Parting with CDs

It may take a while for the authorities to uncover your evil doings, but you will receive your just desserts.

 

Misusing and mangling the English Language has become a national pastime.
Hoarding disorder - Symptoms and causes

Hoarding is this:



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...not this:

 

Your friend is right. At one of the record stores where I worked we'd call that type of release a "one and done," meaning that if we didn't sell it within the first day or two of release, we could expect it to sit on the shelf gathering dust ever after (or we'd send it back to the distributor). I remember crazes over albums by artists like Schoolboy Q and Childish Gambino, and I also remember two weeks later having to mark those same records down. I'm not sure it's a question of the music itself having a limited shelf life so much as the kind of (young) fan who buys these records because it's the latest, hippest thing only move on to the next latest, hippest thing the following week.

 

I don't know how I sleep at night...

 

I have a feeling that she is more untidy than a hoarder. After all, there's a waste basket in that room with items in it. A hoarder would have kept the plastic (pill?) bottles just in case they needed them. The carpet also looks remarkably clean in the areas that you can see, making me feel the photo is staged. She also looks too clean and healthy.

 

I hate to say it but in 10 years I'll be 66 and not interested in buying new music -I am barely interested today, except for a few favorite artists.

Absolutely!

 

It depends on the title. I don't have a single format.

 

True.

The second pics may be OCD however, of which I have the same tendencies.

 

I did not use the word "mental condition" to imply a mental illness on the diagnostic chart.

I am saying that, given the set of facts that I did, there is some kind of mental condition present - merely meaning, apart from a condition of utility - that would explain why (under most circumstances) someone would keep several thousands of CD jewel cases on display in their home, when all of the music could be played, exactly as is present on the CD, through a hard-drive that takes up very little space at all. Whether that be laziness, being a Luddite, ignorance, a stronger-than-normal emotional attachment to physical objects, having an aesthetic preference for them, *or* some actual mental illness/defect that prohibits a person from letting go of physical items, these are all mental states/conditions.

 

Streaming makes total sense to a young person who has not built up a collection of physical media. This gives them access to everything for a small monthly price. Doesn't make sense for an older person who has built a strong collection of their favourite music. At least in my mind. I listen to most of my music on an ipod because of the convenience. All my cds are on my computer and transferred to a number of ipods. I also have some nice ipod compatible powered speakers I use to play the ipods at home. I also have a more high-end 5.1 system for serious listening to SACD, DVD audio, DVD video. It all works for me.

 

It's not just music - books and movies, same thing where new = popular. And it's not a new phenomena.

But with my recent Bon Iver example, this is exactly my point where, in two weeks time people may have already moved on post streaming or digital file release. I personally won't but I am again the exception here, as many of us are. So perhaps one day a 2 week delay becomes 2 month delay or a year.

I'm just being selfish as I heard the album, thought "OK time to think about getting the CD/LP" and realized I can't (yet). I suppose one good thing is getting into the pre-order for something I already know I'm going to like so it's not all bad. For now.

 

I've seen you on the forum more than a few times, but I admit I had to check when you joined.

The reasons I've seen are many. An attachment to physical media / liner notes / being able to hold something in your hand. A distrust on the reliability of hard drives. The work involved to actually rip all the CD's with the masterings they desire versus just enjoying them today. That their stereo setup isn't optimal for HDD use yet and/or they hear differences between their CD hardware and HDD-based hardware. Plus of course the showroom aesthetics that you touched on and others have where it looks more like a home than something sterile.

We might all be a little "mental" spending as much time with music as we do. I wonder sometimes why I keep at it but in the end it's enjoyable. If it wasn't, and sometimes it's gone in that direction usually with the hardware rabbit hole or being over-run with crates of music I can't keep up with, then I have to pause and reflect.

I generally play digital files btw. CD's for me are more to rip and store.

 

We use these terms generically, but OCD is a severe disorder... being passionate about music and deriving great pleasure from collecting it does not qualify as OCD.

I've humorously used the term on occasion, but there have been a bunch threads in the Off Topic Forum where people [who are clinically OCD or who are in the psychiatric profession] debunk the populist notion of the term.

 

I can pick up my battered copy of Hunky Dory and it immediately transports me back to August 1983 when I bought my first Bowie album, I remember that I was 17, it was a Friday and I was working at Dan Evans department store in Barry Wales, I went up to Woolworths on the way home and had been excited about buying it all week, so as soon as I got my wages and finished work for the week, I went and got it for 2.99. My parents were going out that evening and when they went, I played that album over and over until they came back in hours later. I cannot remember how many times I played it that evening, but it must have been 5 or more. The next week I bought Ziggy Stardust, and a single of "Heroes". Did the same thing.

