Great post! I read that and said "check, check and check"....unlimited record buying, here I come!!!!
0-300 for me. When I got back into vinyl 18 months ago I bought a crate to hold my records with a capacity of about 60 LPs and told myself that would be my limit. Now I've got three of these crates and according to my Discogs collection numbers I have 146 in the vinyl category where a multi-LP box set counts as 1 and a 7" single counts as 1. I'm telling myself now that I'm about at my limit but I've got two full crates and one crate that is half full and I really don't have space in my room for another crate so I've really gotta keep a hard limit on this not to get more than will fit in my three crates. I'm still mostly digital in my listening and collecting habits and am trying to sell off some of my CDs since everything is ripped to AIF or DSF and I don't need so many discs. In terms of quantity I have I have more than ten times as many digital releases (which includes both discs and downloads) as I have records. That ratio suits me. If had more space to own records, if the quality control was more reliable for vinyl releases, and if they weren't so expensive, then I'd be okay with owning more. But these days I'm pretty restrictive on adding more vinyl to my collection. I've got what is for me a perfectly adequate and satisfying vinyl playback setup, but I'd rather save money toward buying an endgame DAC than spend it on more vinyl.
Although its not really an equivalency...I need more records way more than she needs the purses and shoes.
If your spouse is limiting something that is important to you, it’s possible you’ve married the wrong person, IMO.
It’s a silly comparison because men also wear shoes, and women also listen to music. Purses… I’ll admit I don’t really understand owning multiple purses. My wife generally only seems to have one at a time, though.
There’s obviously no correct universal answer. As for my own personal psychology, I prefer collections of moderate size, under 1000. I find about 700 to be the sweet spot. Several times over my audiophile career I’ve had, for me, too much music. Having too much somehow lowers my enjoyment. It’s part of what I find off-putting about streaming services as 6 million albums is certainly too much. I find more enjoyment in getting to know recordings very well through multiple listenings. When I have too much music, I find that level of knowing more difficult to achieve and it becomes just a big pile of music. Around 700 allows me a nice variety, so I don’t get bored, yet still can somewhat regularly make the rounds and get to know recordings more completely. I’m sure if I were wired differently, it would be a different story.
Only about 50 of 300 plus get any air time. Listen mostly to SACD and favorite CDs, but I am reluctant to let any of the vinyl albums go.
whatever the answer is, divide by 10 and that’s the answer your other half will say! I’m 42 and have an out 1500 records, and I’m close to capacity.
maybe the equivalent are fanny packs, and you can have multiple fanny packs. Fanny packs come in a variety of colours and capacities. I just really wanted to write fanny pack, as a Brit we find fanny packs hilarious.
At this point in my life, I'm trying to keep my collection of LPs at about 1,000. So far, so good. When I get a new record, I try to find something to move on (or I cheat and move a classical LP onto my wife's record shelf since they are more her thing anyway, and take it off my Discogs inventory). For some reason, I don't seem to have a lot of classical LPs. But here's the thing- I would have answered this question differently at different times in my life. When I first started buying records, I dreamed of what it would be like to have 50 albums. I met this guy who had 50 albums and I thought that was amazing. Then when I eventually hit 50 LPs I thought, "Do I dare dream of having 100?" Sure enough, when I hit 100 LPs I dreamed of 200, and then it was 500, and eventually 1,000. Will I keep it to that number? Ask me in a couple of years!
In my 40's, I had as many as 500 LP's and 800 CD's. At 54, I'm down to about 125 LP's and a little under 400 CD's. My son will have to get rid of this s**t when I die. I'm only keeping what I know I will want to listen to or things that would be really hard to replace.
I'm turning 57 soon, and starting to think hard about this. I've been buying music regularly since the late '70s, and have kept most of it. But up until the 1990s my # of purchases were modest and the physical bulk was easy to keep organized. But by this point, I'm sure I have nearly 2,000 LP's and at least double or triple that amount in CD's. It is to the point where it is getting hard to walk around my house without bumping into random stacks waiting to be listened too, or cleaned, or ripped, to be filed and stored in a shelf or box, etc. I've been thinking I really should be able to thin the herd down to around 500 LP's, and 1000 CD's. The music that means the most to me, remains fresh over time, and gets listened to on a regular cycle organized in a way where I can access it easily in my main listening room. I'm most into '60s pop, '70s hard rock/metal, '80s goth, '90s dream pop/shoegaze and vintage surf instrumentals, and my listening habits trend towards seasonal (as in I don't listen to much surf in the dead of winter, or goth in the middle of summer).
There are much worse addictions than large collections of records and CDs. A milestone when you know that you have more music on physical media than you could hope to listen to in your lifetime. Not just space but weight. Especially shellac. Unless you have children with the same obsession, a millstone eventually for them (unless you liquidise before your own passing - unlikely as age overtakes on your blind side). It would be great if large collections could be left to a philanthropic cause ... a large lending library for younger people who never got the chance to buy vintage first time around - or just for posterity - since vinyl 1st issues now the best instance of some recordings - a trend likely to increase as master tapes deteriorate.
0-300 works for me. A larger collection means that there will be LPs that i would not be playing more than once every few years, which basically defeats the purpose of having them. A few years ago i tried to work out a maximum collection size estimate based on the numbers of hour i actually spend listening to LPs every week, finding that around 250 was ideal. The rest of my music is digital and there is no upper limit to that. Having a manageable LP collection came very handy last year when i moved to a new country. Shipping an LP collection can be expensive!
I've learned that there is no relation between how much time I have left on this earth and the amount of music I own. I buy something, and as long as I listen to it once, then it's earned its place. That you felt better by reducing your CD collection simple does not compute.
When I first got my Spotify subscription years ago, and when I moved on to Qobuz and Apple Music later, I had this idyllic image that it was going to change my purchasing habits. I imagined that I would stream 99% of the time and only buy a handful of records a year that were at the absolute apex of my personal listening experience. That way I’d have a collection consisting only of solid gold audio gems. But it just hasn’t worked out like that in practice! I do still stream a lot, but I’m probably buying more records as a result, as I still feel a palpable desire to own music that I really enjoy on a physical format. Not necessarily for any audiophile purposes, but I just feel like I connect with it differently that way.
I think the two technologies perfectly compliment each other. I’ll often listen to an album on Spotify to help me decide whether to buy it. Furthermore I’ll listen to albums on Spotify in the car, tune or whilst working - and then when I put the record on, the familiarity accentuates the experience.
