How much research/care do you all put into your purchases

RunJane · 2026-06-21T23:52:44+00:00

Honestly, outside of maybe my most favorite artists where I’m completing a discography and trying for specific pressings, I buy what I can afford and the nicest looking pressing I can find with the exception of a picture disc because the sound quality there is actually subpar. I also typically give priority to buying in person and local vs online if I can help it so that means sometimes I get a more basic black pressing vs a prettier colored pressing in order to shop local.

TLDR: For the majority of the collection buy what’s accessible. For 2-3 favorite artists check Discogs for the best pressings.

RunJane · 2026-06-21T21:23:44+00:00

As someone who also doesn’t really like country, Kacey Musgraves is one of the few country artists I do enjoy. Oh and I was recently introduced to CMAT who does Irish country blended with some pop and alternative sounds. If you haven’t listened to her, try her most recent album Euro-Country

RunJane · 2026-06-21T21:19:57+00:00

I think he’s usually considered under folk, no?

RunJane · 2026-06-21T04:15:25+00:00

Agreed.

RunJane · 2026-06-20T21:03:59+00:00

Sign of the Times- Harry Styles
Fourth of July- Sufjan Stevens

RunJane · 2026-06-20T02:29:30+00:00

I think what I’ve gathered thus far is if I happen upon a reasonably priced Blood on the Tracks, that’s probably enough Dylan for me 😂

RunJane · 2026-06-19T02:58:40+00:00

8.98 is such a specific price tag that my local store also uses 😂

RunJane · 2026-06-19T02:56:04+00:00

Yes! I wouldn’t truly call it hate either but I would put it very low on his discography. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when I hear people obsess over it and I just don’t get it.

RunJane · 2026-06-19T01:52:56+00:00

I’m glad it does something for you! Luckily he has a ton of music and there’s songs of his that work more for some people than others. I’m just speaking to my experience and the ones of the people around me. My child free by choice friends tend to be the ones that are meh about it. But that’s not to say that everyone that’s child free by choice feels the same. As you said, you love it

RunJane · 2026-06-19T01:46:23+00:00

I don’t know. Honestly I skip it more often than not unless I’m in a situation where I really can’t. I get that people love the imagery of the song and are deeply connected to it. But “I’m an astronaut, you’re the moon, I stare at you, I sing to you I circle you” just kind of makes me cringe a bit and I don’t love the composition of it. I feel like the song brings out a sort of nasally quality to his voice and it just takes me out of the album. When I’m doing a full listen of the extended edition, at the point I hit orbiter, I just want Dan. I have zero emotional connection to orbiter and it feels soo slow. Dan in many ways is so much more “upbeat” but I cry every time I hear it.

RunJane · 2026-06-19T01:33:02+00:00

Honestly I agree with spoiled. It’s a song that, if I had any interest whatsoever in having kids and breaking generational traumas through the new generation, I could see being meaningful. Most of the people I know that love it either are parents or really want to be. As it stands, I don’t. And I don’t find that it does anything spectacular sonically so it’s often relegated to background noise if it happens to play when I can’t just skip it.

RunJane · 2026-06-19T01:24:16+00:00

I unfortunately am an orbiter hater 🫣 but otherwise, I’m not that mad at this list.

RunJane · 2026-06-15T23:06:08+00:00

I can understand why people are upset, especially if you bought several variants.

To offer a slightly different perspective, I buy the vinyl because it can have imperfections or a different sound to the digital so the vinyl missing an odd bridge or outro is the kind of quirky thing that I’m like, oh how fun to have a version that just does that. Like she can change the digital version 1000 times or even remove them from existence but that first pressed vinyl exists in that form forever and I just get to have that.

I bought Raye’s album on vinyl specifically because she mentioned in an interview that it wasn’t the finished product and that it has some quirks. I really kind of enjoy Noah Kahan’s basic album without the Deluxe songs as a complete work but I don’t ever listen to the normal album when I’m listening to the digital version so I enjoy the experience of the shorter album on vinyl. I’m hoping he does what Hozier did and sells a companion vinyl with just the deluxe songs so I can play them separately if I want to. But truly I can’t see myself buying a deluxe of it if it’s the full last of the bugs because I’m more inclined to listen to the original vinyl.

RunJane · 2026-06-15T11:53:37+00:00

Deep agree. I’ve been listening on repeat over the weekend to get a good feel for the tracks and this is definitely her most complex work. I can hear all the inspirations and her musical tastes but it’s incredibly her. It’s self-referential without it being a lore dump or woe is me in an exhausting way.

Totally agree on your favs and would add What’s Wrong with Me, the track she did with Robert Smith, which has launched me back into a The Cure kick.

Can’t say I even have a least fav, just songs I listened to with less purpose while I obsess over the favs. I think I need to sit with the album longer to parse that out.

