"This sounds absurd. Are that many people compulsive hoarders or using them as hipster decorations?"
Indeed. I know plenty of people like this. In some rare cases they have a record player but it's less expensive than individual albums, and they don't really use it, except for listening to it once or twice.
>In the past, those musicians got CD sales at local gigs. Does anyone buy CDs any more?
Here in Japan, they do. Record shops like Tower Records are going strong, and used CD stores are fairly common. Disc Union in Tokyo is a big chain selling used CDs. There's also some little shops selling used vinyl.
When I was young, I amassed an extensive and impressive collection of vinyl both common and rare, bankrolled mostly by my saintly grandmother. I would stroll around the mall with her on a Sunday and pop into the Wherehouse or the indie record store, and enjoy chatting up a much older blonde clerk before filling my arms with more music than I could ever listen to during the ensuing week.
When I was older and shopped for myself, I'd drive my friends to Tower or the far-flung indie stores, and it was at the latter where I really developed a taste for the rare and near-unobtainables. Then I began to purchase Goldmine magazines, which was the sine qua non for collectors, and I got hooked up with "Record Finding Services" in the UK, which was some dude who'd walk into a store on your behalf and pick up something that wasn't even available on import in the US.
I don't know how many records in total I had, but I proudly boasted of over 100 items by The Cure alone. And you know that old question "Did you read all these books on your shelves?" well I did certainly get around to listening to almost all of the music... at least once.
When CDs came out I embraced the tech and branched out. That didn't entirely put an end to my vinyl purchases, as that was still where the rare and desirable stuff was at, for a long time.
Fast forward to my move to the desert, and in the throes of impending homelessness, I began to sell off my vinyl for pocket money. I wasn't able to keep this up and make rent on the storage locker. My records were eventually sold to the highest bidder. It was a tragedy to be sure.
Then I entered a period where I realized that I didn't need to consume massive amounts of music, and I didn't purchase anything. In fact, my choral activities gave me many opportunities to make my own music, such that it was much more interesting than passive grooving.
Fast forward to 2023: I don't own any device that plays music other than my computers. I have no turntable, no CD drive at all. My music purchases remain firmly at $0. The best music is all over YouTube as much as I want, and on-the-go I am very satisfied with public domain cuts of prayers, classical pieces, and ambient instrumentals while I work.
I am rather glad to be relieved of an insatiable thirst to consume new music; it was an expensive vice, and I was often exploited by my favorite artists as they released endless "collectibles" that I had to catch like Pokémon.
It's not CC. The scale of value is off by several orders of magnitude. Drop me in any large city in the world and I can hunt those things down in a day for less than a $1000. Heck, I could probably do a limited run of mix tapes for that too.
The story in my head is the sampler was a thrift store find or a high school graduation gift and all the vinyl is from their dad or uncle (rare 70s grooves). Poor people can have nice things too.
I regularly troll pawn shops and thrift stores, you never know what you'll find there. For example, they usually have a bin full of vinyl. The staff pulls out any that are valuable, but what is valuable on the market has no relation to what I consider valuable. Jackie Gleason, for example, made many records that aren't available on CD. His stuff is great if you enjoy easy listening, old style.
A couple months back, the pawn shop had acquired what looked like an old DJ's 12 inch single collection from the 70s and 80s. $.50 per disk. I grabbed them all.
>Almost all the vinyl I've bought comes with a download code anyway, and album artwork shines on a 12" x 12" canvas much more than it ever could on the tiny thumbnail you get on a music player app.
My dad was huge into music and had a vinyl collection of 300-400 albums. As a kid, I used to check out the album covers and inserts as I ate breakfast. One that I distinctly remember is cover for "The Wall"
Back in the 80's I was a huge vinyl collector of the new music scene (all the punk, industrial, and what became new age) with about 5000 albums. Of course, they got destroyed in storage. Huge loss, many unique pressings where obscure bands could only press 50 copies, like early Foetus / Lydia Lunch experiments.
When Napster came out, I managed to collect around 87 gigs worth of obscure music very similar to my old collection. Over the years I've added another 40 gigs of hip hop and more recent new music, but that original 87 gigs of the 70's Art Rock, the original punks, original industrial and new wave and then all the fantastic rug cutting Jazz classics... who needs anything new, that originates as a very watered down derivative?
This sounds absurd. Are that many people compulsive hoarders or using them as hipster decorations? If so, no wonder I can't find El-P's early shit on Discogs.
I've got a tiny-ass collection of maybe 500 records.
2 turntables with AT microline cartridges and all the damn leveling, mirrors, gauges, and force measuring accoutrement.
Then there's the shit for dust including the static gun and the toxic chemicals.
And you got your giant Orbeeze needle cleaner.
I could give a left rat ball about analog purity or vacuum tubes of know-nothing audiophile snobs. It's ADC'ed at the mixer and sent 100' (~30 m) around the room over an active HDMI cable to the amp.
What nonsense, I hope he was misquoted.. Like the linked video says, he bought them in Chicago from Joell Hays, another vinyl junkie (and all-around nice guy) that held on to them for a decade, but couldn't get the funds together to restore them all.
I can't understand why every story about vinyl's resurgence needs to make the story into some sort of mythic "rediscovery". My label's been putting out vinyl for years, the only difference is that now there's a 6-month waiting list at the plant. :)
Sounds like a nice idea, but as someone that does buy a fair bit of vinyl (both for listening, and sampling), I find that part of the fun is just browsing through and taking a chance on some obscure records, and seeing what you found when you get home. If you don't like them, you can sell them on.
> The Spotify algorithm, Amazon’s recommendations, they’ll never, ever show you Rod McKuen. Those are designed to direct you towards things that other people like right now. But thrift stores, used bookshops, and Goodwills are, accidentally, perfectly designed to show you things that people liked decades ago, then stopped liking.
I've often thought of and lamented the former idea. That the serendipity of the algorithms is less serendipitous than browsing a local record store. But what I've not considered much is that we, digital age folk, leave nothing behind. When I was young my mom had a pile of 45 rpm records. It was great browsing through those as a kid, knowing what my mom was into as a teenager. What do we leave our children? Our Spotify account? It's just not the same. Records have character. Worn dust jackets, scratches. A physical human held and cared for these. It's a snapshot of a point in time. Newspaper clippings, ticket stubs, it's all going away. They can look at a long-dead iPhone 3G and wonder what music or videos I played on it.
People still buy records even when they cost so much. There's always a decent small market for this stuff that isn't going away, because the equipment lasts forever. The record store in my neighborhood just moved into a larger space.
That's conspicuous consumption as well, just of a different flavor.
Tracking down a working vintage sampler and a pile of rare groove records is a large investment in both money and time.
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