It's that time of year again to take a step back and have a quick glance at the one that just passed. I didn't really need an incentive for that because when I returned home from my Christmas holidays. I had to admit to myself - while looking at the piles of CDs I had stacked up on top of my shelf system, on the floor next to it and at one that had amassed next to my stereo - that my collection had once again outgrown the available space for it.
Yes, I could have crammed everything in that I had bought, especially those larger recently-added items that are so often virtually thrown out of stock at wildly reduced prices around the end of one and the beginning of a new year, but filling up every nook and cranny of my shelf system(s) isn't really the most intelligent way of going about things. As I have several sub-collections strung together shelf after shelf, I need space in-between the various sections and at strategic spots inside of each section to be able to add new items as I go along.
So, once again I was stuck. Because I had some time one afternoon, I did it the meditative way and sat on the floor of my living room, accompanied by the sounds of Chicken Shack's absolutely brilliant "Complete Blue Horizon Sessions", and surveyed what I had and what could possibly be moved elsewhere to free up space and to give everything a little room to breathe. For quite a while I was blank and simply couldn't come up with a solution ... until "Night Life" started blasting from the speakers and I suddenly thought of my ... bedroom.
Yes, the bedroom. See, some years back I had bought myself an extra 4 IKEA Benno shelves and stored them away in the bedroom for future use. In the meantime, those had been partially filled with many packs of new empty jewel cases I so often need when another shipment reaches these shores with mangled goods, partially with CDs I had removed from my collection because they had been "updated" with newer or better releases, or partially with other stuff that I was thinking of getting rid of (but haven't so far ... typical).
So, the decision to move something from the living room into the bedroom was made quickly and after a bit of intense deliberation with my various personae, I decided to split my DVD collection into films and TV series. A quick count revealed that I have about 50 TV series boxed sets and the removal of those would free more than enough space to house my two Beatles boxed sets, the Led Zeppelin one plus a few other unwieldy ones and leave me enough space to spread out the 60 plus meters of music a bit again.
While once again shifting large masses of media around the house, I also had the chance to reflect a bit on my changed purchasing habits. In fact, although it might sound different (and might when compared to less geeky people), I haven't actually bought all that much.
I have virtually stopped buying DVDs because I got tired of having all that stuff standing around (and because I have pay-TV) and I also bought a lot less music these past two years or so. Once the initial "feeding frenzy" was over and I had grazed the various online shops and auction sites thin to put together my initial collection, my bouts have been limited to adding the occasional high spot to my collection (Mosaic boxed sets, for example, which are about to go out of print) or going on brief buying binges when my usual haunts reduce single high spots or items on my eternal wish list drastically. In 2009, the latter seemed to be the case all too often.
I don't know what it was in 2009, but because I have learned to be somewhat patient and wait, suddenly a virtual deluge of heavily price-reduced items hit my mail program's in-box and/or my various online radars. Aside from the two Beatles boxed sets and buying Mosaic boxes, everything I bought was either reduced by up to 80 percent or was offered at a greatly reduced pre-order price.
Because I have started keeping tabs on what I bought - together with both the list price and the median price an item reaches at some point of its online career - I was able to add up in late December what I had saved. It came to approximately 78 percent, and that includes a very large number of formerly damn expensive boxed sets or very hard to find single items that suddenly popped up via some unsuspecting marketplace dealer who didn't know what he was selling. If you were wondering who continuously jumped on items before you had a chance to, it was probably me. As soon as some notification hits my PC from somewhere, I'm usually there to buy it a few seconds later.
On top of that, various forums alerted me to extremely good offers, most of which only lasted a few hours or days before the reduced items had been gobbled up by those in the know. The last route some items took into my collection was by way of a present by some extremely nice readers of this site here, a shop owner or two who rewarded my loyalty with very good offers, as well as generous birthday and whatnot presents which often turn out to be CDs (because my family and my friends know I'm always happy when I get a new CD).
The flip-side of the coin is that now I have so much fine music to listen to that I shouldn't really be buying any more for at least the next 11 months.
Yeah, right.
That's not really why I made space in my collection by shifting everything around. Yes, the list of must-have items has grown extremely short these past 24 months, but the crux of the matter is that there are still a number of excellent reissue labels out there that put together these new items I usually haven't even considered before they start marketing them.
So, also in 2010 there will be plenty to write about here, both about music I'll finally get around to listening to and new music which finds its way into the recently dusted-off nooks and crannies of my shelf system.
Here's to 2010 then.
Let's get to it.
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