Barry
24-10-2010, 23:36
As this is my 3,000th post, I thought I ought to celebrate (?) by doing something a little different. So this is a bit of an essay, which I hope might develop into a useful and interesting discussion.
On the face of it, the question seems both facile and trivial – “no, of course not”; we are all music lovers and have probably spent not insignificant sums on the software (as well as the hardware). However let’s examine this state of affairs a little more closely, and to do that I will have to argue from a personal point of view.
Unlike many members here, my music collection is relatively modest: without actually counting, I have about 1000 CDs and about the same number of LPs (I’ll ignore material I have on either cassette or on reels of tape, since this accounts for only a small proportion). Or to put it another way, that’s around 1600 hour’s worth of listening. If I were to play a different CD or LP each time, without repeating myself, and were to listen to my system for 8 hours a day, it would take about 7 months to go through my inventory. So what you may say? Well I know of a few members who have 4,500 LPs: that’s 3000 hours and would take just over a year to go through, if played for 8 hours a day. Even better (or worse) there are record collectors who have 10,000 or even 20,000 records in their collections. Applying the same mathematics, it would take these fortunate few: two and a quarter and four and a half years respectively, to go through their collections! And would you want to do this anyway?
And here we unearth another problem. I have very wide tastes in music. This has the advantage that at any time there is usually something I can play to match my mood and that of any guests who might be around. The disadvantage is that I can sometimes forget what I have in my collection. In this last regard, it is for good reason that the first new post I read when I log-on will be from the thread ‘Spinning Today – What Are You Listening To Right Now?’ Not only am I interested in the music tastes of other members, which is after all is one of the reasons why I joined, but I will often be reminded of a disc or record I have and had forgotten about and say to myself “What a good choice, I’ve got that – I’ll play it now”.
Another disadvantage in having a moderately large collection, and forgetting what I have manifests itself when I’m looking at offers such as the ‘2 for £10’ or ‘3 for £20’ HMV often run. There have been a number of times when I have bought something as part of these offers; only to find when I file it away, I already possess a copy. Conversely I have at times declined an offer thinking I already had a copy, only to find that I didn’t: by which time the offer has passed, or the CD in question has been sold and other copies are no longer available. But maybe this is a symptom of creeping senility!
My difficulties are further exacerbated by my constant on-going interest in new music (or rather, music which is new to me), either through listening to radio programmes such as Radio 3’s ‘Late Junction’, or through member’s posts in the above mentioned thread, plus of course serendipitous discoveries in charity shops, or through listening to new purchases by friends. Listening to radio: plays, concerts, humour and even the news is all part of my day’s listening; so reducing the time to play discs, both digital and analogue - my eight hour estimate is probably more like five.
And then there is the problem of storage, care and maintenance of all this software as hard copy. Of late I seem to be acquiring more and more CDs, at times at the rate of ten a week. They have to be stored neatly out of the way. At the moment I have completely run out of storage: my shelves are full, CDs are stacked on top of those on the shelves. CDs are piled up on tables, along with books (but that’s another possible thread) and at times even piled on the floor or on the CD player itself. They’re taking over the place. Even LPs are now leant against the wall or even against those neatly filed away. Now before you all tell me of the convenience and robustness in downloading, keeping all the material on a hard disk or two, and of the benefits of computer audio in general, I’ll simply say: “I’m too old for all that now”. Were I to pursue this approach, I would have to have another hard disk containing duplications as back up in the event of a disk crash. And even then I would still keep those CDs and LPs I own. Anyway, I like to look at disc covers and read the sleeve notes, though the horrid little booklet that comes with the CD provides less enjoyment in this regard than that of the LP sleeve.
Finally there is the problem of cataloguing. I believe this subject has been touched upon in a different thread. Quite simply I cannot and would not want material within each medium simply filed in alphabetical order. I have to break the filing down into genres, and then within each genre artists are filed alphabetically by last name, then first name, then date of release. Generally this works quite well, except for artists who through their career move from one genre to another. For example: is John Martyn folk, pop, jazz-folk, folk-rock or what? It can get worse than that with some classical composers: clarinet concertos come before oboe concertos and piano concertos, and these come before symphonies. However, when you have the same piece of music performed by several different ensembles, do you file them alphabetically by performer or in chronological order of issue? What do you do when a CD has music by two (sometime three) different composers? Do you file under the first work, when you might have bought it for the second? And then there are compilations! Sometimes I just give up and rely on my ‘looking around’ a particular area in my collection.
