Recorded Music Collecting

This is a musing about music collecting evolution, the mystical appeal some people find for vinyl over cds, and a note on collecting practice.

For a few years now, I've been reading about a fetish that privileges vinyl over cds. There are technical reasons that might support this: vinyl is analog and continuous physically encoded sound, but cd's are digital bits that are read and interpreted in sequence electronically. Some people claim to be able to hear the difference on a high quality system, pronouncing the vinyl "warmer," and a modest vinyl resurgence seems to come and go, usually at steep prices.

Savvy folks know an mp3 is an encoding that loads the entire digital file for play. It is compressed at variable densities, but usually quite small. A wav file typically is less compressed, but it, too, is sequenced digitally in "samples." Freeware low-end encoding and home-grown editing may not produce the quality of the best commercial encoding, but it can be at least as good as many off-label "collections" that are burned en-masse in limited runs from original sources of questionable quality.

For several years now, Diane and I have a practice of buying a half-dozen new original issue cds for each other as Christmas gifts. We do have our preferences, but we try to be generally open. We feel a little like we're driving a Model A in the Tesla era. With streaming and its convenience, the shrinking of brick-and-mortar music retailers like Tower Records and the fading of "alternative radio" as universities sell off their frequencies, a paradigm shift of sorts certainly has occurred - or evolved.

I began collecting singles retired from juke boxes. My father bought them in mixed boxes from the vendor. It was a great source of obscure artists and b-side gems which, incidentally, had received very little play. Record stores were rare to non-existent, but music stores sold records. I ordered several singles and albums by mail through the music store in the city. Like many others I joined a record club and wound up with expensive albums I didn't like because I didn't submit the refusal.

Diane shares my interest and we have schlepped our increasing collection of music from living place to place over the years.

In the 1970s We discovered used music at Salvation Army and Goodwill. Often bare vinyl, often ethnic and foreign, rootsy R&B or obscure pop, and always somewhat over a decade old - sold for 50 cents to a buck when new music was over $8 everywhere else. I developed a procedure and tools for washing and cleaning and sleeving them. We'd prowl used record shops we passed when travelling. We scored some really great music we would not have bought at new prices in immigrant cities like Omaha, Sioux City, Kansas City, Colorado Springs, Milwaukee, Chicago, Hartford, Portland, Boston, Brockton, New Bedford, Fall River and Providence.

"Alternative radio" was not a real thing except near universities. We made careful collections on reel-to-reel tape to accompany our lives and our parties. Those were mixtures of jazz, regional pop, and evolving hip hop. We moved to cassettes and then home-burned cds, with elaborate box art and labels. Often they need to be re-burned after a few years of play, so I archive the files together.

There are a couple points here. One is the slow fade of this audio model. A few years ago I sold 3 large boxes of vinyl. We have many more albums and maybe we'll digitize some, but we don't really play the vinyl. The CD model is becoming less durable for music sales. The time may come when consumer music will not be sold on physical media.

We may all lament a second paradigm shift, which is the broadcast audio medium itself. Broadcast radio - AM and FM - remains a significant advertising medium. It may be heard mostly in commuting cars, offices and other work places. Commercial music programming tends not to be adventurous, and talk tends to dominate radio. Internet "stations," trying to displace home audio, offer a variety of music and personalized programming free with ads and by subscription. The MTV effect is a thing of the past, and exposure and promotion of consumer music is becoming increasingly fraught.

All things said, I think we're still ahead of European radio for popular music programming. Our broadcast paradigm is entirely different.

13 September 2017