Record collecting still popular?

[Grafwritah]

I'm sure collecting will continue to be a thing well into the future.

But I feel like the peak era of Soulstrut was also a peak era for record collecting, at least outside of the traditional groups.

For the younger folks - at the time - there was an interest in digging up old samples and generally related to hip hop.

Now sampling is not the go to for hip hop, almost all music is available online somewhere for little to no money, there are huge databases of samples, and services like Shazam make finding 99% of songs nearly instantaneous. For those that want to mix/scratch the time of needing actual records and turntables has long past. Pre-cleared sampling services make pulling samples a snap if you still want to do that. Record collecting forums are dead and I'm not even sure Facebook/IG/etc. is relevant in that space anymore.

In that period of time I had a lot of fun buying old records, playing around making my own beats, and learning where samples came from. And then there was a long, long, long time where I had crates and crates and crates of records that sat collecting dust. Other than looking at them, it was so much easier to just pull stuff up on Apple Music. I sold everything I had worth selling, in bulk, when I moved and now I have a couple of boxes sitting in another country that I don't live in most of the year.

But I'm also way beyond the period of being interested in all that, so maybe I'm just out of the loop.

Thoughts?

 

[ketan]

I remember when the reissue game accelerated and I tried to keep up for a while (not necessarily buying - even just listening), but eventually decided I had more important things to focus on in life. Since then, SO. MUCH. ill music came come to light, but I remain relatively unaware. All that to say, I still dig because I'm still crawling my way along this musical journey and still discovering things I hadn't heard before.

I have also never been the type to drop $$ on records I want. (I can count the records I've paid more than $50 for on one hand.) And while labels/shops are charging more than ever (NEW releases are >$50!), thrift stores stay having cheap records. So I'm no longer collecting every new record I think is great, but I do still find the gems and accrue the chud (although the gem:chud ratio has gone up over time thankfully). This summer, some guy bought all my dollar records at a garage sale for a local shop that was opening up --> TFW the chud vanishes from your basement!

Plus I've been DJing again this year, so I've been spending a lot of time with certain parts of my collection, which has felt lovely and motivates me to find new stuff to bring. Also, since we have digi-mons set up alongside the 1200s, I've been using my records to make edits.

 

[klezmer electro-thug beats]

Yeah for me the era you describe was definitely the inspiration to get into records and obscurer old music generally, it was my teens and that was the move I made that developed my own tastes. Here's my view as a little dude for life:

I think that while a lot of people clearly are buying records, the reason to dig old records and/or buy new records has changed. I think there's more of a reaction to things being streamed and not owned, and physical media has a longevity that appeals. I think this may be a bigger factor than a specific scene or scenes blowing up. At least, judging from the many many people who have gotten into collecting records since I first did, they don't seem nearly as into finding Sexy Coffee Pot or whatever. It seems to be for the experience of listening to and possessing an indelible physical piece of music. The hunt for obscurities seems a lot more of a subculture now than it was then. The hunt for new shit you like, or obscure music knowledge, I would like to think that continues. But with a lot more searching Youtube and shit instead.

For me, I don't buy much old vinyl now - I sort of go, I could track down every single amazing 60s and 70s joint that I've ever heard, and that would be a lifetime's work, but I don't have the money and time to do that in any serious way, and I'm a couple decades too late to build up a lot for cheap or easy. So now the reasoning is not to own everything, or to pull samples (which I was never serious enough to get far into) but to buy and own physical artifacts of shit I want physical artifacts of a.k.a. real ownership of, in contrast to the avalanche of streamable stuff that may be great but feels less necessary to me to own.

I gravitate toward certain formats for certain stuff:

45s, I now mostly buy recent or new releases but often not brand new (especially if they were pricy new). I rode the retro wave from the 90s Poets of Rhythm stuff (as a literal 14-15yo kid) all the way to now, the acts inspired by that wave. I don't buy a lot of original funk and soul for the reasons I mentioned before: if I open up those floodgates where could I stop? With a sort of self-limit of "I like some of these throwback/pastiche acts, and there's like a hundred releases a year I even would need to consider" I find it manageable. I know that may sound completely wild, and I'm not totally off buying an actual old release, but it's more rare that I do. I guess the other thing is if I DO buy a brand new release off bandcamp or whatever, I know it is actually supporting an artist currently doing stuff I like.

I've always been into 45 more than LPs. For LPs, typically new from an active band unless again, the artist is taking the piss with the LP cost. But the labels I'm into don't tend to do the hypebeast drop style of release. And again I'm not sweating old stuff that's available in 80 billion formats and reissues and streaming.

Cassettes, I like buying DJ mixes full of unclearable shit, which there seems to be a mini scene of now.

