I’m reminded of that Micky Flanagan sketch about bumping into mates whilst popping out to the local shop.
We all have a just in box, an in box, a “holding” box before an out box, then an out out box. Those with very large collections a way out out box.
Sometimes spending too long with the in crowd - you forget about your out out mates.
I once bought the same book three times because I was buying books to read on holiday, starting at the end of that month.
That was bad enough but when we were packing, I found that my wife had also bought a copy!
I just have files separated into classical, opera, rock (loosely defined), and one for my wife’s choicspe of music that I don’t like. Anything new goes straight in, so no in-box, and everything is in, other than my wife’s things that are in to her but out to me, Then of course tgere is Edgar Broughton’s Inside out…!
So isn’t that called the wife’s not box ?
Marriage counselling experts will have a field day over the appropriate and approximate connotations.
Most of my collection was bought when i worked in London.
I picked up many bargains when hmv oxford street reduced box sets
After christmas. Happy days
As the OP in this thread I must say thank you for way more replies than I was expecting when I posted it.
I think it’s fair to say some of the comments were expected & some weren’t. It’s this latter category that have added interest to what could have been a stream (no pun intended) of the same predictable answers.
However in light of some replies I feel I need to clarify a few points:-
I have not spent my musical life listening to Pink Floyd. I can sometimes go hours without spinning a Floyd album or CD. Having said that I find playing David Gilmour CDs a good substitute & I do have a soft spot for my copy of The Peruvian Nose Flute Ensemble’s sublime version of ‘Comfortably Numb’. Their interpretation of the 2nd guitar solo shows Gilmour what he could have achieved if he had put a bit more imagination & effort into the original.
Joking aside, I am partial to new music/artists & have found some on my own volition over the years, plus a couple following recommendations from members of this forum. However, I am still looking for the artists/music that I find preferable to Clapton/Floyd etc. At the age of 65 I doubt I ever will.
I have a fairly diverse collection away from my favourites. A lot of this is based on my love of the guitar but many of the artists play rather different styles to the standard rock/blues artists. I have a small collection of what I suppose you could call contempory jazz fusion albums from the late 80’s, early 90’s, purchased on the recommendations of some Hi Fi mags of the time. I didn’t like them at the time but they have grown on me possibly as my system has improved but, more likely as I have aged. But, replace Dire Straits/Eagles, never!
I have always enjoyed anything by Vaughan Williams & a lot of Elgar’s music. Since retiring I have expanded my classical collection & quite enjoyed some of it. However, to my ear a lot of the classical repertoire sounds much like my guitar practicing, which is best summed up by the celebrated concert pianist, Erico Morecambeovicz. “I’m playing the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”.
Like most, I do use streaming to find new (to me) music, a lot from forum recommendations, & I do have a small but expanding playlist of albums I have quite enjoyed. However, I have found it quite frustrating that I have not found much in the past couple of years that I would go out & spend my own money on. I do regard the monthly streaming subscription as money well spent.
Well, I think I have said most of what I intended to & must go now. Got the urge to play my ‘Eagles play Dire Straits interpretation of James Last’s Party Greats’ box set………
Before I get any further replies, I hope that it is obvious that I have tried to make some factual points in a somewhat jokey (my opinion, you may not agree) manor.
Finally, sincere thanks for all your interesting contributions to this thread.
Connotations are she likes some jazz, pop and Chinese pop, so folder has her name. She also likes classical and opera, and some of the music in the rock folder - but I don’t think she has ever played anything! The only marriage counselling we’ll ever need is how to encourage her to play it, rather than regarding the system as entirely mine, whatever connotations counsellors may place on it!
Interesting, I grew up on Zep, Zappa, Tull and Floyd and although they are still in my collection I now find myself listening to more Scandinavian jazz than anything else. My wife calls it morose, I prefer introspective! Spotify has enabled me to find literally hundreds of interesting albums by artists I never knew.
Spotify has been a great way to find new artists. It tends to come as a result of two methos
[quote=“hungryhalibut, post:11, topic:18037”]
I find it a little odd to still be listening the the same safe old stuff like Dire Straits and the Eagles. There is just so much music out there.
[/qu
There’s a ton of music, that’s for sure, but sadly few ‘worldies’ like DS and Eagles. Why keep listening to the same old Beethoven, Bach etc when there’s a ton of Ligeti, Khatchaturian, Rihm, Boulez etc to waste your precious listening time on?
Having said that, my view would fall somewhere between HH and the OP. I reckon a well curated 1000 albums would cover most bases. The trouble is, you’ll never know which are are the good ones unless you kiss a few frogs. I have around 4000 albums, but I know that about 30% I’ll never or extremely rarely play again. Another 30% that I’m happy to have, but again, will very rarely play. That leaves me fairly close to that 1000 number which are albums I truly value. Maybe 1000 is a magic number, but my view is that you need to do some digging to find your best 1000 rather than just buy 1000 and that’s job done.
