Target had a thing in their ad this week - vinyl, buy one, get one 50% off. I misread the ad, thought they had vinyl in stores, but as it turns out, it's online only. Not their fault that I misread the ad, and that has nothing to do w/the subject.

BUT...I went to the page. I just want to browse to see what's available, I'm not really looking for anything in particular. So I want to skim through like I would in a store.

The page defaults to sorting by best seller. No problem - I'll just sort it by artist.

Problem.

I can sort by price - low to high or high to low. I can sort by ratings, most popular or most recent.

But not artist.

Speaking of Target (I was going to search for an existing thread to post this, but this one will do): I went by my neighborhood store today (a regular Target, not a Super Target) only to find redshirted employees in the process of reducing the CD shelving by roughly 66%. I'm not sure of the retail terminology, but of the three sets of shelves lining two different aisles, two of them were now filled with Blu-Ray/DVD titles, the remaining shelf was devoted only to new releases and A-Z comps.

Target might have been the last retail chain to actually subdivide music by genre (Latin/Country/Pop)--but at the same time, I did not see any vinyl, either. However, a back wall had been cleared (it was the former spot of the movies that had been shifted over to the former CD shelves) so maybe vinyl is due to be put in that spot. (The last Barnes & Noble I was in devoted more shelf space to vinyl than to compact discs.)

I was going to mention that, too. I didn't notice the CDs so much, but the DVD shelf space was reduced, and the inventory was spread out to make things look full. I don't think I've ever seen 3 "Pretty In Pink" DVDs side by side before. There was at least one whole section of empty shelves.

Target is dead to me when it comes to anything media.

Our version of Target only stocks a very small CD collection of top40 and the usual best of CDs these days.

We also have a version of K-Mart that is even worse.

China no longer sells physical items unless it's a bootleg DVD and they are hard to find as well.

I dunno....years ago, when CD's first appeared, I thought technology would make collecting music better, not lead to the the somewhat empty experience it seems to have become.

Yes, it used to be exciting to track down b-sides. Now it's almost too easy!

I also never thought I'd look at my large quantity of discs as a liability; for years collecting music & movies was (along with my cats & "girls") the main fun thing in life.

I have an offer in on a 1080 Sq Ft house. If I get it, I'm going to be crammed like a sardine, unless I donate my business & 1/3 - 1/2 of my personal collection to charity. As it is, most of my books are going, & I've already thrown away 80% of my old VHS collection & liquidated my entire LP collection. I think I kept around 10 records that I hoped would sell for real money on ebay. So far 2 or 3 actually have.

And at my age, if I look too close at an attractive young woman, I'm either a dirty old man or a pervert.............

That's kind of pessimistic, isn't it, Geff?

Why not a dirty old man AND a pervert?

true

The whole "collecting" experience isn't what it was in the glory days.

Oh, guys. God forbid we should ever have to go back to that. Wasting entire afternoons in pursuit of albums we'd never find at store after store. I've never enjoyed collecting more than in the Internet era ... being able to get everything I want with a few clicks and have it show up at the door in a few days ... the old glory days weren't that glorious for me as a music collector, they were more frustrating. I just want the music, I don't want to have to struggle to find it.

This is how I feel about all shopping. Not just for my hobbies (which the internet is fantastic for, obviously). Looking to buy a new spatula? Amazon, read a few reviews, have the best spatula ever two days later. It's made everything easier and better to me. I was never a thrill of the hunt type of guy, being super impatient.

I hated having to scour 3 or 4 record stores to find that 12" single I heard at the club the night before, and maybe have to wait even longer to have them order it for me, if they even would. Or even worse, with comics, just never getting that issue I missed because the drug store ran out or didn't get it.

As Deep Purple sang......... "It's not the kill, it's the thrill of the chase!"

On the one hand, there's a ton of stuff I've found on the net I wouldn't have owned otherwise. On the other hand, those Bowie & Prince B-sides used to be a big deal (I even once got ......um..... "a date".... because I had the latest Prince b-side)!

I love Internet shopping for as Linda has said, you can get what you when you want.

But the record store experiences were golden too.

