I have a larger CD collection than I need. I think it tops out at around 300 CDs. It was almost 1200 CDs strong when I decided to go on a selling spree. But there is no way I can listen to even 300 albums with any sort of regularity. Yet still I buy more. Even if I listened to three albums a day (and I mean listened to them, not just had them on for background music), it would take me one hundred days to hear them all! What happens when a new CD is really cool and fresh and gets played twenty times straight over a week's time? What happens when I actually have things to do and can't just take a few hours a day to simply listen to music? What happens when I have a friend over who just goes on and on about so-called amazing guitar players so I have to put on Solitary Speaking of Theoretical Confinement to make him shut the fuck up? (that does work every single time, by the way) There is simply too much music to listen to even if I had no other purpose in life other than music listening.
As much as I want every single album on my shelf to be meaningful, groundbreaking, and of super high quality, I also enjoy just having albums. Sure, I was able to get rid of legendary albums I don't really care to listen to such as Paranoid, Killers, Killing Machine, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, and Welcome to Hell, but I also have kept eleven Napalm Death albums. I'm scared to count how many different versions of Suffer the Children are represented in that pile. I love Barney and company as much as anyone, but who needs eleven albums from the same band? Am I really getting something unique and important by having the Peel Sessions, Bootlegged in Japan, Death By Manipulation, and Noise For Music's Sake? Of course not.
Yet I am also aware that I am to a certain extent closed-minded. Sometimes, it isn't the music (or its promise) on the CD that is attracting me, it really is the band logo. Loyalty to a brand name of music composition. That loyalty is certainly not unbreakable, but there are a good many bands whose releases I will purchase just because they are released by that band. That is how I've decided all of my purchases over the last twelve months, after all. But I am aware when my purchases are driven by fandom and not by listening to music. When the expected is what draws me instead of the promise of something new. By talking to many heavy metal fans over the years, I'm not sure too many people actually realize the difference between liking a band and enjoying the music.
The proper size of an album collection will vary from person to person. But every individual, before they spend one more dollar buying music or one more minute downloading it, needs to identify exactly what they are wanting from music, figure out how to best guarantee that their choices will result in getting that from music, and then execute that strategy. Never let anybody sell you something that you know you do not want.
As much as I want every single album on my shelf to be meaningful, groundbreaking, and of super high quality, I also enjoy just having albums. Sure, I was able to get rid of legendary albums I don't really care to listen to such as Paranoid, Killers, Killing Machine, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, and Welcome to Hell, but I also have kept eleven Napalm Death albums. I'm scared to count how many different versions of Suffer the Children are represented in that pile. I love Barney and company as much as anyone, but who needs eleven albums from the same band? Am I really getting something unique and important by having the Peel Sessions, Bootlegged in Japan, Death By Manipulation, and Noise For Music's Sake? Of course not.
Yet I am also aware that I am to a certain extent closed-minded. Sometimes, it isn't the music (or its promise) on the CD that is attracting me, it really is the band logo. Loyalty to a brand name of music composition. That loyalty is certainly not unbreakable, but there are a good many bands whose releases I will purchase just because they are released by that band. That is how I've decided all of my purchases over the last twelve months, after all. But I am aware when my purchases are driven by fandom and not by listening to music. When the expected is what draws me instead of the promise of something new. By talking to many heavy metal fans over the years, I'm not sure too many people actually realize the difference between liking a band and enjoying the music.
The proper size of an album collection will vary from person to person. But every individual, before they spend one more dollar buying music or one more minute downloading it, needs to identify exactly what they are wanting from music, figure out how to best guarantee that their choices will result in getting that from music, and then execute that strategy. Never let anybody sell you something that you know you do not want.