Go back 3 years and I can remember having 5 pound in my pocket and I was going out to buy a Beatles album, I didn't know which one, I only had 1962-1966 at the time. Initially I was going to buy Rock & Roll Music Volume 1, for 1.99 in Woolworths but when I looked at it, I didn't really recognise many of the songs, and was unsure, so instead my friend and I walked to Christophers at the other end of Barry and bought Help! This cost me about twice as much, but turned out to be a great purchase. I still have that album today, the cover is all scuffed up and it has indentations on the cover from where I was writing and drawing, using the cover as base underneath the piece of paper..

Go forward to 1991 and I am in Woolworths (again) and see a CD single of Tin Machine's You Belong In Rock N' Roll, I don't even have a CD player at the time, but I see some of the songs on the CD that I don't have on the 12" single, so buy it, it becomes the first CD I ever own, not sure of the price but I remember being excited to own a CD. I didn't get a CD player until the next year, it just sat on my shelf, with a few other CDs that I got along the way until I finally got a CD player.

Three distinct memories which are aided by being able to touch the item in question. I cannot remember the first song I downloaded, I cannot remember the first song I streamed as there is no physical record of it, no different to not being able to remember the first song I heard on the radio.

Does it matter, probably not, but I cherish memories, and like to have relics to help me remember. Now not every item in my record and CD collection, or book,DVD, Bluray for that matter has a distinct memory but a lot of them do.

I could tell you how excited I felt when the Beach Boys Good Vibrations box set arrived from Readers Digest in 1992, or going to Cardiff on 9.9.09 to buy half of the Beatles remasters, or finding two David Bowie 90s CD singles, plus the 2cd Limited Edition of Bowie's Heathen in Cardiff Market in 2003.

If you don't need "things" to help nudge memories then that's great, but I will keep mine for how ever long I have left on this Earth.

 

Fair enough but there are different levels of this. Maybe "light OCD" - I've seen it in myself and other family members.

 

My initial responses were prompted by the extent to which the perfectly reasonable article that formed the basis for this thread was glibly ridiculed by some here. Why would reasonableness and normalcy be ridiculed? Such reactions come from somewhere. I made it very clear in my responses that I was limiting my own particular comments to large collections of CDs., not other physical media, or particular CDs in general.

You get it - you have culled your herd of CDs from public display and used what now is 15 year+ technology to keep all of the music handy and useable at the push of a button.

My point is not to prod someone with longs-standing nostalgic connections to certain CDs to become rid of them. But if one believes that he/she has close, long-standing emotional connections to thousands of CDs, or that, in sum, they are necessary to display to provide evidence of one's identity.... then yes - there is reason to pause and consider what particular eccentricity/mental condition might be responsible for the impediment.

 

The pathology of collecting CD's. Yes. It's like a forest that collects too many trees. A forest in need of trimming and significant and active clearing out to prevent forest fires that could destroy nearby homes. Or needs clearing out of many of the trees to produce necessary paper products and furniture. I get it now.

 

I don't feel any need to display CDs or vinyl LPs that I have emotional attachments to.

 

So 2 years from now when one of your favorite artists label's stop releasing his brand new work on CD you're going to just not listen to his new releases for the rest of your life?

That doesn't sound very pro-artist to me.

 

I find that hard to believe, Gas. I wouldn't avoid the new Foo Fighters album in 2021 just to impress some strangers in a discussion forum.

Then again, I guess that's what so many of them do with their prehistoric "sound rooms" filled with VHS-era fidelity equipment from defunct brands. Maybe Bob Dylan's next album will completely fall on deaf ears.

 

You seem to think that matters to me but it doesn't. How you deprive yourself of great technology isn't my concern. I used to be one of you. I used to covet my Pioneer SX780 and my Technics SLQ2, I used to remove all static from my vinyl discs. Turns out, that was just ceremonial. I really just wanted to listen to Foreigner as quickly as I could. So now I can.

 

At present, physical media exists a) as a trend for hipsters into retro vinyl on Crosley suitcase turntables, b) as a super deluxe set whose main contribution tends to be a bunch of cardboard boxes and a coffee table book, and c) as a way for the fixed income Walmart crowd to buy a Top 10 LP as an affordable option.

Let's jump 10 years forward. The hipster trend is over and vinyl is passe. The super deluxes have all dried up as all the great 60's bands had their 50th anniversaries for their best LP's and the vaults are empty. The cost of streaming and data has come down to the point where even the lowest level financial segments can afford it.

That will be the end of physical media. So that's where the premise isn't false and that's where the market does decide.

 

If it is the end of physical media, it would only be the end of "new" physical media, and it would force us who still want to buy CDs and records to buy second hand as the only option. Do you really think the music companies are going to accept that loss of revenue?

 

Listen, a part of the recording industry (dare I say the biggest part) is the weeding out of the weaklings from the champions, the gauntlet that must be run to prove that a recording performer can actually develop into an actual 'artist' making actual 'art'. For every 1 legendary recording artist there are, what, 100,000 high school wannabe's who think they are destined for stardom? 200,000?

My point is that the discussions are often swayed by these "but I'm a musician, you don't understand like I do" types who aren't the next Bono. And there's no nice way to say it, they aren't actually entitled to proper compensation from the likes of Spotify.