Music buying habits

[Gordon_Sims]

I recall running into people like that a lot in college. They’d go on and on about a band as though they were their number one fan. But then, as the conversation progressed, I’d discover they only had the band’s one or two most popular albums. Lightweights!

One of my first exposures to just how nasty Facebook can be came about when I volunteered to be on the music committee for my 20-year high school reunion. There was a DJ for one of the events and we were putting together a playlist for the other one. Every band that came up, the one lady would gush about how she was their biggest fan and had all their albums. Even the one hit wonders. When the other lady said we had to have “True” by Spandau Ballet and the first one started in about how she was their number one fan, I’d had enough. Like essentially everyone outside of the UK, I liked “True” and had heard “Gold” but back in the 80s knew nothing else about them. In college I picked up 3-4 of their tapes at the used record store for something like 50 cents apiece, so I could at least say I had more than just the Sixteen Candles soundtrack. I told the fan that there’s no way she was actually their biggest fan and that she only knew one of their songs. She said that wasn’t true and again professed her love for them. I challenged her to name just one of their songs other than “True.” She couldn’t do it. I told her that, just like everyone else, she loved the soundtracks these songs were on and remembered the videos from MTV, but outside of that one oddball in our class who really was Modern English’s biggest fan (he even had posters all over his locker), nobody who loved those songs back then were really fans of those bands in the traditional sense, and certainly not their number one fans. I tried to put it as facetiously as possible because I thought the whole thing was rather silly, but I woke up the next day to find that a big chunk of my high school class had unfriended me (really just her and her friends, a dozen or so total) and that I had been kicked out of the private groups for the reunion planning committees. Had I known she was going to do that I would have told her to relax, don’t do it, and not to worry, be happy.

 

[MrZoom]

I thought I had brought this up before but I couldn’t find it. I’ve had several discussions this week with various people about how, when and why they buy music, which is something some people still actually do.

Do you prefer to buy whole albums or individual songs? My daughters are still kind of baffled by the idea that anyone would buy a complete album instead of buying mp3’s individually. “Why on earth would you buy a song you haven’t heard or that isn’t on the radio?” I’ve explained to them that, back in my day, unless you wanted to buy a 45, you had to buy the whole album/cassette. Sure, cassette singles eventually came along, but until my late teens/early 20s, if I wanted to listen to something in the car it was whole albums and mix tapes. And we’d actually listen to the whole album more often than not, even when there were only a couple songs on there we liked. I’m still very much a whole album person. There are a few exceptions, especially when a song’s only available as a bonus track or on some soundtrack or compilation, but most of the time if I like a song by someone, I get the whole album.

Are you a completist when it comes to your favorite artists? For example, do you have every Three Dog Night album, or just their greatest hits? I’m absolutely a completist, to the point that I once paid almost $40 for a greatest hits CD that was only released in limited numbers overseas just to get a single song I’d never heard before, but that I’d heard wasn’t all that great to begin with. I’m not that obsessive now, but for the bands I really dig, I have all their albums and, when feasible, all their obscure singles and B-sides as well. Thankfully, I’m not as bad as my one friend who’s such an obsessive Eagles fan, he even has all of JD Souther’s albums.

Do you still buy your favorite bands’ albums even when they’re past their prime? A good example of this is the Rolling Stones who, frankly, haven’t had a decent hit since 1989, and a really great song since 1981. Do you keep buying Neil Diamond’s albums out of habit, or do you finally admit that he kind of said all he had to say with “America” and ignore his new releases? I’m kind of torn on this because there are a handful of bands I like who have a song or two on their later, tired albums that I really like. Then you’ve got cases like Journey who really haven’t been the same band since ditching Steve Perry. I’m kind of torn between that completist urge, a fan’s sense of loyalty to my favorite bands, and an all too frequent feeling of being let down by a band whose talent seems to have left office about the same time as the Reagan administration.

