Ears: music collection

Yes, I know: who in the world still listens to music from physical media? You’d be surprised to hear that an awful lot of people hold on to CDs, simply because they have a huge collection and they are content with the music they are used to.

And that is without even considering the many vinyl lovers out there!

Vinyl collecting is different from your old CD collection: where CDs tend to serve a practical purpose of holding music in convenient disk shaped formats, a vinyl disk has an emotional level that CDs usually are lacking in. Vinyl speaks to us on a more visceral level, with imperfections in the sound playing a vital role in the experience of listening. I suspect that these imperfections make a vinyl more unique, and therefore more approachable than the unchangeable sound produced by a CD. But that is a totally different discussion from the clutter approach you usually read about here.

Similar to other items, CDs fall into a number of categories and are kept for a variety of reasons. Some of them will be there because they mean something very tangible to you: maybe they have been given to you by your first love and have a written message in the lyrics booklet, or you associate the music with a momentous occasion in your life, or the music on the CD is otherwise impossible to hear. You may be in the habit of buying CDs instead of postcards to serve as reminders of the trips you took.

All of those are valid reasons to acquire them, but you want to ask yourself if these are they also valid reasons to hang on to them. That first love turned sour quickly, you may not have listened to any of the holiday CDs more than once after returning home, or you have so many CDs you have lost sight of what you actually own…

Does any of this sound familiar?

If you are thinking about letting go of some of them, the best way to get started is to figure out the diverse reasons you keep CDs. Some of those reasons may remain valid, others could turn out to be outdated. It’s a good idea to hang on to the ones with a valid reason for being there, but perhaps there is a case to be made to let go of the ones whose reason for sticking around is no longer relevant. Worse even: some of those thing may hold bad memories… and those really should go. Why hang on to a bad memory? You have learned your lesson from that situation, there is no need to remind yourself all the time.

CDs are, of course, emotional, it’s music after all! It helps to think of them separate from the emotions they hold, though. The music will be around, and sites like Soundcloud or Spotify help you stay in touch with it. Without the need for a collection of dusty CDs.

If you have enjoyed reading this, you may find these other articles interesting:

• Storage opportunities
• Ways to ease the pain of letting go
• Would you consider using paid off-site storage for private stuff?