“The main reason is the storage factor in that, at least in the beginning, you could pack a lot more CDs in a smaller place than you could with vinyl album,” says Clark. Like Newberry, Clark prefers CDs over records these days-an interesting choice for any collector, since most prize analog sound above all. A lot of them were reissues that you could pick up for a couple of bucks.” Record stores couldn’t get rid of their vinyl stock quickly enough, and that’s when I picked up a lot of old rock and soul albums. While I always purchased a lot of vinyl from 1965 on, the bonus years were, without question, in the mid and late ‘80s, when the industry was trying to change everything to CDs. Most of the vinyl albums were purchased prior to 1990. “A lot of the cassettes are bootlegs of questionable audible clarity. “There are also a couple of hundred cassette tapes, although that was never a favorite format of mine, except when it came to making mix tapes,” he says. Nearly half are vinyl albums (including roughly 1,000 45s). Collectors are spoiled and precise… Give me the whole thing or nothing.”ĭuncan Clark, an avid collector and attorney who lives in upstate New York, owns approximately 12,300 pieces of music. I like artwork, credits and seeing who played what and where. “That’s fine for many, but as a collector, I don’t want to download all that and have random papers and burned CDRs in my collection. “Downloading mp3s is a waste of time, since you often get a compressed sound-not a good thing-and there’s often little or no artwork and credits,” he explains. “Number one, I have too many already two, the new ones are way more expensive and three, the days of cueing up records for radio are simply gone!”Īs for downloads, Newberry insists that he doesn’t have any use for digital music, not only for quality concerns, but because it robs him of an integral part of the experience. “I do not even collect vinyl records anymore for three main reasons,” he says. Newberry, music whose collection numbers some 15,000 volumes, including both vinyl albums and compact discs, says his preferences these days lean toward the latter. Thus, records first, eventually superseded by compact discs.” So for me, the physical product has always been the primary object of my desire and affection. “Being in radio, I suppose downloads make the most sense for ease and quickness,” he says, “but I have also been a major collector most of my life. But what is it that compels a music lover in the 21st century to keep buying vinyl, or CDs, or cassettes, or any format that takes up space? Is there something inherently valuable about a physical piece of music? Or about owning music and not just leasing it from Spotify? Many still think so, but why?īarnes Newberry, host of the Americana roots show My Back Pages on Martha’s Vineyard radio station WMVY, is adamant about his preference for physical forms of music, particularly CDs. That’s true until you just have too many of them, which has been my case for several years.”Īs the saying goes, to each his or her own, and while the industry debates the most efficient ways to get music to the masses, collectors stay intrinsically bound to the forms of accumulation that best suit their desires. “One of the advantages of CDs over vinyl was that they were easier to store. Many new albums pressed to vinyl, including movie and TV soundtracks, now come with a free download code, encouraging people to give records, with their superior sound and vintage cachet, a try. Spending on vinyl also outstripped revenue generated by digital downloads as listeners turned more to streaming services and re-embraced tangible music formats. Sales of vinyl records actually hit a 25-year high in 2016, with more than 3.2 million LPs sold. Record stores have receded ever further in the rearview. Physically collecting music is now considered decidedly old-school, of course, and for those with shorter attention spans, interest only in individual songs, or the need to travel with 10,000 songs in their pocket, streams and downloads have increasingly replaced libraries that saddle entire rooms with nothing but shelves, album spines and little space for anything else. But in the past 30 years or so, the means of accumulating music have grown exponentially, with new technologies offering collectors more options than milk cartons crammed with LPs or teetering CD towers. Two generations ago, a “record collection” was literally just that. When it comes to music obsession, a commitment to collecting can take many forms.
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