I have been collecting records for over a decade now. I bought my first vinyl at Discos Revolver around 2015. I remember exactly which one it was and what made me buy it that day. In fact, I can remember where I bought almost 99% of the records I own, and that already feels like a milestone for me because I am not exactly known for having a very detailed memory. Buying physical records has felt special to me ever since.

Of course we already had some legacy records at home from my parents’ collection, and I used to play them on my turntable, even tried sampling them without much success, but I had this permanent urge to build my own collection, filled with my own choices, and create something that could last forever instead of disappearing like bytes sometimes do on hard drives.

Over time, though, accumulating so many records, and hey, a 600-record collection is not even that big, there are true maniacs out there, made me realize that many of them were bought just to discover new samples or hidden gems, and they ended up not being that great. Some are not even aligned with my taste, or worth playing at parties. Believe me, there are a few weird ugly ones that I am almost ashamed to own and that I have barely played once.

It does not make much sense to own so many things that I do not really enjoy and will probably never listen to again. When I moved out of my mom’s apartment, I had to pack all my records and take them to my new place. That was when I realized how much space they took and how many of them I had not listened to in years. I did a first round of filtering and left a lot of them there, but I still brought many with me because at the time I thought I would listen to them again or use them again, and I have not.