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How much music have you got?

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I’m specifically interested in your physical collection – albums and singles

I’m at the stage now where I probably have enough but I can’t stop snapping up bargains especially cds and I was curious about where I stand in comparison to other Afterworders

I have 485 Lps,
675 7″‘singles,
160 12″ singles
600 cd albums
115 cd singles
40 cassette albums

How about you?

0

Comments

  1. The database says:
    10″ EP 1
    10″ Single 2
    12″ EP 8
    12″ Single 166
    7″ EP 23
    7″ Single 1715
    CD 1340
    CD Single 157
    LP 921

    (excluding Box Sets)

    All values (especially CDs) expected to increase at a moments notice.
    It is physically impossible to walk past a Charity Shop and Record Shop and not buy something

    In addition, there’s a pile of about 50 LPs and 50 singles next to me at the moment, and about 120 Cassettes in the loft

    • LPs and 12″ singles (I am NOT going to sit and separate them): 560

      CDs: 450

      Tapes (prerecorded, and not including free tapes from old NMEs): 37

      7″ singles: 86

      Hm. Less than I would have thought, but still respectable (or sad, depending on your outlook).

  6. No idea of numbers, but too many and at the same time not enough.

    It’s quite a fluid thing, my collection, with things regularly leaving as well as arriving, although there’s definitely more in than out. As it were.

  11. 2 feet of vinyl LPs (sold another 6 feet over the years), a foot of 45s, three single beds for children turned into shelving units of CDs, about 300 cassette tapes in the garage, and several well-stuffed hard drives. Every pocket of the car full of CDs plus a 60gig IPod. And probably more. It’s an addiction. What can i say? I also have thousands of books, and a good few hundred DVDs. If I never acquired a new anything, i’d have enough to keep me interested for the enxt 20 years ago. It weas my birthday yesterday. What did people give me? Books, CDs, and DVDs. The stuff now simply breeds without my involvement.

  13. My name is Mr Wrongness and I am a recovering record collector. As yet I am still too ashamed to reveal how big my collection used to be but, in digital form (everything physical long gone), I am down to around 500 albums.
    I have simply no idea how anyone has the time to listen to hundreds nay thousands of CDs given the wealth of books, films, TV series out there nevermind the other essentials of life like walking, cooking, travelling, delighting in grandchildren, watching the vines grow etc etc etc. Life is simply too short, he said staring at 70 in 18 months time, to wonder if I really need the remastered flac bootleg of Steely Dan NYC 1971 (I do, I do!).
    My advice to you all is declutter then declutter some more. Remember what the dormouse said.
    Given the nature and premise of this blog I fear I may be once again speaking to an empty room. I’ll be right here same time next week, all welcome.

  14. Well, where do I go from here, (the wife says down to the tip) I fear, with my LPs/CDs/DVDs.
    No chance I say, can we get some more storage thingies?
    No more room at the inn, I may have to stop this collecting.
    Just checked the insurance docs, at the last census there were;
    6-7000 CDs
    about 1500 LPs
    fuck knows how many DVDs,
    and a shedfull of CD singles (500).
    Got shut of my 12″ singles to make room for more LPs, never again will I give/sell/throw away a single CD/LP/DVD again.
    Just starting collecting 7″ psychedelic singles, again.

  15. Not including bootlegs, 2,773 CDs, or thereabouts, as some of that number are boxed sets, i.e. 47 Dylan albums, 60 Elvis albums, etc. And 301 CD singles/EPs.

    Vinyl – I sold nearly all of mine to fund buying CDs when I bought a CD player. I used to have thousands and I had some really rare and collectable stuff, in particular Beatles and Pet Shop Boys related records. I make a point of never looking up how much they go for on eBay nowadays, as it would only upset me! The only vinyl I have left is a collection of everything available related to The Dream Academy and Stephen Duffy/The Lilac Time. Probably comes to 100-150 if you include singles, 12″ singles, promos, etc.

