The Reduction Theory

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
Perhaps it's a mid-life crisis - I want to sell-off most of my music.
I've had the urge over the last few years to reduce my music collection down to the absolutely essential - just that - the very best of all genres. Anyone else get this urge? Am I abnormal?

It's become something of a 'dream', you might say - because I look at all the music gathered on all the albums I have and know damn well that at least half of it is useless to me now and for all time. The desire is to burn the best of all albums and ship them off to secondhand land. God knows I've recycled enough in my time, and confess to gaining some form of pleasure from being able to let go, to give up what others may regard as precious - a feeling of power over 'it' (the art and consumer addiction). Almost, I might say, a power over those unknown persons who either dare not do the same or who will pick up my leftovers. Ha-ha! (laughs in a deranged fashion). I'm performing a service too, of course, for those picking it up cheap, as all us recyclers do - whilst benefitting from what others reject as we continue to buy.

Now I'm thinking of going further than ever before...to test myself by choosing, say, the very best of my Coltrane collection! Or Sun Ra! Shock! And selling the products.

Have you ever thought the same? Do you know anyone who has boiled their collection down to the crucial elements? Or is your collection, like the universe, destined to continually expand with only occasional sell-offs?
 

msoes

Well-known member
im not a collector at all and i dont buy cds or anything because i feel guilty if i do, such a waste. i find looking at a pile of cds disgusting. i only download and would happily get rid of all my cds.

interestingly i dont feel this way about books

also i am abit weird like that
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Perhaps it's a mid-life crisis - I want to sell-off most of my music.
I've had the urge over the last few years to reduce my music collection down to the absolutely essential - just that - the very best of all genres. Anyone else get this urge? Am I abnormal?

It's become something of a 'dream', you might say - because I look at all the music gathered on all the albums I have and know damn well that at least half of it is useless to me now and for all time. The desire is to burn the best of all albums and ship them off to secondhand land. God knows I've recycled enough in my time, and confess to gaining some form of pleasure from being able to let go, to give up what others may regard as precious - a feeling of power over 'it' (the art and consumer addiction). Almost, I might say, a power over those unknown persons who either dare not do the same or who will pick up my leftovers. Ha-ha! (laughs in a deranged fashion). I'm performing a service too, of course, for those picking it up cheap, as all us recyclers do - whilst benefitting from what others reject as we continue to buy.

Now I'm thinking of going further than ever before...to test myself by choosing, say, the very best of my Coltrane collection! Or Sun Ra! Shock! And selling the products.

Have you ever thought the same? Do you know anyone who has boiled their collection down to the crucial elements? Or is your collection, like the universe, destined to continually expand with only occasional sell-offs?

I've been slowly selling stuff for about 5/6 years, when I arrived in one of the most expensive cities on earth and realised I was tiptoeing around boxes of records I had no interest in.

i used to feel I wanted to know everything about everything I was even remotely fond of, but you reach a point where it makes more sense just to spend time with the things you really like. I now spend far too much of my free time listening to records to see if they're bad enough to be shot of :confused: Yesterday, that meant a really bad DJ cut of Peter Tosh's Maga Dog tune by soome bloke called Smitty released on a label in Dewsbury. It's a keeper, tho I doubt anyone would give me anything for it if it wasn't.

Heaven is around the corner somewhere.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
im not a collector at all and i dont buy cds or anything because i feel guilty if i do, such a waste. i find looking at a pile of cds disgusting. i only download and would happily get rid of all my cds.

interestingly i dont feel this way about books

also i am abit weird like that

I am exactly the same as this.

It makes sense though, a CD is just not really worth what you pay for. It is compact, but it doesn't really matter because you'll just rip it to your hard-drive anyway, and then burn it to a 49 cent CD-R when you want to play it in your car, or if you're more high society, plug your ipod into your car stereo.

At the same time I'm not much of a fan of paying for downloads because the music doesn't actually exist and I could've got it just as easily for free.

