No, I don't think it's ever been posted as its own topic, beb, even though numbers have been referenced in individual threads. Good call!
CDs: I'm going to guess ~2,500. I'm no longer so enamoured of owning music as I once was, so I tend to purge often and ruthlessly.
LPs: ~500 down from an all-time high in the ~5,000 range in the early 90s. I only kept really collectible vinyl, sentimental favorites, and things I don't expect to see on CD in my lifetime.
Tapes: Probably only a handful of favorite mixes and self-produced tapes from friends. Aside from a brief madness in my early teens, I never bought pre-produced casette tapes.
8-tracks, 78s, and Edison Cylinders: Seriously, all three, all a handful of oddities and nothing terribly collectible. My once concession to being a completist is having an example of dead formats on hand as a curiosity and conversation piece.
Now Playing: "Fish in My Dish" Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings Naturally
Originally posted by LinnTate: CDs: I'm going to guess ~2,500. I'm no longer so enamoured of owning music as I once was, so I tend to purge often and ruthlessly.
Same here. I figure if I had kept every cd I ever bought I would probably have between 750 and 1000 cd's. I tend to have a bad habit of buying something and owning it for awhile and selling it and then BUYING IT AGAIN! (gasp)
I'm finally getting my collection where I want it to be, things I actually do listen to on a regular basis. I've tried a different philosophy with owning music. If I'm only going to listen to it a few times, why own it?
Originally posted by buckeyeblogger: I tend to have a bad habit of buying something and owning it for awhile and selling it and then BUYING IT AGAIN! (gasp)
This is, at least, a step up from buying it, owning it, shelving it, forgetting about it, buying it again.
Guilty as charged, but not since the LP era.
Now Playing: "If I Owned A Liquor Store" Jason Wilber Lost in Your Hometown
I'm probably at 4000-5000 cds and at least 750 LPs, but those (like LT) have been purged over time. I, too, only have a handful of cassettes, mostly things that never appeared on CD or LP.
I have fallen victim to all of the buying schemes you mention: buy it, trade it, REBUY it (not that often, but occasionally) and buy it twice because I forgot I owned it (more often than it should). The latter is now less of a problem because I have room to display all of my stuff, but I still do it when I'm out and fine I record I THOUGHT I needed but actually didn't...
CDs: Approx 6700 LPs: around 4850 tapes: Several hundred mix tapes, maybe 20-30 pre-produced cassettes and 15 8-tracks. I don't know how many, if any, of the pre-produced tapes still play good. I should toss them out.
In the mid '90s, I traded away nearly a hundred cd's that I figured I'd never want to hear again.So far I haven't bought anything back. These days, if after a couple spins I don't care for a certain percentage of songs on a cd, I tape or download what I like and sell the cd. I also sold off a couple hundred LPs in the mid '80s. There's a Hawkwind album I kinda wished I'd kept but I have some songs from that album on a Hawkwind comp.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who's bought an album twice because they forgot they own it already. Then again, I've bought a few albums twice because each one was packaged different and often with a different album title. I recall a Surfin' Lungs album being guilty of that practice.
I own 70 CDs, counting double-albums as just one CD, and not counting an odd dozen or two singles. Basically, everything that's on my Rate Your Music profile.
I figure I have about 550 or so cd's in my possession right now. That includes about 50 or so mix discs that I have made. I probably have 25 or so tapes, though I have no clue where they are. And as far as LP's, here's where it gets tricky. There are currently around 10,000(conservative #) albums in storage in Illinois that are left over from when my parent's owned a record store from about '75 to '81. While these are technically not mine, they are willed to my sister and I. But since I do not anticipate my parents passing for probably at least another 25-30 years, I'm not sure I can technically call them mine.
1300 if you include the 300 that went missing during a hurricane. I suspect they still exist. Somewhere. No vinyl — not even a turntable! — except for Meat Beat Manifesto's 1989 debut, Storm the Studio (which is home to the first jungle single). 30–50 tapes between my girlfriend and I, although most are mixes. Sucker still has a tape player in her car.
Probably about 2,000 CDs. I'm afraid about half of them are garbage though. When I was a teen, I would buy CDs based on one song I heard on the radio. Needless to say, that strategy got me a lot of wasted space on my CD racks. When I recently moved, I boxed about 1,300 of the albums I least listened to. I want to one day, when I have massive amounts of free time, burn my favorite songs from the crappy albums and then sell the album (or give it away). Until then, they'll collect dust in my closet.
I have somewhere around 180 CDs. No tapes or vinyl. I'd guess about 30-40 of what I have are technically my wife's, but I listen to a good share of those (especially her R.E.M. albums). I've probably traded in about 70-80 over the years. These days, when I trade in CDs, I make sure to back up the albums on CD-Rs in case I get nostalgic and want to hear them again.
I have about 130 CDs, but I only started collecting in 1998. These years I buy around 20 a year. That isn't quite enough to keep up with all of the discussions around here, but (being a poor college student) that's the best I can do. I've only traded in 1 CD (a live limited edition Blink-182 album that I never really liked, but got more money than face value)
Originally posted by SDF: These days, when I trade in CDs, I make sure to back up the albums on CD-Rs in case I get nostalgic and want to hear them again.
CDs -- about 5,000. I have culled the collection over the years, so there isn't much left to sell off.
LPs -- a few hundred. Mostly I got rid of these as I replaced with CDs. The notion that LPs have better sound is arguable, but after a few listens, LPs lose their pristine sound, and after many listens, they can become useless. So the magic of LP sound is essentially theoretical.
Tapes -- only mix tapes I have made. A few hundred.
Yep. the re-sell Cd. If I kept all Cd's/tapes/lp's I'd be looking at 3,000 total ever owned, maybe more.
Current approx - 900 Cd's, 300 vinyl, 100 cassettes(i can't get rid of or part with - not including mix tapes).
2005 may well be my last year of musical interest. 2006 doesn't look great so far, and my curiosity for new music is definately gone. 2 purchases so far this year, and I can't see myself buying more than 12-15 Cd's this year.
"the sun gets passed from sea to sea, silently, and back to me"
That's interesting, but don't give up hope just yet!! I usually go through the first two/three months of a new year not hardly buying anything new. I just don't get the mania. I love good music! Hell, I've got enough GOOD music to last a dozen lifetimes. But, I usually get into each new year VERY S L O W L Y. Don't give up! This year will be fine, but go ahead and do your other priorities. I, and I imagine others here, hear ya.
"Naked Woman, Naked Man Where did you get that nice sun tan?"
Originally posted by mark f: That's interesting, but don't give up hope just yet!! I usually go through the first two/three months of a new year not hardly buying anything new. I just don't get the mania. I love good music! Hell, I've got enough GOOD music to last a dozen lifetimes. But, I usually get into each new year VERY S L O W L Y. Don't give up! This year will be fine, but go ahead and do your other priorities. I, and I imagine others here, hear ya.
I definitely start slow. Unless a lot of my favorite bands come out with something early in the year, I don't buy much new music. I think I have bought three new releases this year, and I can't really see my self buying anything new till April.