    Electronically, as I download a lot of music these days cos the wife isn’t particularly happy that I have sort of turned the house into a bit of a museum of my collections and I have run out of space for more CDs, I have around another 3,300 albums/bootlegs/mixtapes (hip hop mixtapes, not stuff I’ve put together myself!)

    I’ve then got around 1,500 Blu Rays/DVDs (mainly Blu Rays) too. Fortunately we have a large living room, but the wife is still not too chuffed having the wall space in the living room dominated by my stuff, especially when you factor in the thousands of books, comics, magazines, trading cards, football programmes, James Bond and Batman memorabilia and the signed prints I have filling shelves and all over the walls around the house. It’s because of this that I am happily going along with getting a new kitchen and knocking through a few rooms, even though I don’t really think we need to. My wife is very tolerant of me, so it’s the least she deserves!

  16. Currently hovering around a thousand.
    A quick look see tells me I have many, many discs unplayed since the mid 90s.
    Chief culprit here being Living Colour’s Times Up….bought on the strength of Vernon Reid’s guitar playing…which I grew to hate overnight.

    I also note the wife’s collection racked with mine amounts to 10 discs…Adele, Abba, Madness, Now 98 and 99.
    The latest Adele (bought by me as a “hopeful sex” present) is unopened.
    Her Hot Chocolate best of…which I quite like….is missing.
    Bet her sister has it…..again.

    • “Unopened” – oh dear.

      Funny you should mention Time’s Up. That’s the oldest CD I still have (a couple of dozen from earlier are long since sold)

      Try Solace of You again – it’s brilliant.

  17. Lord knows, roughly 3k cds, 300 lps, 1k dvds (film is the wife’s love)
    But I have also have about 300 discs in waiting: waiting to be listened and added/discarded, being e-music and “review purposes” otherwise unavailable odds and ends scoured here and there. I try and usually succeed to buy in physical or e-music download (ripped to disc) anything where royalties are likely to make a difference.

  18. A width of a garage x 4 shelves of vinyl (sold about 1000 albums some years ago, but they were my brother in laws and after storing them for 25+ years and a final ultimatum to come and get them. He didn’t and we pocketed a nice 4 figure sum for them.)
    3000+ CDs
    100+ box sets
    A few cassettes (mainly those rather nice ZTT ones from the 80s)
    6 plastic storage boxes of DVDs (50% movies 50% box sets)
    300+ Blu Rays

    And growing daily, a nice Duritti Column box through the letter box today!

  19. The space my collection takes up if it was all stacked in individual heaps. Actually counting them all would send me crazy(er).

    33 inches vinyl albums
    5 inches 12″ singles
    9 inches 7″ singles
    451 inches official CDs mostly in jewel cases or digipacks
    32 inches unofficial CDs in paper/plastic sleeves
    118 inches CD box sets
    90 inches cassettes

    My brother, when I was back home at my mum’s in the ’90s, had a sneaky habit of visiting mum while I was out at work in order to nick my CDs and videos. I would notice after a while that certain things were missing and nick them back when I paid a visit to him.
    I’m still a few albums short after all this time. The matter has never been discussed between us.

    • I forgot to include my magazine coverdisc and “various artists” CD collection. Probably about a thousand of ’em.

      I also have a few hundred minidiscs of radio shows. I’d love to find a quick way of digitising these. i.e. not having to play them one after the other into another device to get WAV files and then convert those to FLAC.

  20. …My numbers of vinyls are in fairly similar proportions (though maybe more in terms of quantity/width/girth). A few other thoughts:

    – when I was looking to replace many cassettes (especially the special editions with extra material) with CDs, I failed to attract any interest in the former, and so, with the exception of my NME cassette collection and very few others, everything else went to landfill.

    – with the exception of one LP – Delta 5, which I sold on for double the price the same day I purchased it, as the Island’s record shop only had one copy – I have not disposed of one piece of vinyl or cd I own. I also have multiple versions/formats of many of my favourites. That does not make me weird and/or obsessive, shirley?

    – with the advent of cd, and the much harder-to-come-by vinyl versions of albums (and the poor quality of same, particularly in the 1990s), it has taken me much time and – albeit necessary – expense over the years to acquire essential albums on decent quality vinyl.

