Supply and Demand
As my wife is now well aware, one of my favourite self-therapy activities is the care and feeding of my music collection. Pruning my metaphorical music garden turns out to be relatively low effort, hypnotically repetitive, rewarding in its own right, and gives me a great sense of pleasure when everything is neat and tidy:
All my CDs ripped into iTunes (this is an ongoing process, as my physical CDs are in storage, and every once in a while I'll run across something which is absent from the computer) No missing data: years, track numbers, even geographic location (I have some fun geography-based smart playlists) No misspellings or bizarre capitalization (the CDDB track titles are full of these, and some of them are quite subtle, evading my notice for some time) No unnecessary duplicate songs
Occasionally this activity will also generate one of those "Oh yeah, I remember that song" (or even, "Oh geez, what was I thinking when I sold that?") nostalgia moments which will inspire me to check emusic.com, iTunes, and Amazon.ca to be able to acquire the missing album.
That's what I spent a fair amount of time doing yesterday. And what surprises me most is, if having exhausted the pay MP3 sites with no luck and resorting to used CD stores, the variability in market price for the used CDs.
Here were some examples of the cheap side of things (most of these I own already but was looking up other information):
Amy Millan – Honey from the Tombs – $6.99
Hang Ups – He's After Me – $5.99
u-Ziq – In Pine Effect – $3.98
Red House Painters – Ocean Beach – $3.29
MC 900 Ft Jesus – Hell with the Lid Off – $2.99
Puffy Amiyumi – An Illustrated History – $1.28
Art of Noise – In No Sense? Nonsense! – $1.20
MTV's AMP – $1.00
And then there are the ones that aren't so cheap:
Coil – Musick to Play in the Dark – $59.16
In Dreams Soundtrack – $63.99
Journeys by DJ (Coldcut) – $74.99
Terre Thaemlitz – Soil – $59.99 – $224.00
And lastly, the real puzzler in the mix. Apparently one of those cases where the people who have this album can't seem to get rid of it, and the people hunting for it can't seem to find it:
Red Hot + Blue – A tribute to Cole Porter – $1.49 to $224.99
As irritating as it is to be missing some music I used to own, I don't think it's worth $200. . . .
Occasionally this activity will also generate one of those "Oh yeah, I remember that song" (or even, "Oh geez, what was I thinking when I sold that?") nostalgia moments which will inspire me to check emusic.com, iTunes, and Amazon.ca to be able to acquire the missing album.
That's what I spent a fair amount of time doing yesterday. And what surprises me most is, if having exhausted the pay MP3 sites with no luck and resorting to used CD stores, the variability in market price for the used CDs.
Here were some examples of the cheap side of things (most of these I own already but was looking up other information):
Amy Millan – Honey from the Tombs – $6.99
Hang Ups – He's After Me – $5.99
u-Ziq – In Pine Effect – $3.98
Red House Painters – Ocean Beach – $3.29
MC 900 Ft Jesus – Hell with the Lid Off – $2.99
Puffy Amiyumi – An Illustrated History – $1.28
Art of Noise – In No Sense? Nonsense! – $1.20
MTV's AMP – $1.00
And then there are the ones that aren't so cheap:
Coil – Musick to Play in the Dark – $59.16
In Dreams Soundtrack – $63.99
Journeys by DJ (Coldcut) – $74.99
Terre Thaemlitz – Soil – $59.99 – $224.00
And lastly, the real puzzler in the mix. Apparently one of those cases where the people who have this album can't seem to get rid of it, and the people hunting for it can't seem to find it:
Red Hot + Blue – A tribute to Cole Porter – $1.49 to $224.99
As irritating as it is to be missing some music I used to own, I don't think it's worth $200. . . .