godofdeadlydeath wrote: ↑Fri Nov 20, 2020 10:09 am
I'm really conflicted about my CD collection. I had to toss the majority of the plastic jewel cases when my parents' basement flooded when I was in college and it ruined most of the inserts. I've kept the majority of the collection I'd amassed through 2006 with the booklets and CDs in binders. I rarely use them, and over the last 10-12 years or so, any CD I've bought has either been ripped to mp3s on a hard drive (that I no longer use since my iPod died and now I just stream everything) or just put in a box to collect. If I had kept the jewel cases and the inserts I could see a scenario where I would've put together some nice shelving so I could display the CDs, but at this point, I might just try and sell the binders on FB marketplace and keep the box sets and rare or sentimental favorites.
I don't want it to end up like when I sold my video game collection and about 2 months later my autistic son started getting really into old video games and wanted to learn more about the history and play a lot of old stuff, but it's not like he can't just pull up any music he wants to hear on youtube these days.
Maybe one day I'll start a new collection from scratch.
Good post. In a weird way, 'keeping things for the family/family members' is a big incentive for retaining collections, even if the collector has lost interest. Kids and grandkids often go nuts over stuff like that once it's old or curious enough, and if you've got a large enough family the odds that one of the little fuckers gets interested increases.
Dumb disorganized thoughts written by a man holding a phone at lunch:
I did sell all my video game shit a few years ago, which was a big deal for me. I kept a very small amount of sentimental treasures, but dumped an enormous amount of shit. I figured I'd regret it, but I really haven't yet. The newer culture of video game collecting really bugs me, the prices got stupid, but more than anything I realized that none of that shit was really going away. I didn't need to protect it.
I'm onto horror VHS now which I find way more rewarding. The rental culture is authentically dead, and it's not coming back... it's a world I loved dearly, and something that I think is worth preserving. It's still possible to find deals, it's more personal, and they actually look fantastic on display... which is the big drawback for CDs, for me. Of all forms of media, I think CDs look the worst/blandest on a shelf.
The fix for physical music, I think, came with bandcamp... getting tapes or CDs from bands that really are making incredibly limited runs created something new, which is similar to the old tape trading underground.
I think the ultimate Gordian Knot would be some way of keeping music offline... so that you could only hear it if you had the physical object. I really don't know how to do that... it obviously would be abused by hipster types who really only care about exclusivity and obscurity themselves, which is not what I'm interested in. Truly rewarding experiences with music come from picking the thing up, putting it on, and not changing it until the recording is over. No matter that you've got, it makes the moment better. I can't fucking do that with digital music, no matter what, I lack the discipline. If it's a record or CD or tape, I can pull it off. If you could keep your album off the web completely... you could add magic back to the world, a little bit.