It is surprisingly difficult to get rid of old classical LPs. When I inherited the capiz shell stereo console, a couple hundred of grandpa’s old classical records came along for the ride. Most of them are very good, but neither Amy nor I are huge classical fans, and we have no place to store them (I’ve already consolidated my LPs to just what will fit in the console).
So I selected out a few keepers and took the rest to Amoeba and Rasputin’s. Each store wanted about 2% of the collection, and offered nickels and dimes. As in, $1 for a big stack of great old records. The problem is:
- This stuff was being pressed for decades – there are zillions of LPs out there.
- So few are in good condition today.
- Most people have replaced their vinyl collections with CDs.
- Classical music appreciation is at an all-time low.
Put these factors together and there are way, way, way too many classical LPs on the used market. My problem was not that I wanted money for the records – I couldn’t care less. What I wanted was to find a good home for them – I didn’t want them to end up at the dump, or unappreciated. It was the music collection of my grandfather’s life, the LPs I remember him listening to in the 60s and 70s. Amoeba said they would be willing to take them to the dump for me if I agreed to take less money for them. Rasputin’s agreed to take them all for free and put them in their discount bin. I just wanted someone to listen to them again, so left them on a counter and walked out.
It’s over. LPs are over, classical is over, grandpa is 15 years dead. Moving on.
LPs ain’t over until music like Sore Throat’s “Indestroy” is re-released on CD.
…now there’s a chance for the media companies to make an online buck: re-release old music as downloadable WAVs (_not_ MP3, and definitely _not_ in a DRM-compliant format).
i’ve heard classical nuts who love CD (and MP3), putting the whole Ring cycle on one disk and exchanging rare material with each other….
If I had a faster link, I think you might have galvanized me to action, to put more classical music up on music sharing systems (Limewire/Gnutella, in this case). I think a lot of this music has been around for centuries for a reason, and it’d be a shame if the entire society missed it just because the sharing sites focus on the likes of Britanny and JLo.
-Jim
I think that it’s too bad that classical music appreciation is at an all time low…at least for those of us who enjoy it. Too bad also that KDFC (102.1) here in the Bay Area only plays the most “easy listening” variants of it as well. It’s a pretty diverse genre, and there have been some amazing things done, especially in the last century.