 

[kicks79]

Record collecting is still popular.
Although it's a different beast from the halcyon days of soulstrut. I don't think many kids are searching for samples, as they don't have that code of reference that hip hop gave a lot of us. I think many don't really differentiate between reissues and OGs either. They seem to just be happy to own the record. Discogs messed the game up a little. Everything on there is pretty much 20% more expensive than it should be, and like the local record store owner moans to me, everyone thinks they are a record dealer these days.
I got jaded on digging for the last ten years as life and work commitments got in the way. Having a sizable collection of hip-hop 12s that I couldn't play out anywhere probably didn't help.
Now, after moving to a new place where I can walk to a record store. I feel like I have the bug back. It's interesting to see a lot of Australian, funk, and jazz records come down in price as people aren't up on them anymore, nor do they seem to care. So I've been filling holes in the collection. Plus, buying 45s, I can play out in bars.

 

[Electrode]

My gateway, like many of you, was the initial punch of "Wow! That was used for ____!". Both of my parents introduced me to soul and folk rock when I was into rap as a teenager. Then came what was, and still is, played Los Angeles public radio and, for example, "world music" curated by David Byrne...so on and so forth. All of this exposed me to something new and exciting. Meeting various people "in the know" like us who are into the music I like, but others may not, still is a thrill. I don't care how "popular" vinyl records are. To make a comparison, reading books is still a thing. Granted, I don't buy as much records as I used to, but I will always have a connection to vinyl.

 

[Jimster]

My kids are into vinyl which is a nice surprise, I guess the reality of holding music in your hands is worth more than the warm glow of funding Daniel Ek and his defence contracts. It's Billie Eilish, Lana Del Ray and Black Midi but hey, nobody has a complete rack of Coltrane monos by Osmosis.

I do buy vinyl at gigs and get it signed, because it is way better value to the artist than me streaming it, but I never play it as, until recently (like, when my kids got decks) I hadn't got anything left to play it on.

I stopped regularly shop buying years back and I probably have, in all, around 200 remaining albums and 12s that I want to sell as, at this point I want the space back. Sailor V, as they say. It's not a novelty for me, never was, as growing up in the 80s all my friends had shit loads of vinyl too.

I am close to sticking the lot to charity because I don't have the time to list it all in eBay pieces for years until it hopefully goes. My buying habits were stuff that I actually wanted to repeatedly listen to, rather than as a flipping business model. It's been mostly stuff that I heard that sounded beautiful to me and/or wanted to steal ideas for furthering my own meagre bass playing.

I can tell you that in my old opinion, listening to a lot of music is a green flag, no matter how it's consumed. Glad the kids are going mad for it. Maybe it strengthens their connection to music like it has done for us. In the meantime, I'm still driving a lot and can blast tunes on the commute. Streaming rules for this convenience.

I am trying to cut out the worst political culprits in the game however. Bandcamp seem to be the best unless you know better?

 

[tureheadw]

I'm sure collecting will continue to be a thing well into the future.

But I feel like the peak era of Soulstrut was also a peak era for record collecting, at least outside of the traditional groups.

For the younger folks - at the time - there was an interest in digging up old samples and generally related to hip hop.

Now sampling is not the go to for hip hop, almost all music is available online somewhere for little to no money, there are huge databases of samples, and services like Shazam make finding 99% of songs nearly instantaneous. For those that want to mix/scratch the time of needing actual records and turntables has long past. Pre-cleared sampling services make pulling samples a snap if you still want to do that. Record collecting forums are dead and I'm not even sure Facebook/IG/etc. is relevant in that space anymore.

In that period of time I had a lot of fun buying old records, playing around making my own beats, and learning where samples came from. And then there was a long, long, long time where I had crates and crates and crates of records that sat collecting dust. Other than looking at them, it was so much easier to just pull stuff up on Apple Music. I sold everything I had worth selling, in bulk, when I moved and now I have a couple of boxes sitting in another country that I don't live in most of the year.

But I'm also way beyond the period of being interested in all that, so maybe I'm just out of the loop.
Space Waves
Thoughts?

Now that so much music is instantly accessible, the hunt and mystery have changed — maybe even disappeared a bit.

 

[RAJ]

I too am currently puzzled at the state of record digging in 2025. If anyone can break it down, please let me know.

I have been blessed with a lot of free time lately (empty nester / retired from a highly involved corporate job of 25 years). I've been sitting on boxes of LPs and 45s hoping to get back into the community selling records / DJing, etc. Unfortunately, I am struggling with the current state of all things. The community does not seem to be there like it once was. Last time I was active was the pandemic years and Instagram was popping. Double Decker Records up the road from me was still open and a mecca for heads. Raers were still affordable and readily available. Now shit is just overpriced Thriller and Rumours overwhere.

