The Agency of a Record Collection

Anyone else fall for those Columbia House "11 albums for a Penny! clubs" in the 1990s? After getting the initial penny-wise heist, you were committed to the pound-foolish act of having to buy another dozen albums at full list price.

Yea, I did too.

Working at a store that sold CDs grew my collection. It was a miracle I ever took a paycheck home. 

Eventually I digitized my entire collection, created a centralized "music server" hooked to a hidden stereo, and controlled it all on my laptop.

Peak musical nerdiness.

A casualty of fulltime RV travel was junking that music server, pawning my CD collection, and subscribing to a "close-enough" Pandora stream.

During the COVID lockdown, I bought a 1970s stereo system off Facebook, and we started ordering random lots of vinyl records from eBay. We'd pull a new album out blind each day, play it, and try to guess the artist.

Since then we've enjoyed antiquing for albums while we travel and frequenting the great record shops here in Tulsa.

My fondness for music on vinyl isn't about the sound quality. It's not about the album artwork. It's not about the tactile pleasure of using actual switches and knobs.

It's about agency. And identity. And not giving it away to a big tech company.

From the book "Filterworld" by Kyle Chayka:

"We often build our senses of personal taste by saving pieces of culture: slowly building a collection of what matters to us, a monument to our preferences, like a bird constructing a nest. But...the collecting of culture - whether films on DVD, albums on vinyl, or books on a shelf - has shifted from being a necessity to appearing as an indulgent luxury. Why would I bother worrying about what I have access to at hand when digital platforms advertise their ability to provide access to everything, forever, whenever I want? The problem is there is no guarantee of permanence in what digital platforms offer -the appearance of totality is a facade, buttressed by recommendations - and their interfaces are constantly changing."

Digital platforms are sticky with convenience. But prices will change. New features will appear. Interfaces will get enshittified. Yet, as Chayka points out, 

"I'll keep subscribing to Spotify because it's the only way I'll have access to my music."

The fallacy is, of course, you don't own that music. You're renting it. And eventually, if the past is indeed prologue, you'll lose it when Spotify goes out of business.

And the final cost will be more than just a playlist.