For Those of You with Large LP Collections/Accumulations...

[Ken Dryden]

I will have to admit it is a nice perk to get promo copies sent to me due to writing about jazz and broadcasting a radio show, but I still spend a significant amount every year.

I am thinking about thinning out some things that I may be unlikely to return to in the future, but I need to start setting time aside each week to do that.

If I ever overrun the current music library, my wife has informed me that shelves of music elsewhere in the house are not acceptable. There is no room to add any more shelving in my library, besides, the added weight, since it is over the garage, might not be a great idea.

[Teasing the Korean]

On 10/19/2024 at 5:19 PM, HutchFan said:

I bought most of the LPs when vinyl was very inexpensive and CDs were dominant in the marketplace.  It used to be super-easy to find amazing deals on vinyl.

More recently -- now that my kids are grown -- I've been buying more new vinyl, particularly if it's not available in other formats.  But I still prefer finding deals on used items, if possible.  So I'm still buying plenty of CDs, mostly used but occasionally new, as well as LPs.

It's (still!) strange to see how LPs are now more expensive and CDs are so cheap.  Everything is turned on its head! 

Yeah, this is where we've been.  I was buying vinyl from the time I was a toddler, but we brought home most of what we have now between the 1990s and about 2008 or so.  Since then, I generally shifted away from vinyl, as cheap second-hands stuff dried up around here, and new vinyl usually costs more than I'm willing to pay.  And I've bought more CDs than vinyl since about 2008 or so, because the prices were plummeting.

[Rabshakeh]

As a man whose shelving space limits his collection to 400 records this discussion really hurts...

[soulpope]

17 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

As a man whose shelving space limits his collection to 400 records this discussion really hurts...

Less can be more ....

[clifford_thornton]

On 9/1/2024 at 7:35 PM, Teasing the Korean said:

Baltimore and Ohio make turntables?  

Since you're in Santa Fe, why not a ATSF turntable?  

Good one/bad one 😆

I am getting increasingly tired of having all this stuff.

didn't start buying LPs until college in the 1990s, mostly in the punk/indie realm, and began more actively collecting when I got interested in jazz as a college radio DJ midway through undergrad. Varying levels of being able to afford/find stuff I wanted, tapping out now at 6600 LPs and about 3500 CDs. No room for much more, and could stand to whittle it down a bit. I don't know that at this point in life I need a sound library in the way that I thought about it for the last 25 years.

[mjazzg]

Yeah, I'm beginning to think about a core collection whittled down from the 2000 LPs, maybe 500? Similar numbers for CDs.

 

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, soulpope said:

Less can be more ....

The nice bit is that I get to make sure that I really do listen to all the records once every couple of months. 

The not nice bit is the obvious one. 

[clifford_thornton]

I mean, this kind of dovetails with another recent thread, the subject being what to do (or what to tell others to do) with all this crap when you are no longer alive. Definitely don't want to have it all buried in my tomb. I would, however, be all right having a sarcophagus of my cat next to mine. We could enjoy the afterlife.

[JSngry]

3 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

As a man whose shelving space limits his collection to 400 records this discussion really hurts...

You are an ideal candidate for a few 50 bajillion gigaterriobyte external hard drives. You can accumulate a bigger collection than any of us at no cost of clutterspace.

Plus, you don't have to listen to any of it!!! Guilt-free!!!

[Rabshakeh]

17 minutes ago, JSngry said:

You are an ideal candidate for a few 50 bajillion gigaterriobyte external hard drives. You can accumulate a bigger collection than any of us at no cost of clutterspace.

Plus, you don't have to listen to any of it!!! Guilt-free!!!

I have a massive hard drive of music too. I ripped all my CDs before offloading them.  I never ever listen to it. 

[JSngry]

Having is the point. Listening is indulgence.

[rostasi]

I love running the whole big collection on shuffle nearly all of the time in the house. It's like having your own, very personalized, radio station - plus, tunes "come up" and I'll drop them in a special playlist so that it becomes part of (or sometimes wholly) one of the weekly shows. A single tune might come up that becomes the seed for a full two hour show. I'll completely stop what I'm doing - from relaxing reading to actively cleaning house - if what's playing is compelling enough.

Edited October 22, 2024 by rostasi

[mjzee]

14 minutes ago, rostasi said:

I love running the whole big collection on shuffle nearly all of the time in the house. It's like having your own, very personalized, radio station - plus, tunes "come up" and I'll drop them in a special playlist so that it becomes part of (or sometimes wholly) one of the weekly shows. A single tune might come up that becomes the seed for a full two hour show. I'll completely stop what I'm doing - from relaxing reading to actively cleaning house - if what's playing is compelling enough.

I do something similar.  I can play my entire collection from my iMac on shuffle/random; when in the car, I do it from my iPhone.  I love random, love not having to think about what to play next.  The only exceptions, by and large, are when I play new CDs or LPs.