 

[ketan]

I saw Thriller for $50 in a shop yesterday! That's what's up!

 

[klezmer electro-thug beats]

Should've hung onto my mom's copy, it'd finally pay off! See that's the shit I can't quite compute, I like that my particular combination of records are unique to me. Why pay out the nose for some canonical thing you'd have to really put an effort in to NOT hear in your life regularly?

 

[ketan]

Clearly there are a lot of records being collected today (based on sales) but I don't think there are nearly the number of younger ppl who are interested in digging for soul/funk/jazz/world raers. The IG/Discogs/Ebay train may still be hot becuase older folks who caught the bug in the 90s are wealthier than ever (in some cases). But when I'm out there playing Mt. Airy Groove and Que Beleza, it's largely grown folks (men and women) who are showing love.

 

[Grafwritah]

Yeah for me the era you describe was definitely the inspiration to get into records and obscurer old music generally, it was my teens and that was the move I made that developed my own tastes. Here's my view as a little dude for life:

I think that while a lot of people clearly are buying records, the reason to dig old records and/or buy new records has changed. I think there's more of a reaction to things being streamed and not owned, and physical media has a longevity that appeals. I think this may be a bigger factor than a specific scene or scenes blowing up. At least, judging from the many many people who have gotten into collecting records since I first did, they don't seem nearly as into finding Sexy Coffee Pot or whatever. It seems to be for the experience of listening to and possessing an indelible physical piece of music. The hunt for obscurities seems a lot more of a subculture now than it was then. The hunt for new shit you like, or obscure music knowledge, I would like to think that continues. But with a lot more searching Youtube and shit instead.

For me, I don't buy much old vinyl now - I sort of go, I could track down every single amazing 60s and 70s joint that I've ever heard, and that would be a lifetime's work, but I don't have the money and time to do that in any serious way, and I'm a couple decades too late to build up a lot for cheap or easy. So now the reasoning is not to own everything, or to pull samples (which I was never serious enough to get far into) but to buy and own physical artifacts of shit I want physical artifacts of a.k.a. real ownership of, in contrast to the avalanche of streamable stuff that may be great but feels less necessary to me to own.

I gravitate toward certain formats for certain stuff:

45s, I now mostly buy recent or new releases but often not brand new (especially if they were pricy new). I rode the retro wave from the 90s Poets of Rhythm stuff (as a literal 14-15yo kid) all the way to now, the acts inspired by that wave. I don't buy a lot of original funk and soul for the reasons I mentioned before: if I open up those floodgates where could I stop? With a sort of self-limit of "I like some of these throwback/pastiche acts, and there's like a hundred releases a year I even would need to consider" I find it manageable. I know that may sound completely wild, and I'm not totally off buying an actual old release, but it's more rare that I do. I guess the other thing is if I DO buy a brand new release off bandcamp or whatever, I know it is actually supporting an artist currently doing stuff I like.

I've always been into 45 more than LPs. For LPs, typically new from an active band unless again, the artist is taking the piss with the LP cost. But the labels I'm into don't tend to do the hypebeast drop style of release. And again I'm not sweating old stuff that's available in 80 billion formats and reissues and streaming.

Cassettes, I like buying DJ mixes full of unclearable shit, which there seems to be a mini scene of now.

That's the one thing that modern mainstream streaming fails at, in my opinion - little flexibility when it comes to uncleared mixes or samples. I know can DL and UL to my phone but its annoying. But at least from a hip hop and some other genre's perspective unofficial mixes were so key and honestly are more fun to listen to than straight tracks from an album it kinda sucks.

 

[Grafwritah]

My kids are into vinyl which is a nice surprise, I guess the reality of holding music in your hands is worth more than the warm glow of funding Daniel Ek and his defence contracts. It's Billie Eilish, Lana Del Ray and Black Midi but hey, nobody has a complete rack of Coltrane monos by Osmosis.

I do buy vinyl at gigs and get it signed, because it is way better value to the artist than me streaming it, but I never play it as, until recently (like, when my kids got decks) I hadn't got anything left to play it on.

I stopped regularly shop buying years back and I probably have, in all, around 200 remaining albums and 12s that I want to sell as, at this point I want the space back. Sailor V, as they say. It's not a novelty for me, never was, as growing up in the 80s all my friends had shit loads of vinyl too.

I am close to sticking the lot to charity because I don't have the time to list it all in eBay pieces for years until it hopefully goes. My buying habits were stuff that I actually wanted to repeatedly listen to, rather than as a flipping business model. It's been mostly stuff that I heard that sounded beautiful to me and/or wanted to steal ideas for furthering my own meagre bass playing.