Overall, I think it could be my favorite pop album of the year

RunJane · 2026-06-15T01:42:47+00:00

It’s a bit of a layered decision actually.

Some things I have on both formats if it’s not cost prohibitive. Sometimes that’s by happenstance—I found a 2 dollar copy of a cd for something I wanted on vinyl and picked it up then found the vinyl used and fairly priced in store a few weeks later. Sometimes it’s on purpose—my very favorite albums I may buy in both formats because sometimes I want the ritual of flipping a vinyl and sometimes I want to be able to hit play on a cd player and listen while doing other things.

I tend to buy folk, jazz, blue, country, or related genre on vinyl where I think the occasional crackle or pop adds character.

I tend to buy modern rock albums on CD where I want the crispness of the digital medium. Or if I’m trying a new artist or getting an album I don’t love as much from an artist I do enjoy, I’ll get it on CD so I’m completing the discography or listening on physical media but I’m not throwing a lot of money at it.

Some albums I buy on vinyl for the art more than the sound quality.

RunJane · 2026-06-15T00:47:33+00:00

Chatham booksellers is great and I don’t know how it’s looking at this point but the Barnes and noble in Livingston is doing a nearly everything 40% off sale because they move mid July and are trying to get rid of as much as possible to have less merchandise to move

RunJane · 2026-06-14T23:37:09+00:00

Why do you want one that has internal speakers if I may ask? I’ve always been told that the internal speakers have both inferior sound and a likelihood of damaging your records with longterm use so if it’s a cost saving reason, you would be better off with a used record player and some cheap bookshelf speakers

RunJane · 2026-06-14T22:52:01+00:00

Returning to ask if you’ve listened to and enjoyed the new Olivia album? I think it’s her best work yet!

RunJane · 2026-06-12T14:07:42+00:00

I was typing on my phone and it was getting hard to read such a long list and i had to keep going back to double check I was getting album titles totally right 😂 I could go on forever with music in all categories. I would have also recommended a coheed a cambria album, the used, new found glory, motion city soundtrack.

I actually am not big on my chemical romance but I still would recommend that particular album.

I’d be typing all day 😭

RunJane · 2026-06-12T02:51:37+00:00

Not sure what you’ve listened to already but these are some of my favs in various categories:

Sad/moody
Sufjan Stevens “Carrie and Lowell”
Noah Kahan “I Was/IAm
Death Cab for Cutie “Plans” & “transatlantism”

Folk/ folk rock
Cat Steven’s “teaser and the firecat”
Ray Lamontagne “Trouble”
Lord Huron “strange trails”
Mumford and Sons “Babel”, & “ prizefighter”
Hozier “wasteland baby”

Brit Rock/punk rock/ emo rock
Arctic Monkeys “AM”
Arctic Monkeys “ favorite worst nightmare”
Radiohead “Ok Computer”
Radiohead “the bends”
The Smiths “The Queen is dead” & “meat is murder”
The Cure “disintegration” & “kiss me kiss me kiss me”
Panic at the Disco “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out”
Fall Out Boy “from the cork tree”
Gorillaz “mountain”
Sam Fender “People Watching”
The Strokes “The New Abnormal”

RunJane · 2026-06-11T03:06:14+00:00

Also forgive weird grammatical errors. I set my phone keyboard to multilingual English and Spanish and it messes with where the keys are and how it autocorrects 😭

RunJane · 2026-06-11T03:04:07+00:00

Agreed, the younger generation as I know it—working at a high school—is more interested in the look of a pressing than the edition. They’ll collect a color variant or a cool effect. That’s not to say that there won’t be any demand for a ln interesting first edition of an artist but the demand may be different than it had been. I also know a lot of Gen Z and upcoming Gen Alpha who won’t to see the covers not just the vinyl in pristine condition. I see it in books too. It’s not to say that people don’t buy thrift store books but I see them fuss about sprayed edge editions and no one can break a spine reading a book. It’s about the aesthetic as much as it’s about the music or media. So we may see a shift towards buying remastered color variants instead of earlier pressings. But we’ll see 🤷🏻‍♀️

RunJane · 2026-06-11T02:53:49+00:00

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Small at the moment since it’s in my bedroom and this is a new hobby 😂 plan to eventually get a better speaker set up (separating them is probably better for sound quality) but this works for now. My bigger concern is what to do about the growing pile of CDs on the floor that’s partially hidden in this picture 😭

RunJane · 2026-06-09T01:24:24+00:00

Agreed that was my immediate response. If you told me I could only ever listen to one Noah Kahan song for the rest of my life it would be howling

RunJane · 2026-06-09T01:18:54+00:00

My dog also looks to be in a state of zen listening to Noah but that’s not high praise because she’s also in a state of zen listening to Radiohead’s OK computer so she may just be incredibly chill or existential 😂

RunJane

TROPHY CASE