Who needs a music collection anyway?

Posted on February 22, 2010

I obtained an average music collection in the past, working at vinyl, cd store’s and later a music studio to fulfill my musical needs. But the days of music collections are counted, music needs to be ad-hoc; fitting to the exact moment. 2004 was a tipping point, as online music recommendation services like last.fm and Pandora started to build profiles of users musical tastes, and recommending other music to them. Today, I can buy music online while I am walking the street using Amazon MP3, and services like Spotify and Rhapsody can stream almost all available music to me for about 10 euro’s a month. Who needs a record collection these days?

I’m using last.fm on my ipod touch to keep track to the songs I listen too. While I was checking out my personal top 20 charts, I noticed my musical patterns haven’t really changed over the last years. I’m going to tryout music recommendation services and ask friends for new music recommendations. Got any recommendations I should listen too?

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  • http://twitter.com/joop/status/9460578860 Joop

    Blog Post: Who needs a music collection anyway? http://bit.ly/c7MpUy

  • Tortue

    I DO need a music collection : ) I’m also a big fan of last.fm and spotify but I also desperately need ALL my music at 100% of its quality (that is lossless and sometime Master’s) RIGHT when I need it.

  • http://www.JoopDorresteijn.com Joop Dorresteijn

    Yes, quality is a problem, but I noticed my habits have changed, it’s too much work to take out a record and put it on the record player. And for my iPod, I keep on hearing the same tracks, even though there are enough GBs for weeks of music. I’d rather hit play and skip through unknown recommendations.

  • http://adamdanielmezei.com Adam Daniel Mezei

    Do you have a similar attitude to books? I’ve found that lugging books around from one expat posting to another can get expensive, but there are few things that replace that sensation of having that acid-free tangible page between my thumbs. Don’t know if you’re the same way…

  • http://www.JoopDorresteijn.com Joop Dorresteijn

    @Adam, I still aspire to fill up my book closet! I move them by ship to my location

  • http://ben.lenarts.name Ben Lenarts

    I totally agree! I think Paul Graham captured this idea very broadly and aptly in an article from 2007: Stuff.

  • http://www.JoopDorresteijn.com Joop Dorresteijn

    Thanks Ben! I like:
    -Nothing owns you like fragile stuff
    -overall cost of owning it.