In my 40 years of listening and collecting music I amassed around 3K albums that I have ripped to lossless on my NAS. In addition I inherited a similar sized collection of about 3.5K albums ripped to lossless. As has been mentioned my tastes have evolved over the years and collection is quite eclectic. And with RP lossless and Qobuz lossless I have quite a bit of coverage for content. My local files sound great and I enjoy listening to them but probably only listen to local files 20% of the time and that’s usually when I want to listen to an album from start to finish. Though I do use my QNAP playlist occasionally. That said, I love knowing that should I not have an internet connection I’ll be able to still enjoy a wide array of music from my local files.
But there is only one Hotel California, which we’ve all heard a thousand times. Every new recording of say the Goldberg Variations is different, so effectively it’s new music. There is so much to explore, so why play safe, unless one is particularly unadventurous or thinks of the familiar as a comfort blanket. Adapt or die, to coin a phrase.
Why have a large music collection
Cause, Bowie Lou Reed The Beatles The Stones Pink Floyd The Go-Betweens Eels War Chris Rea The Nationals The Doobie Brothers Bob Dylan The Moody Blues Richard Clapton Aretha Franklin Steve Wonder Joe Walsh Sade Rickie Lee Jones etc etc etc exist
PS I was going to put in commas between them but didn’t want to be accused of writing a grocers list. 
I have about 5,500 LPs and 12" singles, about 1,000 7-inch singles, about 3,000 CDs and about 1,000 cassettes. I started buying back in 1976, though having worked in the biz at various points, and as a reviewer, I have been given a lot of stuff over the years.
I have hundreds of discs I’ve listened to but once, and hundreds more I haven’t got round to listening to yet. Maybe I will listen to them one day, maybe not. I just like records and I like being in a flat full of them. Same for books – I like them and I like being surrounded by them.
Agreed 100% HH. Classical is different for the reason you note and is why most of my (far too many) albums are Classical. It’s a real luxury to have a good selection of options and the only way to find your favoured options.
Hotel California is an interesting choice of example for me. I like it, but I don’t think I ever understood why everyone went gaga for it any more than they should have done over the prior 3 Eagles albums. I was listening last night to ‘Long Road out of Eden’ on Vinyl. Beautiful. If I had to choose between this and Hotel California for my desert island disc, then Eden gets the nod. MOR? Perhaps, but It’s closer to old school Eagles for me and just gorgeous to listen to.
I find the idea that there’s this classic set of artists who cannot be bettered to be largely nonsense. There are plenty of artists of equal stature over the past 40 years and it’s not that difficult to find them. You have to want to and you have to accept that the genres of 40 years ago are much changed but equally worthy of exploration. It’s equally nice to go back occasionally to lots of old stuff but I find the desire to go back to it repeatedly a little soul destroying.
I think perhaps you may need to take nostalgia into account here. You are not just comparing an artists skills from 40 years ago to today, but that original artist will take you back to the period of that music, and bring back great memories of that time with say friends and family that may not be around today. Right now I’m thinking of many happy times in discos and pubs from the 80’s at school and university, and the music is all part of that.
Well yes absolutely. I’m sat here listening to Hotlegs on Qobuz and it takes me back to having discovered the 10cc of Godley and Creme as a teenager and many many associated memories. I can remember finding my vinyl version of this album unexpectedly whilst on a shopping trip to London with my mother. Lovely memories.
However, that wasn’t my point really. There’s nothing wrong with such nostalgia per se or just enjoying the music as great music but to never move on from that seems sad to me.
I grew up in a period when liking the music of your parents was anathema. The love of music my friends and I developed back then was to some degree oppositional but it was also founded on the idea that if you hit a point when you stopped and simply said that these were your music tastes and they were set in stone and that was that then you were effectively dead. You had become parents. Stuck in a moment in time. Now sure I get together with those friends all these years later and we’re happy to reminisce about that stuff; laugh about some of it; acknowledge how much of it we still adore but, ultimately, the thing which gives us that buzz is the fact that we never did stand still. We still thrill at discovering new things and sharing it. One friend loved power pop and is now into thrash metal and blues. Another glories in anything which sounds like post punk. Another discovered traditional folk and has gone down a rabbit hole we can never pursue him down. Others of us have unexpectedly discovered a love of hip hop, glitch, classical and so on.
Yeah I can go listen to Makin’ Movies by Dire Straits but it was a starting point and not the destination.
It’s all a matter of taste!
Give them to me Pete 