Top 5 on Friday - Week 200

From our friends at Music Memoirs

Our Mission Today: Top 5 reasons you splurge on a purchase of music

Over the years I have bought a lot of music. I think my first albums were bought mid '70s and have amassed a pretty sizable collection of LPs and CDs.

The majority of my LP collection was bought used. Through High School, the hours of scrounging through racks, flipping those wonderful covers looking for treasures. I guess I used to occasionally drop $30-$40 at Record Swap but I don't think I ever really went overboard.

In college I would occasionally forget to enter checks and ATM withdrawals in my checkbook so I wouldn't know exactly how much money I had. I would be so worried about being overdrawn that I would just stop spending money until I got my statement and could get things balanced. Usually I would be pleasantly surprised at the mini-windfall and spend some $$ at either the local used store or ABCD's in Fort Collins.

The largest single volume music purchase was when I was in college. The owner of the local used record store called me and said he was liquidating a collection for a radio station that had gone under. He rented the store next to his and invited me in to take a look before he opened up to the general public. I guess I was a good customer.

So after about an hour I had collected a whopping 91 albums on the counter. No real treasures but I picked up some things that I would have never really bothered with otherwise, basically like "I may have heard of these guys...".  At $0.17 each it was still quite a bargain though.

When I switched to CDs I guess my initial purchase would have been considered a splurge. I saved up enough to buy 10 of them along with my first CD player. I didn't want to have this new cool device with only one thing to listen to.

Since then I think the bulk of my CDs came from local shops and then from Amazon but usually no more than 1 or 2 at a time.

Recently I don't buy much music. I subscribe to a monthly music service (Rhapsody) which lets me listen to a ton of stuff on demand. For example, the New Susan Tedeschi just came out and I was able to listen to it online without needing to buy it. Not everything is available but it seems the majority of new stuff is. I also get to listen to a lot of stuff that I call my fringe likes. I like them enough to listen to occasionally but I'm not sure I would spend real money on them.

I still occasionally buy something to fill in a hole in the collection but it has been a while since I've done anything that would be considered a splurge.

So no list - this is as good as I can do on this one...

Cheers!

SB