The Museum vs. Galleries

Depends on the day of the week. Qobuz new releases come out on Friday. So Friday is virtually 100% listening to new jazz and classical releases. Saturday and Sunday are maybe 75% new, depending on the size of the haul. By Thursday I’m pretty much 100% old favorites, with an occasional new fav thrown into the old fav category.

Yesterday, (Wednesday) for example, I woke up with an ungovernable urge to hear Mingus Three or Four Shades of Blue which led to Philip Catherine.  Also listened to Wallace Stoney’s Stand and Nina Simone’s I put a spell on you.  All from my collection. So nothing new.  

70...80% of my listening time is hunting for new tunes and music I haven't heard in spotify, youtube music and youtube premium. Then the titles I liked most I go shopping for vinyls or CDs around bandcamp and local record stores and play them again to enjoy far better sound vs. streaming.  I now realized that I have vinyls released after y2k started dominating my shelves because of that.

For me having first release of new band I liked is more important than having better sounding release of existing band.

I’d say 80% of my listening is now new or relatively new discoveries.  There’s so much great new (at least to me) and well-recorded music out there I’m finding on Qobuz that I rarely feel the itch to listen to my older stuff although it does still happen occasionally.  I’m just so grateful to have found so many new or previously undiscovered artists through streaming — it’s reawakened my love of the hobby and taken it to a new level entirely.  It’s the precious audio gift that keeps on giving. 

I used to play music from my collection (4K albums) nearly 100% of the time. With streaming sounding as good as my library I now listen to new music (or only listened to up to twice before) probably 90%+ of the time.

Streaming completely changed my approach to music.

This has changed for me. When I was first exploring Jazz, for example, it was very exciting. It seemed like an entire universe was waiting for me to discover it and most of what I listened to was previously unknown and recently purchased.

However, as the decades have gone by, I’ve found it harder and harder to find new (to me) music that I want to buy, so I tend to listen mostly to what’s become familiar.

This doesn’t mean I don’t still spend time looking for new music to buy. I do. But now, it takes a whole lot of looking/listening to find anything that really grabs me. It’s not because there’s a lack of music. My taste /personal preference is the limiting factor and it’s very stubborn!