Buying vinyl collections – a philosophical dilemma

[Cupe]

Despite being a dedicated advocate of digital DJing, I still and always will find myself completely enamoured with vinyl. Not necessarily from an audio quality perspective (it’s not all brilliantly mastered and pressed), but from the viewpoint of it being real. It’s tangible, and there’s a real process in buying, playing and owning it. And with each piece of vinyl there is a memory – some bad (why in God’s name did I buy that without listening to it?), and some utterly amazing that are burned into my psyche as if they happened just yesterday.

So I find myself with a dilemma. My record collection isn’t that big, partly because I never had huge amounts of cash to buy just any old vinyl, nor the space to store it, but also because I was quite selective about what I bought. I had to like it before I dropped a large percentage of my tiny income on it. But now I have the new studio, and a ridiculous amount of space. Combine this with a renewed desire for tangible real things, I want to buy a lot of vinyl. But I find myself with an internal conflict.

I could drop by eBay and bid on all manner of vinyl job lots with the sole intention of very rapidly building an expansive and enviable wall full of vinyl. But for me, this equates to the current malpractice of “collecting” hundreds of thousands of tracks across terabytes of drives for nothing more than bragging rights. To dredge up an old maxim, they would not be platters that matter.

So here I am with the headline philosophical dilemma – as much as I’d love to own an obscene amount of vinyl and post a ridiculous number of pictures on Facebook, I keep coming back this — to me music a very personal thing and not a just a commodity.

So vinyl owners — where do you stand on this? Are you a hopeless vinyl junkie who absolutely has to have any old vinyl? Or are you a tad more sentimental and selective about your collection? Would you rather know each and every record in your collection and tell the story behind each of them? Or do you want to pull a muscle pose in front of a wall of vinyl regardless of what it is?

Mark Settle on djworx.com

[russell]

I want to collect all sorts of records but i could never just buy up someone else's collection.

That takes away the fun of diggin. It's good to just buy random records and see what on them. I've got a few i've bought just because of the artwork. Most of them turn out to be pretty decent or have something that could be sampled on it.

[Scottie]

I'd disagree that it's not right to buy up someone's collection, just because you've bought something in bulk doesn't mean you can't have some sort of connection with it. I used to buy 5-10 records at a time, at what point do you say that the music you've bought has lost it's value to you? IMO it's about how often you would actually listen to them, or whether you'd just leave them on display that determines their value. Can't disagree with the buying random records comment though.

[russell]

I used to buy 5-10 records at a time,

That's hardly buying in bulk or buying up someone's collection.

I used buy that many every time I went to the record shop. But I was still there listening and buying them myself.

[OxyKon]

I used to buy 5-10 records at a time,

That's hardly buying in bulk or buying up someone's collection.

I used buy that many every time I went to the record shop. But I was still there listening and buying them myself.

the most ive ever spent on wax at once was about $588, spitfire can quote me on this cause i sent him a pic msg on the stack and the amount, his jaw practically hit the ground, ive never bought anybody else's tunes, sure ive had a few given to me,, in fact the very 1st piece of wax i was given was the 1st day i ever started to spin, was a white label called superstar, my friend said "here, start your collection with this", but yeah cant say ive ever bought someones entire collection, i achaly have no idea how much ive spent on wax in the last 5yrs, but i can say its a shit load

[russell]

I've got somewhere between 600 and 700 records. So i've spent a fair bit i'd imagine.

If you average it out at £8 a record that equals somewhere between £4800 & £5600.

Most expensive record I've bought was £80.

Been buying records for 12 years now but there was a spell in the middle whenI couldn't afford any, then I had traktor due to the lack of money for tunes.

Still crave to buy records though. Gonna be buying a lot once we move and I have a lot more expendable cash.

[Mitch]

I want to start collecting.

2 things holding me back

1) don't have a turntable + can't afford one right now.

2) i can't afford to buy wax all the time

i really want to start collecting though

[wrxfiend]

I used to be selective and still am about what goes on the bottom shelf! That is all my hip hop 12"s and albums, the top shelf is donations, op shop stuff im still going thru.

Now that im trying to make beats. Any vinyl is welcome, so i will happily buy collections when the spare cash is around. I have heaps more in boxes scattered, presents and old grannies collections etc. its definately an addiction!

I am however starting to run out of space!

[overit]

For tunes: Quality > Quantity.

That said I do own a heap of vinyl from the charity shop which at first glance doesnt look like "quality" and oftne isn't even music. I have spoken word, classical, rock, pop, cheese and all sorts bought at 10p a disc... but all have been used to source samples of strings/ hits/ vox etc in the days before sample libraries were available online. So each has a space in my collection, just in case I ever need to source another scratchy old sound.

[eggssell]

ive been buying on and off since 85 (still got that wierd al yankovic album and rocky IV soundtrack )

plus my aunties use to bring me back funk and breakdance compilations from the phils around that time

and in my day a 12 inch was pretty much a standard bday gift, so i racked up a few.

however since actually owning my own decks i aint bought many. some battle records, and then what i can digg out second hand. mainly anything i cant get digitally, or something that has a good mix on it. but yeh if i had a choice of a 3 dollar digital file or a fifteen dollar record. i would actually go the digital file, because then i could get five different tracks. ive said before i am a music fiend. i need new tracks on a regular basis (has to be a minimum 10, but i prefer 20, days before i want to hear a song ive heard again) , so if i ever dreamed of being just vinyl it would kill me.

the other reason for preferring digital is because i cant be farked to rip my vinyl, so half the shit i have bought recently i want to be able to play at work and shit but cant.

im not averse to buying up a collection. i mean i wouldnt just buy it because i would get a fark load of records. its more, if say out of fitty records i wanted 20 of them, and the going price was worth it for just those 20, then hella yeah id scoop it.

my holmie inherited a shyte load of records, and to this day we still digg through that stash and find the best shit. a lot of it is good old funk style house.