    On a(n) (even) more serious note, it seems I will have to bequeath specifically my CD and vinyl collection, together with most of my special books, fillums and graphic novels (comics), because otherwise Mrs Biggles will donate all of them to a local skip.

    Perhaps, after all, I should inform her as to the real values of much of my vinyl and early Marvel/DC comics…

  21. About a decade ago my wife had a count. Well, she counted a shelf and multiplied by the number of shelves. It came to over 30,000. It will be a lot more now. There are about a thousand LPs in the front room and most of the rest are CDs. Probably over 1K dvds and blu rays. We have a long hallway and landing, both of which are lined with purpose built CD shelves. The spare bedroom is also lined with shelves. Box sets are on a top shelf in the hall. There is also a large oak bookcase full of music books. I did have over a thousand cassettes but I threw them all away. I still miss some.

    I did have a cull last year and weeded out thousands of bootleg CDRs to make space. and redecorate my music room which had been getting smaller and smaller as the shelves grew relentlessly towards the middle of the room. Now there is not a single shelf in that room and the claustrophobic feeling has gone.

    Good news – the acquisition of a NAS means that I no longer bother burning CDRs and saves space.

    I do like music and play it constantly.

  22. I’m both impressed and appalled by these statistics, since my music collection occupies a space approximately 10.5 x 7.5 cm, plus whatever space 30 million tracks on Spotify takes up (inevitably some duplication there…). When I go back to Blighty it’ll go with me in my carry-on.

    Even at my most rabidly acquisitive I never had more than 500 vinlys of all sorts. Same for CDs and cassettes, I reckon.

    Books now, that’s a different matter…

  23. I used to have several hundred 12″s and LPs but I sold them when I left the UK for NZ over 20 years ago. Over the last 20 years, I have built up a staggering collection that can be described thus:

    CDs – about 40 (1 bought in the last 4 years)
    Vinyls – 5 (Beatles Rarities, Tour De France Soundtracks, China Crisis x 2, Pet Shop Boys)
    Box Sets – 1 (Depeche Mode)

    ITunes wasn’t the thing that stopped me buying music, it was children and then Spotify. The idea of having a study where I could have my own Bang & Olufsen record player, and speakers placed just so, in a room which houses a big leather chair and a well-organised library of several thousand pristine vinyl records – is the stuff of wild, crazy dreams.

    Spotify means I can listen to anything at any time and the premium service is really cheap, considering how much pleasure I get from it. I can tell my car to play “I Eat Cannibals” and moments later, there it is. That’s just amazing.

  25. CLZ says my total items is 9772 which includes 2356 lps, 2463 cds and 3896 CD-Rs (I back up every digital download). I also have cassettes and picture discs listed separately and50 box sets. The current dvd/Blu-ray total is 1204.

    • Those relying on CDRs to store precious music should know that the lifespan is relatively short. From Wiki:

      “Lifespan.

      Real-life (not accelerated aging) tests have revealed that some CD-Rs degrade quickly even if stored normally.[7][8] The quality of a CD-R disc has a large and direct influence on longevity—low quality discs should not be expected to last very long. According to research conducted by J. Perdereau, CD-Rs are expected to have an average life expectancy of 10 years.[9] Branding isn’t a reliable guide to quality, because many brands (major as well as no name) do not manufacture their own discs. Instead they are sourced from different manufacturers of varying quality. For best results, the actual manufacturer and material components of each batch of discs should be verified.
      Burned CD-Rs suffer from material degradation, just like most writable media. CD-R media have an internal layer of dye used to store data. In a CD-RW disc, the recording layer is made of an alloy of silver and other metals—indium, antimony, and tellurium.[10] In CD-R media, the dye itself can degrade, causing data to become unreadable.