Finding unrealized gems, sometimes for practically nothing, trade ins and most importantly meeting cool people and having tight relationships with record store personal and owners.

Being an older guy now and with a sizeable collection the Internet is great for targeting those "wants".

So I got lucky, I have participated and enjoyed both worlds to enable the growth of my music collection.

Rick A.

Once upon a time, one actually had to purchase printed copies of the artist discographies that Wikipedia provides for free. Because of this, there was a certain bliss when I'd find OOP vinyl, a rare mport, a B-side or a bootleg, because often it was something that I didn't know even existed, something that I suddenly now had the opportunity to own and experience, over and over again..

There's really nothing particularly special about recorded music anymore--not when you can hear anything you want, anywhere you want, anytime you want. What's so special about stumbling across an old vinyl copy of "Concerts For The People Of Kampuchea"? You may buy it, but are you going to haul ass to get home and put it on a turntable to actually play it and hear it? Because you can probably watch actual film footage of those same performances for free on your cellphone while you're still standing there in the record store.

That said--it's a great time to be a collector. Bob Dylan's entire 1965-66 studio sessions are going to be available in a couple more weeks. I have no complaints.

Oh how I wish it was that easy. As someone who backtracks frequently lets just say finding many titles on CD from the 80s and 90s isn't very easy...quite often used copies are very difficult to obtain even if the buyer is willing to pay significant money ($100+).

Back in the 80s if the local shops didn't have something I was looking for I could just give one of my go-to Goldmine sellers a call and have the item delivered to me in a week...not so much different from today. Music Machine (I think they were in Maryland...anybody else use them?)...generally the #1 option for anything that had been recently released. Jack Wolak's Rare Necessities if I was looking for something older. There were about 10 dealers I would work with pretty frequently and most of the time I could track down what I was looking for with three or four phone calls.

A bit off topic, but if anything record collecting has become a much bigger pain in the rear end these days but it has nothing to do ease of buying but rather the "bonus track" and "bonus CD" mess. Back in the old days if I wanted to buy the new Def Leppard album I could go into the store and buy it and knew I had all the music, maybe minus a Japanese bonus cut. And if I was interested in the Japanese bonus cut it generally didn't take very long to look up what it was and determine if I wanted it or not. Today if I buy a new album I have to check if there is are bonus tracks or not? If there are tracks, what's the difference in the Amazon copy versus the Best Buy copy versus the Target copy. Is there a limited edition European digipak version with bonus cuts (a favorite tactic by European record labels like Napalm Records). Are there 1 disc or 2 disc versions (Inside Out used to love this one...have multiple copies of titles but Riverside and Shadow Gallery because I bought the single CD version only to find out later there was a 2 disc version). Generally I don't pre-order, but rather just wait and order roughly 10 discs at a time. These days ordering those 10 discs generally takes 90 minutes...about 85 minutes of research necessary to ensure I get the most "complete" copy and about 5 minutes of actually placing the order).

I miss browsing the bins and finding a gem. The Internet is not like that, it's instant gratification that's great when you really want something quick but the browsing is over.

You forgot to mention the deluxe edition of the album that comes out a month after the regular edition. And the tour edition, with a bonus CD of live tracks.

And that's all before the remastering cycle starts.

And then there's the obscure 1 country only tour edition, that sells for a fortune.

To have both experiences available would really be the most ideal, but the devaluation of physical product makes B&M retailers an endangered species.

I like our old fashioned Jimbo Lunches. Part of the fun is watching Jimbo, list in hand, as he goes through every-frickin'-CD-at-every-store-we-go-to.

That nails it for me. It's nice to have easier access to imports I didn't before, but I miss the excitement of stumbling across something cool I never knew existed.

As I mentioned in the postal thread, with the huge yearly increases, something is going to change. In that thread, I suggested that discs are largely going to go away & be replaced by files, which eliminates postage.

A return of B&M's is another possibility; but unlikely as today's internet model dramatically reduces labor cost per sale.

Either way, I suspect physical discs on the net will be dead long before the end of the decade; or at most will be down to a niche collector's market.