Retiring from Record Collecting

[innerspaceboy]

I may have posted about this previously as I've been considering it for a long time, but I'm strongly considering retiring from record collecting.

I haven't listened to any new music in 17 years. Every time I pull up a song on YouTube, it's 15-17 years old, and usually dated far earlier but was just uploaded to YouTube 15 years ago when it gained popularity. I've never used a streaming service, and don't see any need to. My library isn't substantial - just over 300,000 recordings, but it's enough to keep me listening for the rest of my short life.

I dug through flea market crates and at record shows for the past 20 years. I lived through that golden age where you could find LPs that sold for $300 for 25 cents in great condition week after week. But those days are long over. Goodwill has put an insane markup on even their garbage records, and most new releases are $45 each. I can't play that game anymore.

The majority of my listening is ~800 of my top artists each with hundreds of albums to their names and there is comfort in that familiarity.

I have a Discogs Wantlist that I've been chipping away at now for the last five years when I first considered retiring.

I do buy any new Underworld or Eno albums that are released, but I've made firm decisions like not ordering Eno's $225 new book, (something I'll surely regret given that I have over 90 of his LPs and over a dozen books written by/about the artist). But those exceptions aside, I'm just not deriving the joy I used to feel collecting.

And I dread the thought of having to move the current collection. I've just about filled all my record shelves with a bit of space to spare, so it seems like a good time to hang it up.

It's just a rich man's game now - most every title you could ever want is available as a pre-order directly from the label, or on Discogs in the condition of your choice. That takes all the fun out of crate digging.

I have a small handful of contemporary classical releases I need to fill essential minimalism holes in my collection, and the owner of Bop Shop in Rochester says he could get those to me from his personal collection any time I feel like a drive to that city.

I just don't feel the compulsion anymore. I'm not in a position to buy presently, (I'm unemployed and am fighting for disability benefits), but once I have an income, I'm thinking about ordering those last 13 grails and then hanging it up.

Does anyone else feel this way in the group? Commiserate with me please.

[Trollheart]

I'm not in a position to comment. Honestly, I collected albums in my youth but only because I liked the artist. I was never into "special editions", box sets or any of the other, to me, shit that pushes prices way way up. I've already fumed over the Pink Floyd boxset of I think Dark Side of the Moon that will set a fan back over 100 Euro. I don't have that kind of money, I never had, and if I had, I would be using it for other purposes. I'm not one of these who proudly displays his record collection to show no gaps in an artist's catalogue, or special rare records no longer available. When I rooted in record bins, it was simply to find something interesting or new, or to plug a gap in an artist's discography cheaply. As long as the album wasn't scratched or warped, I didn't care too much about condition. I've bought albums without covers. I would go into the city with 20 quid and come home with a bag full of albums. Sure, many were shit but you usually got the odd good one if you took a chance on something.

The likes of a book - a book! - that sells for over 200 is to be crazy, and only for those with money to burn. As a fellow unemployed person since Karen passed, I can sympathise with not being able to shell out that kind of money, and where, in the long run, does it get you? Like they say, you can't take it with you, or as my late aunt used to say, no pockets in a habit.

So sure, if you're no longer getting enjoyment out of collecting records, and you have enough to keep you happy, why spend money you don't have? My collection of vinyl albums stands at about 400 or so. I'll never buy vinyl again: it's more expensive now, after it was supposed to have gone out of fashion, than it ever was when I bought records. I don't even buy CDs, can't afford it, so I download all my music and while the quality may not be perfect, it's perfectly listenable for me. It's easily catalogued, found, shuffled and takes up no physical space, so that does for me.

In the end, ISB, it's your decision, your money and your life. I'm sure you have better, and more important things to spend your cash on, and as I always say, when it stops being fun, stop.

[Psy-Fi]

I still have all of my records, going back to when I bought my first album back in 1971. My purchases of vinyl have slowed down to around 6 to 12 LP's a year for the past several years. Now that I'm getting closer to typical retirement age, I'm probably going to stop buying physical copies of music altogether in a few more years and then start selling everything off. I figure it'll be a good idea to try to live a much more minimalist lifestyle in my retirement. Plus, I don't want to leave loads of material possessions behind when I die and end up burdening my family members with an overwhelming amount of things to sort through and have to figure out what to do with all of it.

[innerspaceboy]

@Psy-Fi I've definitely considered the family burden factor. My will includes an email template with a letter summarizing my collection addressed to the owner of an experimental record shop in their city. (I know the owner well.) It also includes a Discogs collection link with an itemized inventory of the more valuable half of my collection with real-time valuation metrics so they can easily assess how much to trade it for.

I want to make things as easy as possible for my family when I pass.

[Lisnaholic]

My attitude to buying albums was similar to Trollheart's, though on a smaller scale probably: when I got bored with listening to my collection, I'd scour the second-hand shops for some new-to-me ones. I was never a completist, or too worried about condition either. As Psy-Fi puts a date to his first album purchase, I'll try to do the same: a s/h copy of the Kinks self-titled debut album, probably in the year of its release: 1964.

