Own It, Play It

There's a piece in this weekend's FT 'Opinion' which caught my eye just now, about that very modern phenomenon of not owning one's music collection any more. And by that I mean streaming: as with all other subscription-based listen or watch on demand services, you only get access to the stuff you curate into your playlist for as long as your direct debit holds good. As soon as you default on that payment, for whatever reason, you lose your stuff to back whence it came.

As James Max observes in his piece, '... when it comes to the music that actually matters to me, the albums I return to, the ones that reward proper listening, I want something permanent. Something that doesn't disappear because a licensing deal in California wobbled... ' He has now set about capitalising on the resurgence of vinyl record popularity and production by buying up a new collection to fill the void left by the vacuum of streaming non-ownership. I have to say I concur and wholeheartedly support him in his endeavours, but have to note, somewhat smugly, that he would have found it far cheaper to have hung onto his records in the first place.

For my part, I have never relinquished my record collection, save for selling off the odd valuable record when desperation knocked. Pictured is my current holding of vinyl records, nestled amongst the books and assorted trivia of my room; not a John Peel scale collection, to be sure, but representing a life-long appreciation of music that continues today. My collection still holds the very first single I ever bought - "Shapes Of Things" by The Yardbirds - and the very first long-player purchased: "Wheels Of Fire" [the studio album] by Cream. All paid for, and all still in my possession, and in the form of a technical medium that is simple enough to allow a stranded Desert Islander left with eight discs and no player, to fashion at least some crude means of releasing the music that these slender platters of plastic hold...