I sometimes wonder if I am buying too many albums, compared to when I was younger and poorer, and could afford a couple of albums at most every month. Now I have periods when I buy two every week. I have resisted streaming, where I could really gorge myself on endless musical delights.
Yes, all my albums get more than one play, as the type of music I like (contemporary jazz) often needs more than one play before it clicks. But I have a feeling, that I do not know an album by heart anymore. Maybe the music I listened to in the distant past (rock and prog) is easier to memorise. Maybe my memory is not as good as it was.
Comes with the territory. All of us probably have too much music regardless of format. However, when I was 18 something would get 10 listens and Iād know the track listing off by heart. Give something 10 listens now and thereās just no way the track listing sticks.
Streaming works for me. On release I add albums to a streaming playlist. If I am still listening to them in 2 or 3 months then Iāll buy and download. This helps reduce the number added to my collection each year and ensures they are likely to be oneās that get listened to for a good while.
Yep I feel that way sometimes too and tgat less is sometimes more!
As a Bowie obsessive I knew all his lyrics to his 60/70/80ās albums by heart, every nuance and breath. Embarrassing to admit thatās not the same for his later output, though I know the music very well.
I put that down to buying fewer (couldnāt afford many then!) and repeatedly listening and fully immersing myself into them over weeks and weeks.
Or perhaps as a 65 year old I now havenāt the mental capacity to memorise every lyric and my brain cells are at maximum and slowly depleting
Just on my bike the other day and this came into my head
āStrikes the bell for 5 oāclock, Uncle Arthur closes shop
Screws the tops on all the bottles, turns the lights out, locks it up
Climbs across his bike and heās away
Cycles past the gasworks, past the river, down the high streetā
I stream newly released albums, and if I like them enough, I head towards my local record shop to buy some vinyl. As a trip is well overdue, I have a few albums on the list to buy, and I am pondering whether to add the new CharlieXCX album to the list; it could be an expensive trip to Resident Music.
Iām in agreement with others on the thread. Albums I bought in the 70ās I would play over and over again. To the point that my mother would come to my bedroom and ask that I change the album - didnāt help that my bedroom was next to the living room. Also how could I play Joe Walshās Rocky Mountain Way at anything but high volume?
My music buying, certainly relative to income, was at its highest in the first 5 years or so that I had a system. Mortgage then depressed disposable income for the next decade or so, except when an -endowment policy or somesuch matured and I had about Ā£50 to spend, for which spent an entire day browsing record shops, returning with 17 albums! By the time my CD buying totally replaced LP on the mid 1990s, roughly 25 years after starting, I had amassed somewhere around 550 LPs. My music buying by then wss decreasing, even though my disposable income was at last rising, such that now after some 57 years I only have a little over 1000 albums, and I only buy only a handful of albums a year, mainly because, at least othe than with classical, I am not aware of much new music being released tha is to my taste, while with classical I am sure there is an awful lot more out there that I would like, but generally Iād rather listen to music I like then put in the hours trying to find something new. Maybe one day when I cease to have far too much to occupy myself I might start exploring more classical back-catalogue.
For reference, I have only ever bought music as I really want to play - I think I lack the collector Jean, so Iāve never been into buying all of an artistās output just to have it, nor all the re-releases and remasters etc. And in my case, when I buy a particularly good album I will often play it many time pver the first days and weeks, much as I used toā¦
When I was āyoungā the music I bought could more often than not be linked to events/enjoyable moments in my life. That plus holding the album cover as I listened to albums made things āstickā in a way they donāt so often these days. I donāt fear overload. Knowing I have an album tucked away on the rack, even if I donāt dig it out to play, gives me a warm glow. Mrs twofifty says our racks speak to who we are and the life weāve shared together. I donāt buy downloads. Only hard copy Vinyl or CD does it for me. I love buying music. Canāt see that stopping, ever.
In the Eightees I was in high school, and there was a fad that you would have your favourite album cover painted on the back of your jean jacket. I had Zeppelins first album cover on the back of mine. The album artwork was a big part of owning the album. Of course there were posters in some albums too, which you can not experience from Spotify/Qobuz.
This photo is from the web to show what I mean, not mine.
The one thing I do miss is the physical album covers from LPs, or some of them at least, notably when they had the lyrics or some other content rather than just a picture and track listing. CDs were pretty poor in that respect, artwork and printing simply too small, only the the libretto booklet from operas being worth having in that forma. I suppose when I ripped my LPs I could have kept the covers ā I simply never thought to do that! Or I could do what Iāve learnt from another thread is apparently not uncommon, which is buy LPs purely for the cover even though it would be the digital version I would have and play.
But whilst I purely stream, I wouldnāt want to be without my own copy of the music I like so that I can play it any time, without subscription, without being subject to the potential vagaries of Internet connections, streaming service providersā catalogue changes, licensing changes, etc. tThe fact that it is in āelectronicā format in a little box is not negative, but hugely beneficial in storage space and organisability, etc.
A weird one for me. Grew up with vinyl. Started buying at 10 and didnāt stop until I was 27 and moved to CD. I would hold the album cover when getting the record out and would perhaps pick it up before or after tracks until the track listing stuck or, on the rare occasions there was a lyric sheet, to check out the lyrics. Holding it as I listened though? Maybe the first listen if there were lyrics to follow.
Talking to friends of similar vintage, some recall doing similar to me whilst others recall tossing it to one side until an entire listening session was done. Others would use the sleeve to skin up.
Iād be interested on you expanding on this as Iāve a multi-talented friend who, as well as managing several major artists and running the NW USA arm of a certain well known ticketing company, got heavily involved in market research on what people actually do with albums. Scarcely different outcomes based on age.
Younger listeners, the ones who actually listen, love album covers but, it turns out that even when they say they like holding the sleeve, they spend about the same time I did and do only the things I did. They ascribe great importance to the physical artefact but donāt actually handle it as much as they think they do or even have it available to do so. A surprising number place sleeves on those ānow playingā stand type things. Quite fascinating.
Older users swear blind that they handled covers much more too but, when pushed on detail, the same outcomes were apparent. Some differences on genre but, again, not as many as youād think and not where youād think e.g.older jazz fans often much more likely to just discard a sleeve until an album is done than pop fans.
So did you have to keep buying new jackets, or having artwork overpainted every time you got a new favourite album?
When I was at school, of course with limited resources for buying albums, a few of us would swap music for a few days to hear each others., so several times a week we would have another album to take to/from school. The thing then was to carry the LP prominently under your arm in such a way as to display what it was to other people, especially any girls (I went to a single sex school) - who, we of course we assumed would be impressed.
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