Is record-collecting a form of hoarding? Of course it is!
'Might as well have fun with it, though.
In 2016, photojournalist Reed Young documented the world’s largest (known) record collection and its owner. Young wrote:
Zero Freitas has the largest collection of vinyl records in the world – six million and counting, most of them are stacked haphazardly in boxes in a 25,000-square-foot former candle factory in São Paulo. An impulsive collector, he regularly buys entire collections that he finds through classified ads he takes out in Billboard magazine, and with the help of the scouts he employs all over the world. He’s even hired a team of interns who spend 8 hours a day archiving his collection, but Mr. Freitas knows that they’ll never really put a dent in what owns. When I asked him how much time he spends each week listening to his records, he told me that he mostly listens to the radio.
Though I’m certainly not a collector in a formal sense, there’s never really a time where I’m not thinking about what it means to own music in physical form — or wrestling with the implications thereof. The subject is on my mind even more as I sit in the mostly empty house I’m in the process of moving into with Record Store Day / Black Friday / Buy-Nothing Day coming up this week and a newly-arrived box containing the new deluxe edition of Motorhead’s Iron Fist album.
Up until a few days ago, I hadn’t settled on a living space that had the potential to accommodate my belongings. So, for far longer than I care to admit, I’ve lugged around a bunch of boxes and plastic crates filled with CDs. The fact is, I own more music than I’ll probably ever know what to do with — much less listen to. I’ll admit it: there’s a hoarding component to this. Throw-in the fact that I’m not the most organized person when it comes to living spaces and you have a recipe for a bunch of clutter all over the place. With music and books, though, I’m strangely particular about keeping them in good condition yet I’ve never actually housed them.
No matter how you look at it, stressing over the condition of something you’re not properly storing is… a skewed emotional formula to be living by — and a losing formula when it comes to energy conservation vs. expenditure, since the urgency of not damaging the physical object tends to out-weigh my ability to enjoy it! By the same token, I’m not going to deny how satisfying it is to receive a package in the mail. I receive a lot fewer packages these days than I did in the 2000s, when record labels and publicists sending physical promos in the mail was the standard, but I still get plenty.
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To give credit where due, I often decline physical packages, and I rarely accept vinyl promos. I was able to draw a line several years back and get rid of all my vinyl. I still kick myself over these decisions — I didn’t have much to begin with, but I’d kept several complete catalogs by classic rock-era bands, and they were mostly in excellent condition. But the fuss-to-reward ratio just wasn’t enough for me to continue. Vinyl requires so much maintenance that I felt like it wasn’t worth it to stress over handling my records with care. I figured the records were better off going to a good home, where they’d get more use and bring more enjoyment to someone else.
Yes, I’ve stayed faithful to CDs, a medium that appears to be stuck teetering between obsolescence and a comeback, neither of which seems like it’s ever going to quite happen all the way. For reasons I don’t have enough of a bird’s-eye view to wrap my head around, CDs don’t appear to be going away even though we’ve done quite a bit as a culture to shove them out the door. Most cars in the U.S., for example, no longer come equipped with CD players, and you can’t even custom-order a CD player as an optional feature with many car models.
I don’t want CDs to go away. On balance, when I weigh all the pros and cons, I think CDs are as close to a perfect physical medium as we’re ever gonna get, even though I think vinyl at its best can provide a much richer experience. But how healthy is it to attach to the idea of owning music in physical form? Much as we might lament how the digitization of music has eroded our sense appreciation, there’s also a potential upside in that streaming might help people become less attached to the material-acquisition component of being an engaged listener.
On the other hand, I don’t particularly want to become less attached to owning music! I mean, I think I’ve managed fairly well at staying appreciative when I stream music, but there’s something to be said for combining both the tangible and the virtual. Of course, the music industry and record store owners agree. This Friday marks the fifteenth year for Record Store Day, a twice-annual promotional event where record labels send special limited-run titles to independent music stores in the States, Mexico, Europe, Australia, and Japan. (You can browse this year’s titles here.)
Record Store Day even has its own podcast now. (Because why wouldn’t it?) Chances are overwhelmingly high that I’ll stay home for Record Store Day this year, but I know I’d probably have a good time if I took part. The one time I went along for the ride with a friend, I enjoyed it quite a bit, mainly because I knew I wasn’t going to buy any vinyl. I got to take part vicariously, with no real concern that I’d feel tempted to spend too much. I don’t spend much money on music these days, but it’s definitely been an issue in the past.
In fact, Gabor Maté — a Canadian physician who’s become something of a pop-psychology celebrity thanks to his work and commentary in the realms of addiction, trauma, and ADHD — classifies his old habit of buying classical music as a full-blown addiction. To be fair, Maté also encourages re-framing our understanding of addiction around the question “not of what’s wrong with the addiction, but what’s right about it — what does it do for you?”
In that spirit, if you want to make a case for owning music, all you need to do is point to the ultra-charming Amoeba Records YouTube series What’s In My Bag? If you either can’t make it out to Record Store Day or don’t have plans on going (or even if you do), I’d highly recommend binge-watching their channel. You won’t be disappointed. Happy shopping — or not!
<3 SRK