I have come to a crossroads and I’m not sure how I want to move forward. I wanted to get my fellow music fans opinion. I recently did a large home remodel on my house which has caused me to take everything down (it was gutted) and now i’m putting everything back. Prior to the take down I had two sets up shelving for all of my CDs, DVDs, BLURAYs, and albums. My entire collection. I’m not real sure of the correct count of the items but I can tell you i’ve been collection music for 40+ years. I have probably 400+ CDs, 200 DVDs (some movies, so mostly music DVDs with 5.1 surround), about 50 blurays, and about 100 records. It’s a solid collection.
With streaming and technology the way it is going, they are really becoming obsolete. My CD and record player is in my attic. I play most everything (on the rare occasion I do play one) on my xBox. Some of the older DVDs can’t even decode on the xBox, but I’m sure they would on a standard DVD player. And with my 4K TV, the DVDs look crappy to be honest. The best part of my collection are my CDs. But again, my CD player (an NAD player) is in the attic and with streaming (mostly Apple music) you could say there’s really no reason for me to have them.
What would you guys do with all of this media? Sell them? Box them up and put them in the attic? (My attic can get scorching hot in the summer so i’m worried they might get ruined anyway), My house isn’t massive so space is limited. It’s not like I have a guest room where I can stash them. I feel like it’s either sell them, gift them to friends and family or store them. I’m leaning to store them since I’ve worked so long on the collection.
I have also thought about having a specialty shelving guy come out and build custom shelves for the CDs (at the the least). I’ve got a local file server at my house to rip all of my stuff if I chose to. but that would be a massive job and take a few months to encode everything.
What are you guys doing with your collection of media?
I have a bout 5,000 or so cd’s, blu-rays/DVD and pieces of vinyl…been collecting shit since I was a teenager…I still buy stuff pretty regularly…I’m a sucker for something tangible with artwork etc so I will probably never get rid of my stuff…I have a whole room in my house that is like a god damn rock n roll museum…
That being said,I get where you are coming from…streaming is obviously the present and future and this shit takes up a lot of room…if I were you I would store them but I would totally get the desire to free up space and get rid of them…good luck,man…
I got rid of most my physical media years ago and rarely miss any of it. I don’t have much nostalgia for physical items anymore and already have more entertainment to engage with than I have time, so don’t feel the need for lots of rewatching.
This is the route i would go… who cares how long it will take, the time is gonna pass anyway.
I have about 1500 cds. It took me about 6-7 days to rip everything including grabbing the album cover art for the mp3s. I them saved them all to a san disk for back up. Now i rip cds whenever i get them and makes it easier.
Let me share my similar conundrum with you. Maybe you can take away something from it.
I have over 5,000 CDs. I’d say maybe 35% of the collection is alphabetized and shelved. The rest is everywhere – in stacks, in boxes, on chairs, everywhere. If CDs were mold, the apartment would be unlivable.
I kept up with CD purchases mostly because I felt I needed a backup data copy of albums I downloaded, just so I could restore my mp3 collection if my external hard drive takes a shit. (I listen to 99% of my music in front of the computer, on iTunes. The other 1% of the time is on my iPod in the car. Yes. An iPod. I am very retro.)
About a year and a half ago, iTunes went tits up and I had to pump all of my mp3s – about a terabyte – back into it. I thought it was over. While I was waiting for my PC to process something, I turned around in my office chair, looked at my CDs, and asked myself, in all seriousness, if I had the inclination of re-rip every one of these albums. And of course, the answer was no.
Now I have an enormous albatross around my neck. I am going to try to unload the collection on a local record store – at this point, I’ll give them away for free if a record store would just do the work of packing and carrying them away. But something keeps holding me back. I don’t know what. My shrink and I have been trying to unravel it for months. Why do I keep this crap if, God forbid, I do lose my mp3s? I’m just going to go to Spotify in that event.
So where does that leave me? Where does that leave you? No easy answers. My suggestion to you would be to rip everything, back it up on Dropbox (like I am), and get rid of the CDs. Maybe you’ll have an easier time of it than me…
I keep my CDs (and still buy new ones) because I actually favor playing CDs when I’m at home. Also, there’s quite a few albums I have on CD that I just can’t find on Spotify or even YouTube. And then there’s the “collectors desease” - but my comic books / graphic novels take up WAY more space than CDs - to the degree where I’m constantly evaluation which ones I “actually need” and which ones I can give to the Salvation Army for them to re-sell.
If I ever lose my apartment and have go back to renting, I’ll sell everything I’ve got except my laptop and a couple of boxer shorts and be free.
Yea, that’s the thing. Pink Floyd just announced they’re finally going to release the 2018 Animals 5.1 mix on Blu-ray. I fucking preordered that last week. This week I find out the cure is FINALLY releasing the Wish album reissue that cure fans have been waiting for since about 2009. I preordered that today on CD, so fuck, I’m still buying them.
Yeah, i wouldn’t call it a disease unless its keeping you from living comfortably/normally. If it makes you happy and it aint hurting anything then why is it a problem? I like CDs, i like physical media. It makes me happy getting that stuff. I guess im just old fashioned…
Also netflix and spotify have made me distrustful of streaming. I like to be able to play my songs when i want and not have to worry if the artist is in a fight with the company or if the streaming service has dumped said artist/song cause it doesnt get enough streams… try to find de la souls 3ft high and rising…
I just love physical media in general, my favorite being vinyl and hard cover books.
I get that digital is more convenient and takes up less space, but the artwork and all the little extras that physical media offers adds to the experience and my overall enjoyment.
I don’t know if I’d call it a disease or not, but my office space (I live in a two-room apartment, so I have one room designated as an “office”) is littered with them. I’d say 85% of the room is inaccessible.
I stopped buying CDs over a year ago. I feel better about the situation – a little – and I like the extra money, but of course, I miss the physical media. I guess I can’t have it both ways.
I recently bought a new car and it’s my first one without a CD player(well ,since they started putting CD players in cars…had a few with cassette players)…so I’ve had to do some streaming unfortunately…they gave me 6 months free of Sirius/XM also but I doubt I will re-new the subscription once it runs out…gotta figure that out
I am a massive collector. Over 25 years I have never stopped buying physical media, in fact, due to the extra money I had over the pandemic from not traveling, my collection tripled in size over the last two years. Bought every CD I had ever wanted but not bought, stuff I sold, lost, ect. Then I turned towards finishing discographies of my favorite bands, including singles, promos. I finally finished custom shelf’s in my studio for my music collection too, another project that had been on the books for years.
I own maybe a hundred or so records, just stuff I have picked up over the years to collect, probably the most valuable/rare I own are original copies of Mechanical Animals and Holy Wood I bought back when I was in high school when they came out. I know vinyl has seen a huge resurgence, but not with me.
The last couple years out of curiosity I have started picking up cassettes, because I guess I am a hipster since I “have to be different” .
Anyways, here is all my Ministry tapes IMG_20220804_104250222|690x388 Not pictured is the All Day and Dark Side sampler cardboard sleeves.
