would it just be a mausoleum of sorts?

One possibility, offered only as illustration, would be the Chicago Jazz Archive at the University of Chicago. Long ago, as a student there, I listened to some late Ben Webster for a jazz course taught by Richard Wang. I have no insider's knowledge, but given that it's a jazz archive and it's at a university, there is some reason to be hopeful that they know what they want/have, and will tell you if they're interested in any part of your accumulated recordings. The collections on the link appear to be artifacts and/or sheet music, but at least one mentions recordings.

[Hot Ptah]

Here is a 2004 newspaper article about what happened when a collector donated his 15,000 jazz albums to the University of Kansas. Only one student came to listen to any of the records in two years, and funding ran out for any staff to work with the collection. I do not know what happened to it after 2004.

Dick Wright, who donated the collection, was a well known, and much liked figure at jazz events in Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City for many years:

KU’s jazz archive struggles to survive

The late Dick Wright’s rare collection seeks funds, leadership to stay viable

January 16, 2004

For the past two years, Josh Powers has been living every hip-hop producer's dream.

As the archivist for the Richard F. Wright jazz archive at Kansas University, Powers has unlimited access to thousands of the most rare and valuable jazz recordings in existence. From legends like Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington to lesser-known greats such as Red Nichols and Clifford Jordan, the archive is a jazz-lover's El Dorado; it's a wonderland of infinite discovery stocked with 33- and 78-rpm gold.

For Powers, a local producer who recently released a record under the name "Scenebooster SoundSystem," working at the archive comes with a particularly enticing benefit: being able to sample the records to use in his beats.

"Having access to this collection puts me on par with millionaire record producers in New York City," said Powers, who spends 25 hours a week in the jazz archive cataloguing its 20,000-plus recordings. "A huge portion of (my record) came out of this archive."

Any day now, Powers will lose his job. His boss -- Roberta Freund Schwartz -- will tell him that he will no longer be receiving a paycheck. He will still be welcome to come and use the archive, but he will no longer make $10 an hour to look after it.

"Unfortunately, our endowment money has run out," said Schwartz, an assistant professor of historical musicology who has managed the archive since its namesake -- KU jazz history professor Wright -- passed away in 1999. "At this point we're pretty much running on goodwill."

Barring a last-minute donation from a jazz-loving Rockefeller, KU's Archive of Recorded Sound -- which also includes the James Seaver Opera Archive -- will be hibernating for a while. The $54,000 donated by KU alumni Paul and Maurine Adams in 1998 to keep the archive running is all but gone, having been spent on shelving, rice-paper lined polysleeves, listening equipment and archivists' salaries. Without money to pay a full-time staff member, the archive will be available only by appointment. All efforts to build an online database of its contents will be put on hold, leaving 95 percent of the collection's holdings uncatalogued (according to Schwartz's estimate).

"It's very, very hard because I know what a great treasure this is," Schwartz said. "To generalize, we are now looking for funds."

All that jazz

Roberta Freund Schwartz, assistant professor of historical musicology and manager of KU's Archive of Recorded Sound, shelves a priceless opera recording. Inset at right shows a closeup of one of the unusual albums in the collection that includes detailed artwork on the disc itself.

Though the archive is housed in KU's Department of Music and Dance, it has never actually received funding from the music school, instead relying on independent donations and grants.

The collection traces its history back to 1979, when the KU Libraries purchased Seaver's opera collection and a complete discography of jazz artist Red Nichols. With the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, librarian Ellen Johnson oversaw the cataloguing and growth of the collection from 1983 to 1988. When she retired, the libraries decided not to hire a new custodian for the collection, instead transferring responsibility to the music and dance department.

"It would probably be catalogued by now (had it stayed under the control of the libraries)," Schwartz said.

Wright, who was also known as the host of KANU's "The Jazz Scene," revived interest in the orphaned archive in the early '90s when he donated to it his personal jazz collection of about 15,000 records. Wright also moved his office into the archive and began assisting students with independent study projects and accommodating visits from scholars across the country who came to do research.

