Do you still own a physical music collection?

I listen to music exclusely digitally these days. Mainly Spotify but sometimes MP3 via USB in my car when the mobile signal is too bad. Thanks to the increase in mobile network speeds and broadband, plus the power of smartphones these days and the popularity of smartspeakers.

What is mad with smartspeakers is that a lot or people only listen to music using them these days. That means they are listening on one speaker in mono. Imagine even considering that 30 years ago?

I've still got my music CD collection of over 500 albums. But I can't have listened to any of them in nearly 10 years.

I also still have all by vinyl LPs. I still love looking at the covers and inlays. I have even considered getting my record player out again, but haven't yet.

But I also still own my whole audio tape collection that must be easy over 200+ albums. But what to do with them? I'm not likely to ever play them again. The only tape player I still have is in my 23 year old Akai hifi seperates setup that's currently at my parents house as my mum uses it sometimes. But the tapes are not going to be worth anything. But I do have a lot of obscure albums in there. So I just hold on to them? Until I eventually die then my son throws them away!

I was sorting out a load of stuff I still have stored away in a closet at my parents house the other week. I still had piles of VHS tapes there. I was looking at them all and suddenly thought why am I keeping them? Especially the blank ones with stuff recorded from the TV. So they all got binned. I have however still held on to a few purchased VHS tapes that I never replaced on DVD and am not sure they were ever released. But will I ever actually watch them? I don't actually have a VHS player here.

What have you done with your music collections?
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Not any more. Got some CD's arsing around in storage & a few Elite CD's I listen to very rarely on my Marantz Signature CD Player.

All the Vinyl I had went down the slot with my Divorce back in '94.

I do have some video tapes in storage & have no way of trying them. The Panasonic player I had died many moons ago & went to the local tip as landfill.

I do have a boxed Denon 1940 DVD player though. Waiting for eBay to offer £1 fees & she'll be advertised.

Poor quality MP3's the rest of the time H.
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I very narrowly missed out on some Pioneer Fluoroscan separates being sold locally on facebook.

My dad had some of these, but they are gone now, and i wish they'd been kept.

All my CDs are in storage but I've just recently been getting back into listening to FM radio at home (I was given a modern 'boombox' for the kitchen).

We have two of the UE boom speakers, they can be set up to work as a stereo pair but it's a little bit of a hassle to do so, so often end up using just the one. It is convenient though, to have all the music and playlists through Spotify on my phone.
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Re-reading this topic I still have the same situation. My Music CD, Tape and LP collection is all in storage at my parents house. They keep commenting that I need to do something with it all and they are not getting any younger so the free storage won't be there forever!. But what to do with it all? Audio tapes must be worthless now. And most music CDs are next to worthless. But with a very large collection and so many memories it's impossible to decide.

My wife is looking to get a new Record player that can stream to Bluetooth smart speakers, so a mix of the next and old tech. Her mum has a large 80's LP collection so she wants to play them all again. This means I can also listen to all the LPs I also still have. But tapes? I still have my Akai separates but I like the declutter of the digital age. No need for shelves and shelves of media.

The problem is nostalgia and a music collection. I feel sorry for my son's generation as they don't have any physical connection to music. It's all available on streaming to listen to nearly everything ever released, but without any direction. With a physical music collection we could browse through it, discover an album we had forgotten about and listen. And we have lost the physical music stores. Every Saturday going into the store and spending ages going through the albums to discover something new. We have amazing instant access to almost all music now which is great, but we have lost that personal connection to it, I was thinking about this the other day in a charity show. They had a lot of new LPs and CDs in stock and it was obvious these were from a couple of big donations as the artists and type of music had a theme. This was someone's personal music collection that told a story about their life and likes. When a family member dies you go through all their belongings and reminisce, and discover what they liked to listen to. In this digital age that's gone. The same is true for video games. Going through older game collections you instantly get to see what someone liked. Now with digital collections when someone dies their online accounts close and it's all lost. Very sad.
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