the continuing decline of my music collection

I'm sipping coffee in Borders, where I've been for almost the past three hours. It doesn't feel as if it's been nearly that long. I lose myself in bookstores the way some people lose themselves in - well, whatever it is people lose themselves in. It's never long after Ashley leaves town before I find myself wandering the aisles of a Borders, picking up books I'd like to read, thumbing through them, and then placing them back on the shelf. I always bring a book or my journal with me, but I rarely acknowledge their presence. Rather, my time is spent browsing, sampling books and albums that I never seem to get around to buying. I don't know why that is. Well, I do know why when it comes to books: I know I don't have the time to read them, or I have other things that I need to read first, and I've become fairly self-disciplined at not buying every book that catches my eye. But with music, my fiscal discipline is more puzzling. I used to buy albums with reckless abandon, which in retrospect probably wasn't the best idea. A lot of albums from those days have been sold at used-record stores or forgotten along the way. The ones that remain tend to bring a grimace to my face when I occasionally run across them in a box at the back of my closet. But in many ways, I wish I could recapture a bit of that recklessness. Record prices today are simply too expensive (and my internet connection too slow) to permit unfocused experimentation, which is unfortunate. I'm reluctant to buy an album unless I know beforehand that it's great, or at least very very good, and even then I often am unable to complete the act. I'll carry it around the store for awhile, then set it on the shelf and head quickly for the exit. I am, it seems, incapable of an impulse buy. Each purchase must be very carefully considered. Research must be done: what do the commenters and reviewers at Amazon have to say? What about the good folks at Rolling Stone, Magnet, or No Depression? By the time I'm done weighing the decision, the desire and opportunity to buy the record have passed. This reluctance to make anything other than a fully-informed decision when purchasing an album is perhaps the biggest obstacle to expanding my music selection. Well, that, and the fact that I'm no longer certain of my tastes when it comes to music. The two feed each other, and my music collection starves.

There are a number of ways out of this dilemma that I've explored, but none are particularly satisfying. One option has been the local library's music stash. I've been pretty regularly checking out albums from the Chapel Hill public library and copying them on my computer for the past six months or so. While this has increased my supply of music, it hasn't done much for the diversity of my selection. My choices tend to be limited to classic jazz albums, original cast recordings, and the occasional Beatles record. This is not exactly pushing the boundaries of my aural soundscape. The other option is downloading (legally, of course) songs off the internet. This allows for fairly low-cost experimentation, but it has several inherent problems. First, it forces a choice of only one or a couple of songs from an artist, which means that if you choose poorly, a promising band or artist could be prematurely written off based on insufficient exposure. Second, and perhaps this isn't a problem for some people, it divorces a song from its place within the larger thematic concept and flow of the album from which it is drawn. I tend to find sequencing to be a key feature, particularly on really excellent albums, and the process of plucking a song from its intended place in the track ordering fails to acknowledge that importance. Besides, I like to have the packaging of an album; the artwork and the liner notes, if any attention is paid to them by the artist, can often enhance the listening experience. That seems to leave only the option of actually buying an album from the store, an option which, for a variety of reasons (not least of which being our household budget), simply isn't very attractive to me right now.

Is there an alternative I've not considered, some low-cost, low-risk way to both broaden and expand my music collection? Or is there simply no substitute for buying an album, even when you're not very certain of its quality or fit with your tastes, and spending time exploring it, opening yourself to it, and allowing for the possibility of occasionally getting very minimal return on investment? I tend to think the latter.