[Roger Farbey]

On 10/21/2024 at 4:10 PM, Rabshakeh said:

As a man whose shelving space limits his collection to 400 records this discussion really hurts...

Yeh, same for me (<500) so only a "small" collection.

[clifford_thornton]

Getting some new shelves built after an accident resulted in a heavy object torpedoing into the leading edge of a pile of records stacked on the floor, taking chunks out of a couple box set covers. I really need to get control over this stuff and stop accumulating more than I have room for. As Sabir Mateen once titled a tune, "addiction ain't fiction" !

[HutchFan]

22 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said:

Getting some new shelves built after an accident resulted in a heavy object torpedoing into the leading edge of a pile of records stacked on the floor, taking chunks out of a couple box set covers.

Ooooof.  That's a bummer.  Sorry to hear that, Clifford.

 

23 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said:

I really need to get control over this stuff and stop accumulating more than I have room for. As Sabir Mateen once titled a tune, "addiction ain't fiction" !

So true!

 

[clifford_thornton]

yeah, at least the box sets are replaceable. Much better than the line of rarities next to it (which have all been moved).

[mjazzg]

Why is the double floor pile always there? It never leaves no matter how many I file.

Glad it wasn't the rarities but any kind of damage is a pain

Edited November 21, 2024 by mjazzg

[Brad]

I have about 2,000 CDs and probably 300-400 LPs. I have almost reached my room capacity for CDs.  I have sold some and will probably sell some more. I reached my LP capacity awhile ago and have limited shelving capacity. I will probably try to sell some to the local store in town and probably list some on eBay. 

[Teasing the Korean]

On 11/21/2024 at 1:38 PM, mjazzg said:

Why is the double floor pile always there? It never leaves no matter how many I file..m

😹😹😹

[Kurt Anderson]

I blame it all on Eric Dolphy in Berlin (Inner City).   I had been collecting rock records since I was a teenager when, as a freshly minted college grad,  I ran across that Eric Dolphy record in a $1.99 bargain bin.   Within months I'd sold or traded most of my rock records to finance my decades-long exploration of jazz.  I'm now 67,  and just as thrilled to eavesdrop on the process of creation as I ever was.    

I likely now have well over 5,000 jazz records, and while the pace of acquisition has slowed,  I still get that same kick out of discovering new sessions and new voices.   

[Ken Dryden]

5 hours ago, Kurt Anderson said:

I blame it all on Eric Dolphy in Berlin (Inner City).   I had been collecting rock records since I was a teenager when, as a freshly minted college grad,  I ran across that Eric Dolphy record in a $1.99 bargain bin.   Within months I'd sold or traded most of my rock records to finance my decades-long exploration of jazz.  I'm now 67,  and just as thrilled to eavesdrop on the process of creation as I ever was.    

I likely now have well over 5,000 jazz records, and while the pace of acquisition has slowed,  I still get that same kick out of discovering new sessions and new voices.   

I was one of those who actually got into Eric Dolphy before John Coltrane, Charles Mingus and a few others. Thanks to Frank Zappa for his "Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue," which peaked my interest in checking him out. I think Last Date and Outward Bound were my first two LPs.

On 11/24/2024 at 10:58 AM, Teasing the Korean said:

😹😹😹

It's like the CD stacks on the floor or middle shelves, by the time I have shifted all the new acquisitions that I've heard in alphabetical order, they seem to pile up. By the time I get to Bob Zurke, the stacks approach 300-400 typically. I may have to hire a part time library assistant to help with filing.

 

[Rabshakeh]

3 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

I was one of those who actually got into Eric Dolphy before John Coltrane, Charles Mingus and a few others. Thanks to Frank Zappa for his "Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue," which peaked my interest in checking him out.

I was in that crowd too. Big teenaged Zappa fan so Eric Dolphy was always a subject of interest.

[Pim]

I have a pretty modest collection with around 800 cd's and almost 600 LP's. I think I sold around 300 cd's and about 100 LP's in the past 3 years as I became more selective in what to buy and what not to buy. I used to go to a cd/record fair and i took home 30 cd's or even more as they were only 5 euros a piece. But I found that I only listened more than once to two or three cd's. The rest was okay but was mainly taking up space. I now use Spotify, SoulSeek and YouTube to try records out. From there I make a selection what I want to hear again. If it clicks the second and third time, it ends up on my Discogs wantlist. That's what I want to buy. There are now 48 items on that listen, half of them cd and half of them LP. I don't do impulse buys anymore. Dissapointed too many times and selling them is mostly a money losing game. 

I think I have room for another 100 cd's. That's probably enough for the rest of my life. Unfortunately I am reaching the maximum capacity of my LP shelves. Probably room for ten more or something like that. I am saving up money the coming two years for a beautiful new LP closet. That's going to give space to another 500 and that's probably the maximum I could keep in my music listening room. The ridiculously thick LP sleeves in some of the current series like the Tone Poets and the Verve AS series are pretty annoying. They are beautifilly done of course but take up as much space as 2 and sometimes even 3 regular LP's....