How much vinyl is to much vinyl?
I finally have most of my vinyl in the one location. I have about 50 or so of my more collectible albums in my office for now. Mostly the bootlegs, picture discs and first pressings.
So as I try to figure out how to sort and keep my vinyl organized, I started to wonder if I have to much vinyl and how much is to much? I don’t play my music as much as I should or want to, but somehow don’t feel like I want to let it go either. It amazes me how over time things sort of take on a life of it’s own and somethings so simple can get out of hand. If you think about it, two a month for 40 years is equal to 960 albums. I might have been better off buying Apple stock with that money, but that would not have been as enjoyable.
As a side note, my two kids came over to the house a few months back and started to go through the collection and divide it up. They actually started to to argue over come of the albums as to who deserved it more. I was just sitting back in the corner thinking to my self, “you know, I am sitting right here, I’m not dead…yet”. But I must admit that I was very pleased with myself for giving them a love a music. And not for just what is the current flavor of the month, but a lover for what got us here.
Second question, how do you sort your vinyl, alphabetically, by genre, or by a mix of both? Mine is currently alphabetical for the most part. I have not gotten to sorting it alphabetical with in the alphabet. All of the A’s are together, B’s, and so on. I have pulled all of the 12” dance singles, remixes, and club edits out and keep them separate for now. I think the goal will be to get in alphabetized within each letter while keeping the 12” dance singles, remixes, and club edits separate. I think I will also pull out the punk albums and keep them in my office for easy access. My coworkers seem confused when I have Bikini Kill or the Clash on in the background during a Team’s call.
Short answer: it’s never too much 🤣 Now seriously, as Michael points out, this will vary from person to person. I think if you struggle to downsize, you shouldn’t force it unless it becomes a necessity. Nice that your children will get to inherit your records — you know they’ll be in safe hands.
Bob,
The "I'm not dead yet" moment is one of the great quiet victories of parenthood — watching your kids argue over your records means you did something right that no parenting book ever told you to do. And the coworkers confused by Bikini Kill on a Teams call is a feature, not a bug. There's a whole music history in that collection of yours, organized or not. The albums that shaped us have a way of resisting neat categorization anyway — which is probably why alphabetical within genre feels both logical and slightly beside the point.
I produce American Song, a podcast tracing the arc of American music from the Colonial era forward. People like you — who've spent forty years building a collection because the music actually matters — are exactly who I make it for.