1. I tend to buy full albums, even when I’m doing digital downloads. The way I look at it is, that artist put in the effort to make a complete album, so I’m supporting that artist by purchasing and listening to his or her complete work. (Even if one or two songs are duds. )
   I also am one of those stuck-in-the-muds who still buys a few physical CDs a year. While digital downloads are nice and convenient and take up less space, there’s something about holding the physical disc in your hand. And I can always ‘rip’ the audio files off the CD to put on my computer/phone/tablet.
2. Not a completist. I’m still missing a few albums by Jars of Clay and Amy Grant (just to name a couple of favorites off the top of my head).
3. Yes – to use the Amy Grant example again, I still buy her new releases even though the peak of her popularity is long past. The dance remix album she came out with in the summer of 2014 is lots of fun.

 

[tomarin]

One of my first exposures to just how nasty Facebook can be came about when I volunteered to be on the music committee for my 20-year high school reunion. There was a DJ for one of the events and we were putting together a playlist for the other one. Every band that came up, the one lady would gush about how she was their biggest fan and had all their albums. Even the one hit wonders. When the other lady said we had to have “True” by Spandau Ballet and the first one started in about how she was their number one fan, I’d had enough. Like essentially everyone outside of the UK, I liked “True” and had heard “Gold” but back in the 80s knew nothing else about them. In college I picked up 3-4 of their tapes at the used record store for something like 50 cents apiece, so I could at least say I had more than just the Sixteen Candles soundtrack. I told the fan that there’s no way she was actually their biggest fan and that she only knew one of their songs. She said that wasn’t true and again professed her love for them. I challenged her to name just one of their songs other than “True.” She couldn’t do it. I told her that, just like everyone else, she loved the soundtracks these songs were on and remembered the videos from MTV, but outside of that one oddball in our class who really was Modern English’s biggest fan (he even had posters all over his locker), nobody who loved those songs back then were really fans of those bands in the traditional sense, and certainly not their number one fans. I tried to put it as facetiously as possible because I thought the whole thing was rather silly, but I woke up the next day to find that a big chunk of my high school class had unfriended me (really just her and her friends, a dozen or so total) and that I had been kicked out of the private groups for the reunion planning committees. Had I known she was going to do that I would have told her to relax, don’t do it, and not to worry, be happy.

She should have just done her angry dance outside (in some quasi-abandoned urban area, perhaps) and moved on.

 

[natsume]

I always purchase the full album, actually I prefer to have CD than buying digital downloads. Unless, I want only one song from a band. But that’s a rare case. It is nice to explore the other songs in a music album. I have many favorite songs that are not released on the radio or music videos.

 

[Kay_Cee]

I like to buy individual songs. There is only one band (the Beatles) where I can justify buying an entire album- because I like everything they made. Music these days, I only find two or three songs from any artist that I can appreciate.

Everything they did? Even “Revolution 9”?

If so, you’re the first person I’ve heard of who actually liked that.

 

[Kay_Cee]

My husband and I deal in records and CDs on eBay. We still sell quite a bit, especially during the Christmas season.

But I can’t help wondering when enough is enough. My husband has more music than he will ever have time to listen to. Aren’t thousands of LPs and CDs enough? He has 8-tracks, 45’s, 78’s, cassettes, and reel to reel tapes. He spent $3,000 on a storage shed to help house his collection, and right now he is in the middle of converting our daughter’s former bedroom into even more storage space. Yet he can’t seem to stop buying more.

I think even music can be an addiction.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

1. I tend to buy full albums, even when I’m doing digital downloads. The way I look at it is, that artist put in the effort to make a complete album, so I’m supporting that artist by purchasing and listening to his or her complete work. (Even if one or two songs are duds. )
   I also am one of those stuck-in-the-muds who still buys a few physical CDs a year. While digital downloads are nice and convenient and take up less space, there’s something about holding the physical disc in your hand. And I can always ‘rip’ the audio files off the CD to put on my computer/phone/tablet.

I still buy CD’s, but usually only when it’s cheaper or there’s no download available. A lot of albums on Amazon are cheaper if you buy the CD and you often get an automatic download included. I also buy a lot of used CD’s. I can’t justify spending $10-15 on a CD when I can get it used for a fraction of the price.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

My husband and I deal in records and CDs on eBay. We still sell quite a bit, especially during the Christmas season.

