New Turntable 6 Years Later

Looking at my old posts I saw that it's been 6 and 1/2 years since I purchased my turntable. And over 500 records later and it's still going strong. Here's the breakdown of how many albums I digitized since then:

2013: 10
2014: 44
2015: 13
2016: 192
2017: 164
2018: 113 (thus far)

As you can see, 2016 was the year I really started getting down to this meticulous work. I had been gathering albums from thrift stores and acquired quite a number before deciding to digitize them. At the moment I still have around 30-40 that need to be done.

This has significantly increased my music library and saved me tons of money. Sure, the quality is not the same as from a cd. But for the price it's well worth it. Well worth it indeed, considering a few of these thrift store finds I have sold for $25 each. Think about that; paying $1, sometimes $2, and reselling for $25. You could say in some cases I'm getting music absolutely free!

Since I'm not a record collector, rather a music collector, I have no desire in keeping most of these thrift store records. Thus I plan to sell these at a garage sale sometime next year. The plan was to hold this event this year but things didn't quite pan out properly. That includes the weather suddenly going from 80° to 50°.

I am starting to wonder if I should change the stylus soon. According to what I've read it should be replaced after 200 hours of play. Let's say each record is about 30 minutes. That means that after 400 records it's time for a new stylus. And as you can see from the above numbers I have played well over 500. That's not including the records I didn't digitize but just played to see if they were in good condition.

Some of the records I plan to keep because they are of my favorite artists. But most I have no interest in having. I am not a vinyl person. Once I record these things into mp3 files I will most likely never play them on a turntable again. I don't have emotional attachments to them because they're not from my childhood nor were they given to me as gifts nor are they being passed down to me. But some have nostalgic qualities and I would just like to keep them.

I will be unleashing some from my own long-time personal collection as well. A long time ago a neighbor threw out a few boxes full of records from the 1950s and 1960s. All sorts of stuff from The Beach Boys and The Beatles to Hawaiian music and traditional Mexican music. I don't know why anyone would just throw these things in the garbage. Especially The Beatles' record which was their first ever on Vee Jay records. And I know these neighbors used to hold garage sales of their own. I can't explain it. This trash treasure is where I got my first Beach Boys record from, even though I have never been a huge fan of theirs. Basically, the spoils were split up among other members of my household. I being the youngest had little say in what I wanted. Later though I would go on to inherit all of the ones which were taken, as the interest in vinyl of the other family members dwindled. So as of today I am the one with all the spoils! And now it's time for me to find a new home for them.

If records still continued to be only source of recorded music I would have run out of space years ago. Considering I now have about 500 of them along with about 2000 CDs and over 200 cassettes (before I started selling them), I don't know where I would store nearly 3000 vinyl records. Thank goodness for CDs!

No More Music Clubs

I first started buying music cassettes in the late 80s, going from jr. high to high school. I joined Columbia House which had a great introductory offer--something like 12 tapes for 1 cent--and further good deals after meeting the membership commitment of purchasing a few additional titles at regular club price. From the time I joined them I remained till the end and acquired quite a collection of tapes and later, cd's.

Sometime thereafter joining Columbia House, I joined BMG Music Service, at which point I had switched over to purchasing cd's. The move to buying cd's wasn't so much my own personal choice. I enjoyed working with tapes, though I was well aware of their shortcomings and delicateness. It was more of a forced move as cassettes were being phased out. Looking back on it all, I definitely prefer cd's and wish I had never even began to buy tapes. But at the time there was quite a difference in price and money was not as readily available to me. Thus, I still have a great number of cassettes even after parting with many through ebay and other individuals. I have converted nearly all of the ones I still have to .wav files and cd.

Anyway, as a result of my memberships in those 2 clubs, I have amassed a large collection of tapes, cd's and plenty of boxed sets as well. They offered unbeatable prices especially on those boxed sets.

Then in 2005, BMG acquired Columbia House and there was one less music club to be a member of. But BMG still offered plenty of great deals and I continued purchasing (and getting free) many albums from them. Until they shutdown sometime in 2009 and became YourMusic.com, which was an online only store. No more mailers. I rarely purchased from YourMusic.com. The deals were not bad but no longer as wonderful. And now at the end of this month it will be shutting down as well. I guess people are just not buying cd's anymore. They're going the route of downloading.

I know that I haven't been buying many cd's lately. But it's not because I am choosing to download instead. It's due to having bought so many while I was in those 2 clubs and from Amazon and CDUniverse as well that I haven't even been able to listen to all of them. I was just accumulating cd's for the sake of accumulating them. I'm now looking to downsize my music library a bit and perhaps keep only the titles that are meaningful to me.

As far as the cassettes go, well, it's hard for me to part with all of them even though I have transferred them all to cd. As I said, I have already sold a good number of them, but I'm still hanging on to a little less than 200 total. Some are not available on cd so I want to keep those. Maybe I'll take some pictures of them and upload them here.