Life was much simpler at the beginning of my student days, when I possessed less than twenty LPs, and even when it had grown, so as to fill six wine cases, I knew exactly what I had and where it was.
Regards
On the face of it, the question seems both facile and trivial – “no, of course not”; we are all music lovers and have probably spent not insignificant sums on the software (as well as the hardware). However let’s examine this state of affairs a little more closely, and to do that I will have to argue from a personal point of view.
Unlike many members here, my music collection is relatively modest: without actually counting, I have about 1000 CDs and about the same number of LPs (I’ll ignore material I have on either cassette or on reels of tape, since this accounts for only a small proportion). Or to put it another way, that’s around 1600 hour’s worth of listening. If I were to play a different CD or LP each time, without repeating myself, and were to listen to my system for 8 hours a day, it would take about 7 months to go through my inventory. So what you may say? Well I know of a few members who have 4,500 LPs: that’s 3000 hours and would take just over a year to go through, if played for 8 hours a day. Even better (or worse) there are record collectors who have 10,000 or even 20,000 records in their collections. Applying the same mathematics, it would take these fortunate few: two and a quarter and four and a half years respectively, to go through their collections! And would you want to do this anyway?
And here we unearth another problem. I have very wide tastes in music. This has the advantage that at any time there is usually something I can play to match my mood and that of any guests who might be around. The disadvantage is that I can sometimes forget what I have in my collection. In this last regard, it is for good reason that the first new post I read when I log-on will be from the thread ‘Spinning Today – What Are You Listening To Right Now?’ Not only am I interested in the music tastes of other members, which is after all is one of the reasons why I joined, but I will often be reminded of a disc or record I have and had forgotten about and say to myself “What a good choice, I’ve got that – I’ll play it now”.
Another disadvantage in having a moderately large collection, and forgetting what I have manifests itself when I’m looking at offers such as the ‘2 for £10’ or ‘3 for £20’ HMV often run. There have been a number of times when I have bought something as part of these offers; only to find when I file it away, I already possess a copy. Conversely I have at times declined an offer thinking I already had a copy, only to find that I didn’t: by which time the offer has passed, or the CD in question has been sold and other copies are no longer available. But maybe this is a symptom of creeping senility!
My difficulties are further exacerbated by my constant on-going interest in new music (or rather, music which is new to me), either through listening to radio programmes such as Radio 3’s ‘Late Junction’, or through member’s posts in the above mentioned thread, plus of course serendipitous discoveries in charity shops, or through listening to new purchases by friends. Listening to radio: plays, concerts, humour and even the news is all part of my day’s listening; so reducing the time to play discs, both digital and analogue - my eight hour estimate is probably more like five.
And then there is the problem of storage, care and maintenance of all this software as hard copy. Of late I seem to be acquiring more and more CDs, at times at the rate of ten a week. They have to be stored neatly out of the way. At the moment I have completely run out of storage: my shelves are full, CDs are stacked on top of those on the shelves. CDs are piled up on tables, along with books (but that’s another possible thread) and at times even piled on the floor or on the CD player itself. They’re taking over the place. Even LPs are now leant against the wall or even against those neatly filed away. Now before you all tell me of the convenience and robustness in downloading, keeping all the material on a hard disk or two, and of the benefits of computer audio in general, I’ll simply say: “I’m too old for all that now”. Were I to pursue this approach, I would have to have another hard disk containing duplications as back up in the event of a disk crash. And even then I would still keep those CDs and LPs I own. Anyway, I like to look at disc covers and read the sleeve notes, though the horrid little booklet that comes with the CD provides less enjoyment in this regard than that of the LP sleeve.
Finally there is the problem of cataloguing. I believe this subject has been touched upon in a different thread. Quite simply I cannot and would not want material within each medium simply filed in alphabetical order. I have to break the filing down into genres, and then within each genre artists are filed alphabetically by last name, then first name, then date of release. Generally this works quite well, except for artists who through their career move from one genre to another. For example: is John Martyn folk, pop, jazz-folk, folk-rock or what? It can get worse than that with some classical composers: clarinet concertos come before oboe concertos and piano concertos, and these come before symphonies. However, when you have the same piece of music performed by several different ensembles, do you file them alphabetically by performer or in chronological order of issue? What do you do when a CD has music by two (sometime three) different composers? Do you file under the first work, when you might have bought it for the second? And then there are compilations! Sometimes I just give up and rely on my ‘looking around’ a particular area in my collection.
Life was much simpler at the beginning of my student days, when I possessed less than twenty LPs, and even when it had grown, so as to fill six wine cases, I knew exactly what I had and where it was.
Regards