At the risk of starting a pissing contest, I noted the size of Chris Cantalini’s (Gorilla vs Bear) music collection in Muzzle of Bees’ interview today and couldn’t help but wonder…
Any idea how many albums are in your collection?
Probably about 300 on CD, another 100 or so on vinyl, and like 60 GB on my hard drive.
…does it matter how much you listen to so long as you listen to the “right stuff“? Sure today you can get a sampling of almost any band over the net, grabbing bits and pieces from this blog and that website, but to really get a sense for a band, I’d say you’ve got to give the whole album a listen at least once. I was at a fashion show over the summer and there was a German DJ spinning some pretty good stuff that I never heard before. I ended up picking up General Electrics at his recommendation, a relatively new band on the Compost label. He said that there were over 20,000 albums released last year in Germany alone. Now I knew there were a lot of little electronic labels and dj’s doing DIY stuff, but I was taken aback by that number. Multiply that across the globe and it quickly becomes impossible to listen to even a small fraction of all that music. I am quick to confess that I probably rely on AllMusicGuide too often to supplement my knowledge (how do they manage to listen to all those albums, and rate them no less?). In the end, whether its AMG, Pitchfork, CMG, The Wire, or your local record store, we rely on their expertise to filter out the enormous amount of music out there. Filtering though is dangerous because it means that other people are making your decisions for you. For most of us, that means choose your filters carefully. The cooler your filter, the cooler the stuff is you listen to. Blogs have opened up a whole new world of filters by giving a platform for the masses to voice their opinions. I would say that is where they have their greatest potential, as a caucaphony of individual voices that reflect the density and diversity of music out there. I guess the message is, be your own filter. Oh yeah, and don’t believe the hype.
And just to set the ‘record’ straight, I’m sitting on 2,400 albums on cd, vinyl, cassette, and mp3’s.
: General Electrics - Frost on your Sunglasses :
: General Electrics - Tu M’Intrigues :
how do you come up with that number? i wouldn’t have a clue as to how many albums i own.
This is going to sound a bit crazy, but I counted all my cd’s for insurance reasons before moving to LA and at that time had about 700. That’s a lot of money right? Since then I have purged the collection significantly and probably have around 300-400. ITunes makes it pretty easy to figure out how many albums you have. Granted that some of them are not full albums, but 2,400 is a conservative figure.