YOUTUBE and Vinyl are gonna bankrupt me!



I jumped back in to vinyl and boy has music buying become more expensive! Not only because vinyl costs more than CDs or downloads/streaming, but I’m also buying so much more music now.

The biggest dent in my bank account is due to discovering music via youtube. It’s become my main method of music discovery. For one thing, as noticed by numerous music lovers no youtube, their "recommendations" algorithm has really become sophisticated within the past year or two. The recommended music/videos that show up as I follow link to link are absolutely terrific - one gem after another. For another thing, youtube is great for actually hearing rare or under-the-radar music. So many people have uploaded vinyl rips of hard to find albums, and so many alt/non-mainstream music shows up on youtube. And it seems almost everything is available on vinyl these days, especially from new artists.

So I keep going down the rabbit hole, hearing awesome albums which...sure enough...are available on discogs or the artist’s own site.

Recently I’ve been on a binge for late 70’s early 80’s Brazilian and Japanese funk/jazz/prog stuff. And lots of alt-smooth-vibe jazz. Some really great stuff coming out from new artists. I’ve been a music omnivore for a long time, but I’m amazed at how much wild and wonderful stuff there out there that I never even thought to investigate, or knew existed.

It’s a fun time to be a music lover (especially on vinyl).


I’m not a music "collector," or vinyl collector in the sense of "I must have all 3 versions of X album" stuff. I simply order based only on the music I want to hear. But even so my stack of records is starting to reach hoardish-looking levels (well, to me anyway).

I...must...slow.....down.

Tell me I’m not the only one afflicted.
prof

 I second  rbstehno

 Roon with Tidal is a great way to explore with links to Bio's, other albums by same artist, similar artists, different performances of same song , etc. It can become a rabbit hole as you suggest, but a very functional one where you can save songs along the way, make playlists, etc.

I find myself pleasantly surprised by the sound quality at times also..   

I planned to move from my current squeezebox-based server to Roon, but that was slowed down by my dive in to vinyl which is taking much time away from my digital front end.  I hope to try Roon soon.
Youtube has very little influence on me. What kills me is Discogs. If I see Chris Bellmen or Kevin Gray listed as the mastering engineer or cut by in the credits I end up buying it. I rarely regret it. But, I just keep spending more money. I can't keep up with both of these guys releasing new remasters. Kreig Wunderlich at MoFi isn't helping either. His stuff is stupid good.