I can tell you that in my old opinion, listening to a lot of music is a green flag, no matter how it's consumed. Glad the kids are going mad for it. Maybe it strengthens their connection to music like it has done for us. In the meantime, I'm still driving a lot and can blast tunes on the commute. Streaming rules for this convenience.

I am trying to cut out the worst political culprits in the game however. Bandcamp seem to be the best unless you know better?

I think about how as a kid I would have thought Spotify/Apple Music/etc was absolutely amazing. My mind would have been blown.

It is nice that I can find 99% of music at any time but takes some of the fun out of it, but that's progress. It's so much easier to travel these days and so well documented that it also takes a bit of the fun out of it, but I don't think anyone would go back to spending months on a sailboat to travel.

I sold my collection for a relatively nominal amount (in my opinion) to some guy who had a part time record store or something like that. Oh well.

 

[Grafwritah]

Now that so much music is instantly accessible, the hunt and mystery have changed — maybe even disappeared a bit.

The novelty of a lot of stuff is gone thanks to the internet. I wouldn't undo the convenience of having so much info at my fingertips but it was fun to feel like you discovered something or were in the know when others weren't which is nearly impossible these days.

 

[Grafwritah]

I too am currently puzzled at the state of record digging in 2025. If anyone can break it down, please let me know.

I have been blessed with a lot of free time lately (empty nester / retired from a highly involved corporate job of 25 years). I've been sitting on boxes of LPs and 45s hoping to get back into the community selling records / DJing, etc. Unfortunately, I am struggling with the current state of all things. The community does not seem to be there like it once was. Last time I was active was the pandemic years and Instagram was popping. Double Decker Records up the road from me was still open and a mecca for heads. Raers were still affordable and readily available. Now shit is just overpriced Thriller and Rumours overwhere.

The prospect of being retired at such a young age (relatively speaking) is unfathomable to me, haha.

I think the ship has sailed personally. Not that one can't sell records or whatever but to one of the other comment's points that industry if you will is probably shored up by middle age+ folks who have money to spend now. I just don't see anyone coming behind as a large social segment thats going to pick that up. If we look at most other collectibles there seems to be a peak when nostalgia + disposable income hits a generation and then it tapers off to a niche. I think hip hop really was the impetus for an additional wave for records, especially stuff that nobody would have otherwise thought to collect like random samples from obscure high school band records or whatever.

 

[Grafwritah]

Clearly there are a lot of records being collected today (based on sales) but I don't think there are nearly the number of younger ppl who are interested in digging for soul/funk/jazz/world raers. The IG/Discogs/Ebay train may still be hot becuase older folks who caught the bug in the 90s are wealthier than ever (in some cases). But when I'm out there playing Mt. Airy Groove and Que Beleza, it's largely grown folks (men and women) who are showing love.

I think this is spot on, in my not professional, anecdotal, and very limited perspective.

 

[kicks79]

Raj is spot on the money. Many people don't have the hip-hop references we did. So, records that have samples or drum breaks are largely ignored. This, combined with the sad fact that heaps of boomers are leaving the planet. Means that there is a ton of mid to late 60s and early 70s records hitting the market, and the prices are way down compared to what they used to be.

 

[klezmer electro-thug beats]

Overall that isn't a disaster for records (sad for other reasons -- my folks are boomers!!), cause I feel like one of the things tying up older stuff, and slowing interest in older records, is that back when the hip-hop-rejuvenated genres were blowing up, they were still affordable. You had scores even in the 2000s, even posted on the Strut, that could not happen in a mature market. That closes off those records to new interested people. But maybe it's the "doo-wop collectros dying off" story over again and interest will only ever stabilize or fall. I suspect less so, because the hip-hop sample era genres are more relevant to current music even now, but what do I know.

 

[kicks79]

Oh, it's not a disaster for records at all. I'm seeing titles I've never seen before out in the field and at prices way down from what they would have commanded twenty years ago.
The flip side is that many "rare" titles, talked about here in the Strut have tripled in price. I see that the northern soul scene is still going, reggae and Brazilian collectors, city pop and anything Japanese has blown the hell up. Are funk 45s still commanding high dollars?

 

[Jimster]

Northern Soul raers are still going for mad coin. My cousin is married to a Northern Soul DJ, I was chatting shit with him at a funeral (my aunt, her mum) last month, he has a mind like a steel trap and people are constantly asking him to sell specific 45s but he's never sold a single one, despite mad offers . He says he did give one away to a fellow DJ who was dying and had wanted it all his life.

Despite living in the Northwest where the hog is definitely not fat, they get big crowds of 50-60-70 year old people with money to spend (The Grey Pound) and it's a total lifestyle for them.

I can't see my generation having that connection. Can you see 70 year olds turning out for hip-hop nights?