This is why I buy vinyl.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
im not a collector at all and i dont buy cds or anything because i feel guilty if i do, such a waste. i find looking at a pile of cds disgusting. i only download and would happily get rid of all my cds.

interestingly i dont feel this way about books

also i am abit weird like that

Totally agree esp about books versus CDs. Some people (Oprah being one and Jeff Bezos being another) are trying really hard to sell the public on the idea of replacing hard copies of books with electronic copies, but there's something about reading off a screen that really bothers my brain/eyes after a while.

CDs are just an outdated, awkward format that we really don't need anymore. They scratch, they start to wear out fast, I hate them.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
Have you ever thought the same? Do you know anyone who has boiled their collection down to the crucial elements? Or is your collection, like the universe, destined to continually expand with only occasional sell-offs?

One of my friends, a very talented musician himself, does this in a way. Except its not a "boiling down" it's just a "not owning very much music". He lives a sort of nomadic lifestlye so it's partly necessary.

Anyway, I lived with him once, and he owned a grand total of I think it was 4 records. One was a Gentle Giant LP, one was the soundtrack for the movie Barbarella, one was that Queen album with "We Are The Champions" on it (this is the only song he'd play from it) and one was a Godflesh LP. Oh and he picked up a live James Brown record too.

And this was all he listened to for the good part of a year. Happily. It was weird because despite being a particularly inspired musician professionally, he didn't actually have much of a hunger to continually consume new music. At all!
 
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nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
One of my friends, a very talented musician himself, does this in a way. Except its not a "boiling down" it's just a "not owning very much music". He lives a sort of nomadic lifestlye so it's partly necessary.

Anyway, I lived with him once, and he owned a grand total of I think it was 4 records. One was a Gentle Giant LP, one of the soundtrack for the movie Barbarella, one was that Queen album with "We Are The Champions" on it (this is the only song he'd play from it) and one was a Godflesh LP. Oh and he picked up a live James Brown record too.

And this was all he listened to for the good part of a year. Happily. It was weird because despite being a particularly inspired musician professionally, he didn't actually have much of a hunger to continually consume new music. At all!

I like this guy already.

Well, not really his taste necessarily but still. Once I've already heard something, and if I love it I've definitely heard it countless millions of times, why do I need to carry around all of those stupid plastic things that are so annoying and break? I know all the songs anyway to the point where I could play them in my head for myself. When I find something new and exciting I'll listen that to death until it's in my head stereo. Then I can throw out the CD.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Esp with the internet, and being able to look up most stuff on youtube or google up someone else's mediafire or whatever, who cares about buying anything, it's a waste of time, you're a suckerbrain for giving that industry money.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Have you ever thought the same? Do you know anyone who has boiled their collection down to the crucial elements?"
I go on vinylvulture board fairly often and this is an idea that comes up every now and again.
Personally I like vinyl and I quite like the way a big shelf or five of vinyl looks so I won't be getting rid of my records any time soon. On the other hand, I don't really like cds and I gave/threw all of them away ages ago. As for books, I tend to give them to people that I think will like them. Not really a present as such, more of a loan which I will almost certainly forget to request back. I do this because, as a general rule, I don't reread books (I'd normally rather read something new) and because they take up space.
I'd like to have a fairly empty space in my house and I generally don't buy any physical objects at all (except for the aforementioned obviously). One of my friends told me that he is trying to end each year with less stuff than the year before, just slowly whittling down to the vital things and I can see where he is coming from.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Buying vinyl is kind of one way of refusing to give the industry money and instead just handing it over to a private collector. Plus vinyl takes longer to wear down, and the covers are nice to use as art for the walls.

If I absolutely must buy something that's only released on CD, I usually get it used from Amazon for like $5 from a used seller and sometimes resell them to those shops like Other Music when I'm done or if I don't like them.
 

STN

sou'wester
I'm a hoarder. I like having words and sounds imprisoned in little objects.

