Before I get to this question, I will recount a tale of woe which prompted this query.
Back in the day (pre Tidal and The River) my sampling of music was random and misguided. Usuallly a purchase of an album would be the result of either already owning an album of a particular band with an ill-educated urge to own more from the same Band, or wandering into a record shop (more latterly a CD shop), browsing for what seemed forever and coming out with a random purchase.
With this strategy, I managed to build a decent sized, but ultimately unrewarding library of music. Some good stuff yes, but way too many albums the led me to mutter under my breath ‘…what the hell was I thinking…?’.
As a consequence, my collection of albums was limited in size and questionable in content. I became rather disillusioned with listening to music in the home and even contemplated selling my beloved HiFi.
Then t’internet happened, then streaming happened (both subscription and local). Halle…flippin’…llulia? At last I could research new (to me) music on t’internet (and the Music Room in this wonderful place), listen to a whole album for ‘free’ (well ‘virtually’ free - excuse the pun) on Tidal and make a considered decision if a CD was either a pile of rubbish, good but only good enough to put in my Tidal favourites, or ‘bonkers good’ that warranted either a CD purchase from that cheap watery place or so good I needed to seek out a hi res version, if it existed.
The result - a more diverse library of music I simply adore! Belters, each and every one. OK, there is the occasional CD I will go off, but on the whole my collection is so much more rewarding than it used to be.The main problem is deciding what album(s) to listen to.
My collection is also of a size and ‘quality’ now that I simply can’t get bored. And I guess the size of my collection is what I am really referring to in the title of this thread.
I now have a core of probably 200 albums (and growing) that I will listen to on a ‘regular’ basis, with say 200 more I would listen to less frequently and 200 more that I would rarely, or never listen to.
So how many albums do you need in your ‘listened-to’ collection and how do you keep your collection fresh and rewarding?