But I can’t help wondering when enough is enough. My husband has more music than he will ever have time to listen to. Aren’t thousands of LPs and CDs enough? He has 8-tracks, 45’s, 78’s, cassettes, and reel to reel tapes. He spent $3,000 on a storage shed to help house his collection, and right now he is in the middle of converting our daughter’s former bedroom into even more storage space. Yet he can’t seem to stop buying more.

I think even music can be an addiction.

Collecting can be a real addiction. I’ve sold off a couple collections so I’ve gone through it. I have friends whose marriages broke up over their collecting addictions. About the only thing I can say I still collect is music, but I tend to spend less than $20/month and the vast bulk of my collection is digital so it doesn’t take up any space.

As for finding the time to listen to it all, I try to have music playing as often as possible, both at home and in the car. There’s stuff I listen to all the time, while other music seldom, if ever gets played. There’s also a lot that I used to listen to all the time that has been demoted to the seldom-heard category. Still, it’s nice to have around if I’m ever in the mood for it.

 

[Kay_Cee]

Collecting can be a real addiction. I’ve sold off a couple collections so I’ve gone through it. I have friends whose marriages broke up over their collecting addictions. About the only thing I can say I still collect is music, but I tend to spend less than $20/month and the vast bulk of my collection is digital so it doesn’t take up any space.

As for finding the time to listen to it all, I try to have music playing as often as possible, both at home and in the car. There’s stuff I listen to all the time, while other music seldom, if ever gets played. There’s also a lot that I used to listen to all the time that has been demoted to the seldom-heard category. Still, it’s nice to have around if I’m ever in the mood for it.

The problem, of course, is that if he listens to something, I have to listen to it too, whether I want to or not.

If he’s driving the car, we listen to what he wants to listen to. If I’m driving the car, we listen to what he wants to listen to.

I asked him once why he needs all that music. His reply was “I just do.”

That did not answer the question for me.

But I’m glad he’s converting one of the bedrooms into a storage area. I’m sick of CDs in the kitchen, in the living room, in the bedroom. He promised, before we got married, that I could have a nice neat clean house. I’ve been waiting 26 1/2 years for him to fulfill his promise. Having this second storage area (in addition to a storage shed) had better work.

 

[randomuser]

Collecting can be a real addiction. I’ve sold off a couple collections so I’ve gone through it. I have friends whose marriages broke up over their collecting addictions. About the only thing I can say I still collect is music, but I tend to spend less than $20/month and the vast bulk of my collection is digital so it doesn’t take up any space.

As for finding the time to listen to it all, I try to have music playing as often as possible, both at home and in the car. There’s stuff I listen to all the time, while other music seldom, if ever gets played. There’s also a lot that I used to listen to all the time that has been demoted to the seldom-heard category. Still, it’s nice to have around if I’m ever in the mood for it.

I cannot set foot in a Goodwill or thrift store without heading for the records. And they typically have a ton of records. Everything from campy novelty stuff to 70’s/80’s-era r&b/soul (which inevitably will get sampled on hip-hop tracks) to movie soundtracks and 80’s Top 40. I love how they have the 45’s just stacked without the sleeves with no adapters for the donut hole. Part of me wants me the “record collector hero” who helps rescue an otherwise forgotten artist, like in “Anvil” or “Searching For Sugarman” or “A Band Called Death,” and part of me just likes discovering exciting new stuff that in a million years won’t ever be leaked online because nobody else will know about it.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

I cannot set foot in a Goodwill or thrift store without heading for the records. And they typically have a ton of records. Everything from campy novelty stuff to 70’s/80’s-era r&b/soul (which inevitably will get sampled on hip-hop tracks) to movie soundtracks and 80’s Top 40. I love how they have the 45’s just stacked without the sleeves with no adapters for the donut hole. Part of me wants me the “record collector hero” who helps rescue an otherwise forgotten artist, like in “Anvil” or “Searching For Sugarman” or “A Band Called Death,” and part of me just likes discovering exciting new stuff that in a million years won’t ever be leaked online because nobody else will know about it.

That’s kind of how I was back in college with cassettes. We had a few used stores we’d go to and if the cover art, band name, or anything else at all about the tape caught my attention, I’d buy it. I was sure I was going to uncover some forgotten gem or a band who should have made it big but didn’t. All I ever found was that all those 25-cent tapes earned their low price.