State of the union

This section of my site is dedicated to something that is really precious for me: my album collection. It counts 228 albums (or music DVDs or compilations). The exact numbers are on the left..

I make it a point to buy all the music I like. But ofcourse, I don't support the music industries current situation. If you do everything 'legally' you would need to put your hard earned money down on every album that might interest you. That's nonsense. At least with a lack of a decent return policy in your record store (or iTunes for that matter).

So yeah, I do things differently. I organize my iTunes library in 4 sections: 'new stuff', 'keepers', 'want' and 'bought'. A 5th section, 'in rotation' makes sure there is a clear flow through the 4 sections. If something is good enough it gets upgraded from 'new stuff' to either 'keepers' or 'want', other stuff gets deleted (except for the 2-3 songs I like). I'm still undecided on buying the 'keepers' (my budget is not unlimited, and having too many albums keeps you from exploring the albums you've bought in dept), but the albums in the 'want' section are sure to be bought within the year. I also only store the 'bought'/'want' albums in high quality (256kbps AAC), all the other albums are stored in 160kbps MP3.

Buying MP3s is also an awfully bad trend on itself. Obviously, it serves one of the purpose why I buy music: to support your favorite artists. But what do you get? A couple of files that are also available on any (illegal) sharing site. Artwork that is displayed in iTunes with a width of 150px. Lyrics that are only available when sitting in front of your computer. It's just sad, when for (almost) the same price, you can get the case + cd + leaflet in your favorite record store (or on Amazon).

This brings me to the next 'awfully bad trend'. CDs in thin (paper) cases. Yeah, it's cheap to produce, but you don't get any extras (lyrics, extra artwork), it easily tears, and it's hardly visible on your CD shelf.

My last concern is also linked to CDs. Concern? Rather a possible reinvention of buying physical music. Store the music on flash memory. Put it in a nice case. Make that flash stick readable on computer (USB or variant), but also create dedicated players that can replace your CD player. You don't even need dedicated players: most DVD players and TVs already have a USB entrance. It would provide a perfect fusion between your digital and physical music collection.

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Band

Air The American Dollar Antony and The Johnsons Arcade Fire Architecture In Helsinki Arctic Monkeys Arsenal Basement Jaxx Beirut Bell X1 The Beta Band Bettie Serveert blink-182 Bloc Party Blur Bob Dylan Bon Iver Bonnie 'Prince' Billy Bright Eyes Broken Social Scene Casiotone For The Painfully Alone The Chemical Brothers !!! Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Clint Mansell Cloud Cult Constantines Courtney Love Daft Punk Dark Was The Night Depeche Mode dEUS DJ Shadow The Dodos The Doors duyster Eels Explosions In The Sky Fanfarlo Fatboy Slim Fleetwood Mac Franz Ferdinand Free Energy Frightened Rabbit Gary Numan Get Well Soon The Go! Team Godspeed You! Black Emperor Goldfrapp Gorillaz Grateful Dead Green Day Grinderman Handsome Furs The Hives Hot Hot Heat Infadels Interpol Islands The Jesus And Mary Chain Jimmy Eat World Johnny Cash J??nsi Joy Division Kate Nash Kelley Stoltz The Killers The Kills Kimya Dawson Kings Of Leon The Knife Kraftwerk La Rocca LCD Soundsystem Led Zeppelin The Lemonheads Lou Reed M83 The Magnetic Fields Magnus Maria Taylor Mercury Rev MGMT The Microphones Moby Modest Mouse Mogwai The Moldy Peaches Moloko The Mountain Goats Mumford & Sons Muse The Music The National Neutral Milk Hotel Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds Noah and the Whale The Offspring Okkervil River Ours To Destroy Oxford Collapse Pavement Peter Bjorn and John Pink Floyd Placebo The Postal Service The Prodigy Pulp The Raconteurs Radiohead The Raveonettes Razorlight Róisín Murphy Say Hi Say Hi To Your Mom Scarlett Johansson Shout Out Louds Sigur Rós Slow Club Sonic Youth Soulwax Spoon Stephen Malkmus The Streets The Strokes Sufjan Stevens The Sugar Riots Sunset Rubdown Swan Lake Switch Talking Heads Team William Television The Tellers The New Pornographers Times New Viking Titus Andronicus TV on the Radio Two Gallants 2 many dj's Ugly Casanova The Velvet Underground Violent Femmes Vitalic The War On Drugs Weezer The White Stripes The Who Windmill Wolf Parade Yeah Yeah Yeahs Yo La Tengo Young Marble Giants