My vinyl collection topped out at about the size of two compartments of your record shelves, ISB - something like 300 albums, I think. Where are they all now? I don't know because I left them in an un-secured place in England and they were all stolen, so rather by force of circumstance, I've been pushed into adopting Psy-Fi's commendable attitude: don't leave behind you a pile of stuff that may be priceless gems to you, but may well be a burden to your relatives.

Slightly connected to this topic is one of the few quotes I remember by heart, by Kahlil Gibran: "Beware of comfort, who enters the house as a guest, but soon becomes the master". He apparently wrote that after rejecting an earlier pronouncement: "Beware of collecting vinyl albums, because the listening pleasure they give steadily decreases, from the initial joy of acquistion onwards." 

Edit: last vinyl I bought was in 1993, so the maths is easy : I collected about 10 albums a year for 30 years. Ha! Even I didn't know that before. Thanks, ISB.   

[Trollheart]

I'm the opposite. I want to leave the biggest burden I can for my family to trawl through. I want them to spend the best years of what remains of their lives trying to figure out what of my stuff is worth keeping and what can be donated. I may also slip in a few mousetraps among the collection, just for fun.

Seriously: never really thought about it. I reckon anyone sorting through my stuff will throw away 99 percent of it, and I would not recommend eating the three-year-old packet of biscuits that is still under the bed.*

As for first album bought, I think it may have been ELO's Discovery, probably bought around the time it was released, too, 1979. I don't play albums any more (no turntable) and yet I don't want to get rid of my collection. It's kind of a part of my life now, a link back to my younger days. Probably wouldn't get much for it anyway. I only have a few signed copies and those are by Marillion, so nobody would care. The condition of each album is good, to very good, but certainly not record collector good/ISB good. Anyway, my record shelf is against my bed and helps stop me falling out of bed at night, so I don't want to empty it.

* at time of writing

[innerspaceboy]

Thanks, TH.

As I mentioned I've posted threads about giving up this hobby several times over the last few years, and have purchased fewer and fewer LPs each successive year. (The one exception was the $330 limited edition hand-numbered Complete Obscure Records l Collection vinyl box set copy #605 but that was impossible to pass up.)

The element I keep returning to with these posts is the dilemma of what to do with all that time I used to spend crate digging and what impact that has on my identity after being wholly consumed by the hobby for the two decades of my adult life.

I trawled hobby subreddits, posted detailed queries, and started a thread here that you were all kind enough to engage me on, but I've still not arrived at a solution.

If the autism diagnosis returns as "marked" and the government deems me properly disabled I'll have even more free time on my hands for the considerable future, so this will be even more of a challenge.

I'm thinking that I would devote myself more exhaustively to the arts, cinema, literature, and music. I could archive the many hundreds of Underworld releases that came out in the years after I indexed my collection. I could do the same for Steve Roach, who has been insanely prolific in his output even at his older age.

I could do some more research into copyright law to see if there's any possible chance of navigating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Controlled Digital Lending to officially register my archive as a not-for-profit and make it publicly accessible. (This is extremely unlikely.)

I still struggle every day with how to make it though the day alive. I hope I can start to enjoy these last years of my life before that opportunity is seized from me by mortality.

I crave social interaction, even as an introvert, so I've been attending artist conventions and Meetup groups like the Carl Jung group and am meeting some absolutely fantastic people. Perhaps one of these will result in a mutually-rewarding relationship.

I've just learned of two anxiety support groups in my village so I plan to explore those in the weeks ahead.

I just feel so alone.

Thanks for engaging me, everyone.

[Trollheart]

Just an idea, if you're looking to fill up time and also do so productively. Since you say you've never seen many/any movies, or tv series, why not start watching some and then write a journal based on your experiences? I'm sure everyone would be interested to hear your unique, first-time view on classics like Star Wars, Jaws, The Godfather, Citizen Kane etc. You'd have a totally different viewpoint to everyone else, and as well as being able to share your reactions you would get a chance to see some movies/series you really (to quote a cliche) should see before you die.

[innerspaceboy]

That's a valid idea. I'll consider it. Thank you.

It recently occurred to me that I'm so removed from contemporary culture that I would never understand any of the current movies and shows, which are all based on well-established fandom universes that I've never heard of. Everything is a sequel or a hyper-meta-modern self-referential work which would make no sense to someone whose never heard of those... superheroes (for just one example).

[SGR]

@innerspaceboy if you're looking for a TV series that might both be of interest to you and won't waste your time with 5+ seasons for the story to play out, I think you might really enjoy Black Mirror. It's sort of like The Twilight Zone in that each episode (around an hour long each) has its own self-contained story, but these stories are all in the realm of dystopian science fiction - essentially, stories of how grim our futures might be if certain technologies affect and influence them in a variety of terrifying ways. My only caution would be that it's rather depressing - but the first four or five seasons are all some of the best damn TV I've ever seen.

[Lisnaholic]

^ Yep, I'd second SGR's recommendation.