It was during this time that the collection experienced its most rapid growth, as Wright's friends and colleagues (such as Chuck Berg and Howard Rittmaster) donated thousands more records.

Shortly after Wright's death in 1999, one of his former students, Brandon Burke, convinced the music department to employ him as a full-time archivist and caretaker of the collection. When Burke began the monumental task of cataloguing the collection, he confronted an "abandoned garage sale" of boxes upon boxes of unorganized records.

"Dick was an amazing historian and really loved spreading the word about his favorite style of music," Burke said. "He was not, however, an archivist, and he was not a librarian."

Burke spearheaded the effort to build an online database of the archive's holdings; a tool that is essential for accommodating graduate students and scholars from across the country. He also worked to bolster the national reputation of the archive by making connections with other archives across the country and National Public Radio.

Burke, who now works as an engineer at an audio digitization lab at the University of Texas, said he was continually disappointed by a lack of student interest in the archive. During his two years working in the archive, Burke said he only remembers one student who came in to request recordings of pieces he wanted to learn.

"It makes me wonder whether these kids even like the music they're playing," he said. "I mean, how in the world would you not be intrigued to just go in there and look around?"

Jazz out of bounds

One obstacle to attracting student interest in the archive is copyright law, which prevents archivists from making copies of the recordings for patrons to take home.

"Most archives are for scholarly research; they're not for recreational listening," said Deborah Gillaspie, curator of the Chicago Jazz Archive at the University of Chicago. "It's here to be preserved for the next 30 to 50 years, it's not here for someone to come in and say ‘I want to listen to Miles Davis.'"

Students at KU have other options for listening to jazz, but none are as enticing as the Wright archive. The Thomas Gorton Music and Dance Library offers plenty of records from the Thelonius Monks and the Count Basies of the jazz world, but lacks the scope and breadth of the Wright archive.

"We deal with more of the rarities," Schwartz said. "Most of the archive's stuff may not have a wide enough appeal to be held in the main library, but it's just as just as important in a historical sense."

For example, students would have no problem finding Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool" at the main library, but they'd have to come to the archive to find "Blue Moods," a rare recording with Charles Mingus on bass that sells for hundreds of dollars on eBay.

Dan Gailey, KU's director of jazz studies since 1990, says his students will be losing a valuable resource if the archive is not open to them on a regular basis.

"I think they would even use it more if it was better staffed," he said, adding that Powers could not assist with independent study projects since he was not a member of faculty. "When Dick was alive there were students up there all the time."

Gailey, who single-handedly runs the jazz program and teaches all of its classes, admitted that the archive was not high on the list of priorities in an already tight budget.

"Right now the reality of the situation is that if it was going to be state money (used to hire a full-time archivist) it would mean somebody else losing their job," he said. "So the only way that this is going to get fixed, at least in the near term, is either private money or an additional grant."

Nobody's child

Even without a caretaker, the collection will at least stay intact with a few precautions, Burke said.

"As long as they maintain humidity levels that are respectable and light levels that are respectable and air quality levels and temperature and stuff that place will pretty much take care of itself," Burke said.

Schwartz said she is working on applying for another NEH grant, a long process which involves precise accounting of what the money would be used for.

"We may have to try for 10 years, but I'm going to be here," she said. "And these records aren't going anywhere, either."

[Hot Ptah]

This is probably not the best solution, but I've seen Half Price Books take in large cd/lp collections in the past, not nearly as large as yours but probably near a 1000 units or so. My understanding is that they will pay at least a $1 a cd, and although that's not very good for a cd or two, it can add up if its a collection of cd's in the 1000's. And the cd's you sell will most likely find their way to the fans of this music who search high and low in used bins for jazz.

I took about 100 books to Half Price Books, mostly hard cover, all in very good to excellent condition, and was offered $5.00 for all of them. I was told that as they were "not recently published", that they were pretty much worthless. I have not taken any records or CDs to Half Price Books, because the experience of lugging all of the books back to my car soured me on trying to sell anything there.