Purge!!!!

[zebrazub]

Hello everybody! Good to say hello to this great community of oddballs with hearing deficiencies, carenze uditive!! So many good LP's out there, but you can't collect them all! My question for you is how do you organise your files/LP's/CD's. So, in a way, what drives your collection and how do you manage it. Is it a burden? Do you spend all your spare hours tagging/ripping/foraging/foraggimentio? My reason for asking is after a long time away I'm going through my files/CD's/Lp's and trying to decide what I like, what to get rid of and what I NEED to listen to more often. I'm making list after list and it's turning into a joyous event that is taking me right back to why I love this music in the first place. But, no disc space/ no money/ no time!! So, Epurazione! Hahhah!

[nidostar]

I had to laugh! I've never been described as an oddball with hearing deficiencies before.

I have an extensive collection of LPs (1500+), CDs (1200+), 7 inch singles (600+) and few remaining cassettes. I have such an eclectic taste in music that, whilst I may not fancy listening to a particular genre of music one day I know that some weeks down the line it will hit the spot be it classical, rock or easy listening. So I am loathe to throw out any of my music knowing that over time I will enjoy listening to all of it. Does that make me a "stamp collector" as Psyclon or likedeeler once put it or just a music fanatic who likes to keep all of his options open. I like to think it's the latter. But then I'm lucky I have the space to store all my music media.

A glance at my iTunes/Apple Music app shows that I have just short of 300,000 items. Not all are music but mostly and doubtless loads of duplicates. But it's all on my HDD so what? It's not like they are taking up any more room than a collection a tenth of the size. I love to have music on in the background whenever I can be it at home or in the car so I am confident that most of what I have will be listened to at some stage. Though I have to say my wife does worry about my musical choices. Am currently listening to the Bruton album Interpol (BRJ 22) which I suppose is an acquired taste compared to, say, Neil Sedaka on the Google Home which she was listening to a few moments ago.

As for tagging I must confess to being a little obsessive though I don't feel it takes up an inordinate amount of time especially as I have a social life and a garden to maintain. And anyway good tagging pays off in the long term when listening to stuff I don't recognise in the lounge being streamed from my computer in the study.

[PotatoNumberOne]

[WARNING: long post, not exactly answering the question] I find this a very interesting topic and I'd like to hear more people's comments on this!

I guess on a deeper level this question concerns the psychology of collecting itself, right? Because if you feel sometimes that your collection / passion for collecting has become a burden, the idea of a purge might seem very promising - a promise of less weight and more clarity and freedom. On the other hand, there's a reason why we collect all this stuff in the first place. So at that point you would probably want to find some kind of balance between the curiosity / the joys of collecting and an inner peace that can sometimes be disturbed by simply having to deal with too much stuff (or running out of space for that matter). Of course you would first have to admit to yourself that collecting can become a burden in the first place.

Perhaps this is overly introspective and people wanna be Kool & the Gang and don't go there - because it surely is a lot more fun to research and listen to and obsess about a hundred more albums you didn't know about, instead of dissecting your own collecting habit and making hundreds of decisions of "i need this / i don't need this".

As for the "stamp collecting" (not to completely re-heat this apparently not very succesful discussion): I definitely see that if the sheer enjoyment of the music is what we're all here for, the so-called "stamp collector" might miss the point. Maybe then the idea of a purge is the hope to reduce this kind of collecting, in order to achieve clarity on what is the music that's truly the most important to you. On the other hand I think it's clear as day and just in the nature of things that there's MORE to collecting than the actual music - especially with collecting physical media. Why else would people obsess over physical artefacts and pay ungodly amounts of money for a piece of vinyl? And cover art for instance still makes an impact in the digital realm. As Brian Bennett put it in the Library Music Film: [Library Music] is "music to make pictures look good". I think the same applies vice versa: we respond to funky cover art and great typography etc. and connect it to the actual music - these seperate artistic efforts tie in with each other and that can be a reason for you to buy an album or prefer one album over another. And what's wrong with responding to great visual art in the context of music? I think this is one example of why it can be difficult to let go of things you have collected, even though you have to admit that there's other music that's more important to you, or that you already have "enough" music in your collection. (The cover art case is probably slightly different with say, the KPM 1000 series - even though I once bought a KPM record on a flea market and the seller told me that I should take it "for the cover alone").

Sorry for going so long on this and still not exactly answering your question. It probably comes through that I'm struggleing with these questions myself from time to time. Would like to hear if anybody can relate to these thoughts at all.

Thank you for listening!

Greetings
P1

[JimmyD]

A collector's dilemma, what to do when you hit a "ceiling", be it space, time or money? I've found that digitizing all my music has been the answer. Hard drives are relatively cheap and getting cheaper every year. Over the years, my tastes have grown from R&R (born and raised in Motown) to jazz, classical, easy listening/lounge, then to library. Although I still have all my R&R records form the 70's, I did purge all my CD's (after I digitized them) when we moved out of State. I did save all my bootleg CD's from the 90's. Some things I just can't let go!

Call me a hoarder (You're a Hoarder!). Ok, ok, I'm a music hoarder, yes, guilty as charged! To keep my music organized (200K+ tracks, 2.25TB) I created genre folders (Classical, Jazz, Rock, Library etc), inside these, I sorted by artists (Classical folder is sorted by composer), then album title. For the various-artists albums, I sorted by album title under a "Compilation" folder. Specifically for my Library folder, I sort by music house (Bruton, KPM, Selected Sound), then by album number. It seems to work for me, so far. I may only listen to a record once, but I did it! Having it all digitized means I can always go back if I want to and have a listen. Very rarely do I ever delete songs, but, saying that, I did today! There was a better soundboard version of a Santana concert in Europe in 1972, so I saved the better one and purged the old one.

One suggestion, and its a strong one. Buy a couple of hard drives and back up your music every month or so. HDs are reliable, for the most part. But this is your hard work all on one drive. Back up! Don't be a victim of a crashed drive.

This site has really opened my ears to a whole new realm of music and music interpretation that I never knew existed. The European jazz interpretations are fantastic. I can't seem to get enough! Growing up in a border town, some international influences naturally bled across the river, but it was mostly UK stuff. And that makes sense since Canada, being a part of the Commonwealth, would naturally draw from there. Discovering this site has been a gold mine of continental influences that I appreciate listening to daily. Thanks to everyone who make this site so successful. You all are fantastic!

Ok, back to hoarding, I mean collecting. Ha ha! Its got to be fun, not a chore. Once its a chore, its over. So far, its been a labor of love for me. I enjoy discovering new artists, new music and I want it all!!

[nidostar]

One suggestion, and its a strong one. Buy a couple of hard drives and back up your music every month or so. HDs are reliable, for the most part. But this is your hard work all on one drive. Back up! Don't be a victim of a crashed drive.

Ha! I couldn't agree more. By complete coincidence I happened to notice this afternoon that my Time Machine backup (Apple) stopped 12 days ago because of lack of space. So I've hurriedly ordered a 6TB (yes 6TB!) drive to replace my seemingly inadequate 4TB backup drive.

[kpmhill]

My 3x strategy for backup:

• Apple Time Machine
• Backblaze cloud backup
• Periodic drive cloning

I haven't lost any music yet.