Selling My Music Collection On Discogs

Introduction

Around 1980 music started to go digital and it was an excuse for record companies to resell existing product to music fans. There was still a physical copy of the music on CD and the commercial failure of DAT. I write a piece on music media, originally on Seven Days In, but it was repurposed as one of my first Vocal stories that you can read here.

So on to the main point of this article, why some of my collection is up for sale to anyone who wants to buy something from me.

I've included Neil Innes' "Recycled Vinyl Blues" which was a funny and astute observation on the supposed vinyl crisis of the 1970s (which saw the first 12" vinyl singles as well).

So How Did This Happen?

CD because it was digital, and PCs included CD readers people could rip and share (illegally) music on peer-to-peer networks such as Limewire and Napster, creating a mentality of "Why should I pay if I can get it for free".

Digital music has become the norm with streaming via iTunes, Spotify and Amazon, though my preference is for the Bandcamp model.

I have always believed that music should be easily accessible, and to be honest I have a CD player by my computer and a lot of my CDs on racks that I can easily pick the disc I want to play from them. I also have ten boxes of CDs in my office which are a little more difficult to get my CDs from.

The thing is I could play a lot of this digitally but I find that the "touch of a button" only works when you have pressed a lot of other buttons previously and waited for an app or two to open, whereas putting a CD on takes seconds, so it has become my preferred option.

I also listen to 6Music as well which generally seems to introduced me to good new music.

But as usual, I am wandering off track.

With digital options, people were telling me they were boxing up their physical media (Vinyl, CDs, and Cassettes) and putting them in the attic. DVDs and Tapes were subject to the same treatment thanks to the rise of streaming services, even I am often too lazy to go to my DVDs take the disc out start the player, open it up, start the disc watch five minutes of anti-piracy notices (I bought the bloody disc) and finally watch the film when I could have just "pressed a button" on a streaming service.

When something goes in the attic that's it, you are unlikely to ever use that thing again, so I said why don't you give them to charity or sell them?

So back to me.

I ditched vinyl when my daughter Juliet showed me what she could do with a needle and one of my records.

That was nearly forty years ago.

We all collect things and I realized that I bought many CDs to support the artist, many I just didn't listen to and so tried selling on eBay and Amazon. EBay wouldn't let me charge postage and Amazon wouldn't let me sell and places like CEX would give me maybe 5p a disc.

Then I discovered Discogs, my store is here.

Because I am not selling because I need the money, I thought I would try this and am sometimes shocked at how much CDs go for. I currently have 370 items for sale (that is about 10% of my collection) and I sell all around the world. I joined in 2017 and since then have sold 437 items so that is roughly 2 a week and the money I get is far more than if I tried to unload in bulk.

Conclusion

I probably buy more vinyl and digital music, but still buy the odd CD, like my most recent purchase here:

All the CDs I am selling are a result of me initially supporting the artist by my purchase, and now I am making a little coffee money, selling the ones that I don't think I will play again. It's not that they are bad (well a couple are) but I think that other people will enjoy them, and that is better than them sitting in a box.

Thank you for reading, Vocal is my other supplier of coffee money.