I don't have nearly enough Coltrane or Sun Ra records.
 

nochexxx

harco pronting
i'd really like to the rid off all my cd's as i'm happiest with my vinyl. the problem is the resell value of cd's is dire, isn't it? i'm guessing discogs is the quickest way of listing cd's but selling them is another matter. what's the best way then?
 

mms

sometimes
i've got lots of vinyl, i buy alot of it new as the music is new so i get it from the record industry, i don't see why i shouldn't give them my money, thats a weird arguement, i've got nothing against people releasing music, most of the labels are indies who just about scrape by and the music is great i've got no problem with that.
i listen to it all the time. yeah cds piss me off massivley though, ive got hundreds of the difficult to find scratched up pieces of shit everywhere.
i cull records about once a year, i've got about 100 to go to the second hand shop now, i sold about 90 last year and made about £700 so that was good.

i like mp3s even less though i have a habit of burning mp3s to cd to listen to them, so i've got loads of shitty burnt cds about now.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
How about supporting the artists who made it so they can make more music? ffs :mad:

I totally agree with you. At the same time though, I feel like now that the industry is changing a bit, artists have to realize that we can get their music for free much easier than we can get it from a shop, and so they need to step up their game a bit.

I like supporting grime music, but most of the money I've spent on it has been in the form of vinyl releases. This is because I find it very hard to reason spending $25.00 after shipping and tax to receive a CD-R in a jewel case with some pants MS Paint cover art.

It makes little sense how the average person now values CDs much less than than they ever have, but CD prices have remained exactly the same regardless. That's the music industry for you though.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Vinyl is all I buy now, mainly because I can't afford to buy vinyl AND CDs. I don't like CDs anyway, much prefer vinyl.

I've gone on about this quite a bit recently but my PC crashing over the last few weeks has made me feel that I could do without a lot of what I think is essential... at the same time I miss having the constant flow of new mixes to listen to etc... but do I ever listen to most of those mixes properly?

Sometimes music takes a while to sink in and when you're constantly getting new stuff the sinking in period isn't there anymore.
 

mms

sometimes
It makes little sense how the average person now values CDs much less than than they ever have, but CD prices have remained exactly the same regardless. That's the music industry for you though.

know what you mean about grime and cds/vinyl i'm sad that less stuff is out on vinyl cos you know you have to really want to put it out if you put it out on vinyl there is a sense of quality control thru cost efficiency.

cds have actually gone down about 2-3 quid in the last 5 years or so , cds are more like 9.99 8.99 new now were as before they were 10.99/13.99, so obviously the dealer prices are more like £5.50 £6.00, the margins are smaller, then that sort of carpet selling amazon style reduces the cost even more, ie if the cd will sell in bulk at a even more reduced price the shop will take it down to 7.99 or 6.99, they might loose a pound per sale but they will sell more as they are the lowest price on the search engines.
vinly on the other hand has gone up in price, so you're making a commitment :)
 
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DJ PIMP

Well-known member
i do mass deletions every so often... but only 10 gigs or so a pop.

i get waaaaay too much joy from music to ever pare it right right back. doing that would involve a real kicking and screaming, toys out the cot, multi-day hand-wringing tantrum of angst and brutality.

i'm sure every OCD style music collector here can relate ;)
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
How about supporting the artists who made it so they can make more music? ffs :mad:

Not many artists make their money from direct sales of their CDs. Maybe on smaller indie labels.

I don't want to give my money to any industry, really, they're all equally stupid, but as far as the music industry is concerned: most labels, even the indie ones, are ultimately owned/distributed by parent companies that exploit labor and all sorts of horrible things that are par for the course in business these days.

DJP, I enjoy music a whole lot, I don't think being a collector means you necessarily enjoy music more than other people. It just means you're more attached to the fetish objects you associate with music.
 
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ether

Well-known member
€ 138.99 on discogs for a copy of anti war dub, at those prices I think I need to have a clear out...
 
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