The Art of Collecting

At least twice a year, I review all the digital subscriptions I've accumulated and evaluate my usage. Whether it's canceling a news publication I haven't read in over six months or reassessing my Spotify or Tidal subscriptions, I estimate that I've spent hundreds of euros annually on these services.

In an age where subscription services are the norm, we have gradually accepted the luxuries and conveniences they provide. However, this access often comes with a catch: the control these services exert can lock us in under the guise of accessibility. As this control over media diminishes, the art of collecting has become a long-lost niche.

The concept of spending money on a single piece of media, as opposed to paying for a subscription that grants access to entire catalogs of music, feels foreign to me. I was never part of the hipster trend that took the 2010s by storm; in fact, I was put off by stores like Urban Outfitters dedicating entire sections to vinyl records from mainstream artists. What ultimately drew me to vinyl was the independent music scene that gained traction in the mid-to-late 2010s.

Independent Music and the Appeal of Physical Media

At 15, I stumbled upon a project called Vignettes, a beautifully crafted abstract album just over two hours long, produced and released by Damu the Fudgemunk on Redefinition Records in 2017. Through Vignettes, I discovered Redefinition Records and immersed myself in the independent hip-hop scene, delving deep into their catalog. With these independent records often releasing a limited number of physical copies, I found myself feverishly trying to obtain every physical copy I could afford.

This strategy effectively enticed listeners to purchase their music. My deep dive into Redefinition Records' discography and their physical releases became an entry point for exploring their impressive back catalog, fueling my excitement for upcoming projects.

From Damu the Fudgemunk, I discovered Klaus Layer, who has collaborated with artists like K.A.A.N as well as his collaboration with Blu on The Illest in Charge from The Adventures of Captain Crook project in 2013. With the limited money I had, I focused on purchasing cassette tapes of available projects. With childlike excitement, I unwrapped each tape, evaluating every track list and description, and admiring the artwork on the tape cover.

Owning my favorite music creates a bond that is unmatched by streaming services. However, as much as I cherished my vinyl and cassettes, my phone became the primary way I consumed music. Like many, I brought my cassette player to school and listened to tapes during breaks.

Building a Personal Digital Library

As Spotify rose in popularity in the mid-2010s, my friends and I were enchanted by the convenience it offered. Living in Indonesia, it took time for music to be licensed and released in my region. Despite this convenience, I was frustrated that much of the music I loved wasn't available on these platforms.

In 2016, after discovering De La Soul through that year's release of The Anonymous Nobody, I was eager to explore more of their work. However, I soon learned that many of their projects weren't on platforms like Spotify due to legal disputes over their back catalog with Tommy Boy Records, leaving no legal way to access De La Soul's music for the foreseeable future.

Similarly, older albums, projects, or mixtapes rarely appeared on Spotify or other sites. A significant portion of Yasiin Bey's (formerly known as Mos Def) music was also nearly impossible to find. The Ecstatic, one of Bey's most impressive yet lesser-known solo projects, was only available as a full album upload on YouTube.

This limitation became one of my biggest frustrations with streaming platforms. I decided I no longer wanted my music consumption to be dictated by a corporation like Spotify, so I began downloading and curating my own music collection. I developed a digital library featuring artists from The Pharcyde to Marvin Gaye. The pride I felt in meticulously downloading every album, ensuring correct metadata and album covers, surpassed any pride I felt in my Spotify playlists.

Not even the once-novel Spotify Wrapped, which admittedly has lost its appeal after the lockdown years, couldn't compete with the joy I experienced each time I opened the Black Music Player. While streaming platforms offer accessibility and features, they diminish our ability to control how we listen to music.

Less is More

The music I downloaded were typically full albums. I felt that picking and choosing certain songs to import into my music player did not fully capture the artists' work.

This approach meant that some projects contained songs I wasn't particularly fond of, but I kept them to claim the project in its entirety. But that's the entire point - to fully accept all of an artist's work, we can't solely focus on the highlights. It's important to also uncover the less appreciated cuts on their album. It is for this reason that I often detested the idea of extracting songs from an album to create a playlist. For me, owning these albums meant appreciating their beauty and flaws in full.

It was a conscious decision that I would generally be listening to far less music, as I was only limited to the music that I had in my library. By having music be less accessible and actively restricting myself from blatantly using Spotify to satisfy my music pleasures. This meant that I was able to appreciate the albums much more wholly than treating it as if it were just another song on Spotify; this was also in large part due to the amount of work I went through to find the music to validate its correctness before putting it in my phone. Admittedly, it was a lot of work that I don't think any sane person would go through.

With many of my close friends consuming new music like they would skip through TV shows—making quick judgments based on 15-second snippets—the act of truly appreciating music is often lost. How can you skip to the most interesting part of a song like you would in a show on Netflix? Have we lost so much appreciation for the music and the artists that create it, reducing them to mere content creators?

Purchasing vinyl or cassette forms of music is less susceptible to this treatment. Realistically, how often is someone really going to fast-forward on a tape player or do a needle skip on a record. This is in addition to the fact that physical media needs to be treated with such delicate care, that I wonder if people should treat digital music in the same way that they have to with physical media forms.

Ultimately, what my music collection has taught me - in both digital and physical forms, is that we must appreciate every aspect of what makes a project what it is to truly enjoy the music artists produce. To celebrate an album's or a song's highlights, we must also embrace everything else that tells the full story.