      As well as degradation of the dye, failure of a CD-R can be due to the reflective surface. While silver is less expensive and more widely used, it is more prone to oxidation resulting in a non-reflecting surface. Gold on the other hand, although more expensive and no longer widely used, is an inert material, so gold-based CD-Rs do not suffer from this problem. Manufacturers have estimated the longevity of gold-based CD-Rs to be as high as 100 years.[11]”

      Many of my old ones when played sounded muffled and scratchy; all have now all be chucked. They’re great for short-term use, e.g. copying an album to play at work or in the car, but for anything else they’re useless, unless perhaps you have expensive gold CDRs.

      • All my digital library is also backed up to two separate hard drives, I lost thousands of photographs in 2006 thanks to a Windows update and a dodgy hard drive, I never rely on one storage solution now.

        My precious music is mostly on vinyl, I can’t remember the last time I actually put a CD-R into my CD player.

      • Early laser discs and CDs suffered from laser rot” caused by the edge of the disc not being sealed, allowing oxidisation over time from the edge in. I worked for the company that installed the video walls for the initial ru of Chess. The video was run from Phillips laserdisc, using glass masters rather than regular discs, until one got dropped.

  27. Scary amounts for our house size, though one new year resolution is to pare it down significantly… estimates below

    Vinyl albums: 300
    12″ singles: 100
    7″ singles: 800 (I have a jukebox, if that’s a mitigating factor…)
    Cassettes: 100 pre-recorded, countless (minimum 500) others
    CD albums: 1000
    CD singles: 200
    Box sets: 15

  28. CLZ shows my CDs to be just under 5000 (including box sets) but there’s an awful lot (probably about another 1000 at a conservative estimate that are freebies which live with me too)
    There’s about 2000 singles and about 300 LPs
    Cassettes – too many to count but they are now in a couple of (very) large plastic boxes and I’d estimate about 1500.
    Digital files – God knows
    Books – fucking thousands (though over the years I have got rid of a lot)
    DVDs – about 200
    Football programmes – 50 years worth of attending on average 20 matches a season.
    When we had an extension built I commandeered what had been the garage for a study and had bespoke CD storage put into it. I’ve now outgrown it.
    I do some work for local hospital radio and I’ve got waaaay more physical stuff than what they’ve got.

    My wife talks about something called decluttering but I start and then get engrossed in something I’ve found and that’s normally as far as it gets.

  29. About 2500 elpees, roughly 11000 ceedees, around 50 vinlysingles, approx. 500 cassettes, and 20 terabytes of, er, indeterminately sourced boots in flac.
    If I listen continuously, I will be approx 223 years old before I need to repeat anything.

  31. Far, far, too much. My wife asked me what I was buying the other day:

    “It’s an LP”
    “Why?”
    “Because I only have it on an old CD”
    “What are you going to do with it?”
    “I’ll listen to it”
    “When?”

    She has a point.

    As others have said above, she has more tolerance/patience than I deserve.

  33. Around 700 Vinyl LPs and singles, I’ve no idea how many CDs – maybe 2500. Not got loads of box sets, no more than 30 or so. Still got a few boxes of tapes too.
    I do actively try and do crop rotation with records and just keep stuff that’s special – sold a few bits on Discogs recently. Would offload some more of the CDs but while there’s never been a better time to sell Vinyl, there’s never been a worse time to sell CDs.

    I buy records and CDs to listen to, not to collect and they get out of their sleeves and played on a regular basis – and occasionally shoved in a bag and DJ’d with.

  34. Can’t move for CDs Part 114:
    Someone, a RAWWWKKKKK fan, is getting rid of all their CDs, whole runs of individual acts, in one of our local charity shops.
    Probably a New Year’s resolution.

    Chipping away little by little, and avoiding ELO, Queen and Status Quo like the plague, there’s enough McCartney (a 2cd/1dvd promo of his debut LP), “Hot Rats” and “The Genesis of Slade” on the margins of his collection to keep me in CDs for years to come.
    It’s 16th January and I’m on 10 already; those 2017/2018 reissues will just have to wait awhile.

  35. How many? Lots, not got the time or inclination to count them. I bought 6 CDs yesterday while through in Glasgow for a gig and when I got home another CD and a CD box set had been delivered.
    Far more stuff than I will ever be able to listen to before I pop my clogs but it gives me something to do

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