I think that's a great idea for ISB to explore, Trollheart - and don't worry about being out of some contemporary culture loop, ISB. There are so many great stand-alone movies from the past that you don't have to look at super-hero sequels etc etc at all if you don't want too. Personally, I'd start with any film from the Merchant-Ivory team: most of them are adaptations of novels from the 1920s/1930s.

@Trollheart: Did you meet the band Marillion?? Also, how many signed copies of Beefheart albums do you have?

Finally, let's all get real about how our families will regard our prized possessions when we're gone:-

 

[Trollheart]

@innerspaceboy : stay well away from stupid superhero movies. You wouldn't enjoy them and they are not worth your time. I would suggest, if you want, starting a thread where people can give you ideas of movies you'd enjoy on their own merit. As Lisna says, many many movies are totally standalone, and you don't need any information on previous ones to enjoy them. Look at the original Star Wars: it doesn't reference anything (well, Lord of the Rings, Arthur and the Holy Grail etc, but no other franchise, at that time) and is thoroughly enjoyable as a one-time standalone movie if you don't want to go further. There are many of these, and not only science fiction. I mean, let's be honest: about 80 percent of movies these days are cookie-cutter rubbish and remakes, but going back 50 years or so there are so many really good ones. I mean, have you even seen Casablanca? It's actually amazing how, when you see movies like those, you suddenly get all the references you've been hearing most of your life.

TV series are another matter. That's really a case of what you want to get into, and how invested in the show you want to be (cue ISB watching 9 seasons of Friends! ) but yes I'd agree with Black Mirror: some of the finest and most thought-provoking science fiction writing since The Twilight Zone.

@Lisnaholic yes I did meet Marillion, at a record signing. It was just the once. Karen also met them and was invited backstage at a gig I took her to. Guess I didn't have the legs... 

[innerspaceboy]

Thanks everyone!

I took Troll's advice and today I watched Don Hertzfeldt's It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012) for a touch of existentialism. I enjoyed it. It was thought-provoking, much like Linklater's Waking Life which I also thoroughly enjoyed.

I was dating someone who was into television when Mr. Robot and Black Mirror were popular. Though her I saw "Nosedive" and "San Junipero" which were some of the greatest television I'd ever seen. And I saw a few plot-critical episodes of Mr. Robot as I am interested in hacker culture.

I should also dive deeper into my complete Twilight Zone franchise library. Lots of classics there and consistent good writing, or so I'm told. I'm not sure how I feel about Twin Peaks. It seems to polarize audiences.

I could also always remain on my high-horse and dive into my library of thousands of MST3K and Rifftrax films. I have every surviving episode of MST3K plus the reboots and synced Rifftrax audio with the first hundred-or-so Hollywood films they riffed, like the Twilight saga.

It just takes a lot of energy for me to sit down and watch an entire film. I often find it draining. It doesn't help that I have an uncomfortable Victorian chair at my computer desk. I need to troubleshoot universal video codec support so that more of my film library play successfully on my Chromebook. That way I can watch them in bed over wifi.

As far as writing about them, I'm not sure what I would say. I feel so alien to the world of television and cinema. Perhaps I should enroll in a film studies course at a local university. (Would they force me to watch the original Star Wars trilogy?)

Supplemental note: I LOVE Seinfeld

[Saulaac]

Whilst I haven't owned any vinyls (my parents had probably about fifteen vinyls which have ended up in some attic, but which at the same time shaped my musical heritage), I defo admire the collectors who loved to crate dig  . I would do it myself very occasionally in Tottenham Court Road or Soho or in North London, but it would be in the CD section, just in case I saw something which may tickle my fancy.

In the true spirit of propertarianism, owning a large collection of vinyls sounds absolutely fabulous to me! I would certainly not give up a collection of vinyls on a whim, or unless you absolutely have to sell them to make ends meet.

Almost everything is taxed nowadays. Even all our cheap monthly subscriptions to spotify and other channels, which add up over time. But nobody can touch your physical vinyl collection, ISB. You can't be taxed on it. It is yours to keep, and it is yours to decide what to do with it, without govt. interference.

[Trollheart]

It's up to you of course, whatever you want to do, but consider, as an example, my current exploration of The Fall in my thread Trollheart Spends Time With... This thread is meant to serve as an entryway for me into bands/artists/genres I'm not familiar with, so I treat each album as if I've never heard of it (which I have not) but as I go on through the thread I'm able to make some slightly informed decisions from the knowledge I've gained of the band, e.g., this is a more commercial outing than their earlier albums etc. If I were you, I would approach each movie with the kind of wide-eyed wonder we did as children, having no idea what it's going to be like. I would NOT research anything, at least, not until you've watched it, otherwise your opinion might be skewed by popular opinion (who would, after all, say they hated The Godfather? @jimmy jazz, I'm looking at YOU!) or you might get information about the movie/series which would ruin it for you (spoilers).

I'll take it upon myself to start that thread, but let me just say, with your love of Victoriana, two series I think you would thoroughly enjoy would be Downtown Abbey and Dickensian, both of which I'll detail a little better in the thread when I make it.

Speaking of which...