People love their music and have favorite albums they must always posses.
What albums have you repurchased as new formats have been introduced?
All my vinyl and tapes are gone, so I can only remember buying a few albums in three formats: Bob Welch’s “French Kiss” on vinyl, 8 track, and CD was one of them.
The ultimate fan will have bought the album on vinyl, tape (reel-to-reel, 8 track, cassette), CD, SACD (or DVD-A), and/or Digital downloads (mp3). Bonus points for esoteric format like DCC or DAT or even Edison cylinder.
So, I have bought the same album 3 times, how about you?
I’m too young for anything before cassette, but does it count if someone bought an album again after losing it? If so, I have bought the first A Perfect Circle album four times. No idea why that’s the only one that ever gets lost…
On a side note, I now burn every CD I buy and store the original in a CD case, just to be safe. I also rip all the songs onto my computer too. I actually am that guy that everyone pretends to be when they say, “No RIAA, I did buy all these songs, these are backups!”
Well tapes and vinyls were pretty much both around through my childhood, so I never had a need to buy a tape of something I had on album. CDs became popular when I was in High School. I purchased my first itunes songs in 2004.
For the most part, my taste in music has changed enough that anything I had on tape I didn’t bother with on CD. And of course itunes imports CDs so there was no need to repurchase my CD songs on itunes.
Some exceptions:
Billy Joel - got his tapes right before CDs took off so I was still into him when I started getting CDs.
Random nostalgia - mostly singles - songs from my youth that I remember fondly from the radio or 45s or cassette singles - I’ll occasionally pick these up on itunes
Some rare soundtracks - I rebought the soundtracks to Electric Dreams and would have for Made in Heaven and Joe vs the Volcano had they been available, instead I got individual songs or procured them through other means…
Reverse! - there were a few albums, one by Indigo Girls (Swamp Ophelia), and one by Disappear Fear (the eponymous one I think) that I bought on CD to listen to, but also bought the vinyl as a collectors item.
Beethoven’s symphonies. My father used to play them on 78s (which I still have). Then mono LPs, stereo LPs, reel-to-reel, cassette (+ Walkman), ADD CDs, DDD CDs, and now on my iPod.
I’m pretty sure I still have the complete studio recordings of Led Zeppelin, The Doors, AC/DC (up to Back in Black), and possibly Black Sabbath (up to Heaven and Hell) in vinyl, cassette tape, and CD form. I do have most of them in iTunes as well, but didn’t buy them again to get them there.
I’ve been thinking about starting a similar thread…but procrastination is my middle name…so thank you on my behalf.
I have recently rediscovered the joy of listening to an entire album and so…
The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club … vinyl and now CD
Don McLean’s American Pie … vinyl and now digital download.
And I’m thinking about repurchasing Billy Joel’s The Stranger, Carole King’s Tapestry and CSN’s Deja Vu
Joni Mitchell’s Hejira. I bought it on 8-track at K-Mart as a teen, then the vinyl album, then picked it up on CD. I bet there are more, but that’s the first one that comes to mind.
There are probably lots of cassette tapes I bought for my Walkman (how cool was the Walkman for a teenager?) that I eventually bought on CD, too.
I had a lot of 8-tracks as a young teen–at that time, they were available extremely cheaply at places like K-Mart as the format was almost dead by then. You could pick them up in a bin just like you can the $5 DVDs at Wal-Mart today.
Which makes me wonder about all those DVDs my husband picks up from the Wal-Mart bin. Destined for obsolence, I bet.
Apart from that, some music is really just good enough and meaningful enough to keep upgrading formats to match current technology.
I do also have an E-Music subscription as well, so I’m embracing that format, but it doesn’t feel as real to me!
Tommy by the Who.
vinyl, then cassette lost the cassette. bought another, CD then the soundtrack when the stage version came out, lost one disk and bought on iTunes.
“Rumours” by Fleetwood Mac comes to mind. My Mom bought me my first cassette at a garage sale, when I was about 17. I loved it from the start and listened to it almost constantly for about a month. After that one was worn out, I bought another. That one fell victim to a tape recorder, so I ordered a third. When CDs became popular, I replaced the cassette with a CD.
Most of my music-buying life has been spent during the cassette era and the CD era. There have been many, many tapes that I have replaced with CDs (often, though not always, when I found a good deal on a used copy) (if you really wanted me to, I could provide a list, but it would be a long one), but very few that I’ve had more than two versions of.
One exception I can think of: The Kinks are The Village Green Preservation Society: Originally bought it cheap on vinyl (and copied it onto cassette so I could listen to it); it was one of the first CDs I bought when I got a CD player; and was happy to get the deluxe remastered expanded 3-disc version for Christmas last year.
I have several albums where I have a vinyl version and then another copy that’s a Mobil Fidelity half-speed master. Then I might have a Japanese pressing. Perhaps, as in the case of Dark Side of the Moon, I have a special anniversary edition on colored vinyl. I have at least 3 vinyl copies of Who’s Next. And this doesn’t count the ones I purchased again because something happened to the first copy.
Since I began buying CDs, I will now have the original release, the re-mastered version and the re-mastered deluxe version. So, there are some albums that I may have 6 versions of.
You know, I’ve never bought a vinyl album in my life?
I wasn’t really into popular music until high school, which is when the CD started replacing the cassette as the medium of choice. I owned a few tapes - some Iron Maiden albums, The Pogues Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, a Silly Wizard album that I think was technically my mom’s. All those eventually got replaced by CDs. Everything else I own, I bought in a digital format right off the bat.
I still have maybe 1000 LPs. The one I have bought the most has to be Dark Side of the Moon. I’ve gone through several copies on regular vinyl, and own Japanese and Original Master Recording pressings as well. From there, I went straight to CD. Tape never caught on with me, except to make mix cassettes for the car.
For longevity, I still own my original LP of The Doors, which was the first LP I ever bought with my own money. Got it the week it was released.
I’ve owned three on vinyl, cassette and CD:
[ol]
[li]Iron Maiden - Number of the Beast[/li][li]Judas Priest - Screaming for Vengeance[/li][li]Metallica - Kill 'em All[/li][/ol]
