Less is more
I've enforced a new level of self discipline on my music spending habits this year. Briefly - one new album a month and one "classic" album a month. I'd started to find that too many things were being played once or twice, hadn't particularly grabbed me, and were being filed away. I suspect this is me trying to get back that teenage feeling of playing Be-Bop Deluxe's 'Modern Music' or 10cc's 'Sheet Music' to death simply because I didn't have much money to buy more than a few albums a year. Whatever your personal feelings on those records, I know every note of them; and I'd like to try and recapture that level of intimacy with some new music. Has it worked? Sort of. I'm still persisting with The Aliens album, it's a grower that might've been dismissed under the old regime. The Richard Hawley album gets better with every listen. Of the old stuff, I can now see what all the fuss is about with 'Surrealistic Pillow' and 'Talking Book'. However, half the battle is trying to find the time to listen, really listen, to albums in the way that I used to. Modern adult life makes it all but impossible. Overall, I reckon it has been a worthwhile exercise and I'd recommend it to anyone looking to curb their CD habit and reappraise their existing music collection.
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An unverifiable statistic
... which I once came across is that on average an album gets played 1.7 times. This sounded crazy to me until I looked at my collection and saw albums bought because of one good track (the only one as it turns out), or bought because I didn't get into them at the time they were released and felt that I should catch up with, but then never got around to playing, or bought because they were cheap (R.I.P. Fopp) and are on the "must listen to sometime" pile.
I agree with the original post - I have loads more music and loads less time to listen to it than I did as a young man. What's more, music is regrettably far less important in my life these days. It's just a casual experience, and nothing gets played to death anymore.
Yes, I have recently started
Yes, I have recently started doing something similar, for pretty much the same reasons. I limit myself to about 4 CDs in the car, playing them in rotation for a month or so. Typically these would include the latest "Now Hear This" (of course), something from the stockpile of unplayed CDs (next up is "Abbatoir Blues", bought ~2 years ago, still in its wrapper) plus a couple from the classics archive (co-incidently, I also recently dug out some old BeBop Deluxe - Futurama and Sunburst Finish).
It's about an album once a
It's about an album once a week or once very fortnight for me, although some of the best purchases are things you stumble across, when you don't expect to. It's been more of a classic artists year for me, spent a lot on Dylan and hope to buy the new Neil Young album at the weekend or will I? The third series of LOST is out, I'm torn between a rock and a hard place and I should be saving for Christmas.
I know what you mean...
Life stuff just gets in the way. Most new albums I have bought have just not cut it with me. When was the last time a new record gave you goose bumps?
Sam Beam
For me, the new Iron & Wine album has been one of the few "blimey, that's really good" experiences of '07.