Record Collectors: Unique Characteristics or Not?

Steven Clark (not his real name but a real person) is a record collector who lives on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. Now that Steven has retired, he has more time for leisure. He spends this time on record collecting—mostly 33-rpm jazz from the late '50s into the early '70s. Clark has about 700 to 800 records, most in the jazz category, plus a few in other classifications.

Even with a brief question-and-answer session via e-mail with Steven, I could sense that his passion for record collecting was coming through. He has a zeal for the object of his affection—records. The salient question is why? To answer this, I looked at four research publications that I hope might answer this question.

Publications

Eisenberg (2005, first published 1998) wrote about the motivations that lie behind the collecting of “cultural objects” such as records. In order, he relates

1. “The need to make beauty and pleasure permanent,” based on a fear of it possibly or likely disappearing.
2. “The need to comprehend beauty” because it becomes “more beautiful the better it’s understood…”
3. “The need to distinguish oneself as a consumer, by acquiring the rarest items or the most complete set or going to the greatest lengths for a purchase.”
4. “…nostalgia, a sense of belonging felt through collecting bits of the past.”
5. A quest for social capital in all its forms, “the need to impress others, or oneself.”

Shuker (2004) suggests that the popular image of collecting is that it is only a substitute for relationships with real people. Though this opinion may draw on some previous academic work, Shuker sought to delve into this concept further. For this purpose, he interviewed some 67 record collectors.

Shuker interpreted the results to indicate that record collectors embody a complicated combination of characteristics, including not only a love of music but also “obsessive-compulsive behavior, accumulation and completism, selectivity and discrimination; and self-education and scholarship.” Based on his results, he proposed that record collecting “presents itself as a core component of individual social identity and a central part of the life cycle.”

Giles (2006) took a similar approach to Shuker. He did a comprehensive interview of 20 British record consumers. From these, he gleaned that three facets of record collecting were recognized as psychologically relevant:

1. Records as sacred objects,
2. Record collections as an extension of self, and
3. Music is a sensual experience.

Brown et al. (2016), a study different than the others, examined why music fans would purchase records rather than listen to music that was available for free. Of interest is the fact that most of the participants were female (68.88 percent). All completed an open-ended survey. The heavy weighting toward females in this study makes the results suspect in that most vinyl collectors (by some accounts, 19 out of 20) are male.

When the answers were tabulated, the researchers found two main themes: short-term comparisons and long-term considerations. For the short-term, price was the most critical issue, along with the number of songs on an album and the positives and negatives of different formats.

Long-term considerations included adding to a music collection, how long the album could be enjoyed, and, perhaps surprisingly, who received the money spent related to the wealth of the recording artist. This latter result may have been contributed to by the greater number of female participants who could be construed to be more empathetic than men toward the performers.

What These Four Studies Said to Me

What I glean from these research papers is that those who collect records share many characteristics with collectors of other objects. For example, Eisenberg, who writes about the motivations behind the collecting of “cultural objects” such as records, reports the reasons collectors collect most accurately in my judgment. He cites two reasons related to beauty (or, in the case of music, beautiful music), including the need to preserve it and the need to understand it in order to appreciate it better. Both are applicable to other forms of collecting. The consumer aspect of acquiring the rarest is also among Eisenberg’s top reasons to collect; this is pertinent to collectors in other areas as well. Eisenberg additionally states that nostalgia and the need to impress others additionally play a part, just as they do for any collector.

Shuker is the most negative regarding the motives of record collectors among the four authors. He brings up the now outdated theories of Freud and Muensterberger that suggest that those who collect are either depraved or deprived in childhood. Further, he goes on to suggest that record collectors exhibit obsessive-compulsive behavior, which we now know not to be true. Though 30 to 40 percent of the population collects, only 1 to 2.5 percent are obsessive-compulsive. In the end, Shuker softens his earlier hard stand to suggest that record collecting is a core component of individual social identity and a vital part of the life cycle. This applies to all collectors as well.

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Giles' interpretation of record collectors parallels what is written about all collectors—i.e., that record collectors consider their records to be sacred objects, and their records are an extension of themselves. Other collectors regard their treasures as sacrosanct, too. It is also abundantly clear that all collectors think of their collections as extensions of themselves, thereby the saying that selling part of one’s collection is like losing an arm or leg. And, although music may be a sensual experience, perceiving beauty in one’s objects gives pleasure as well, though of a different kind—visual rather than aural.

The work of Brown et al. makes me uneasy, as I stated previously. The participants in the study were nearly 70 percent female, which means the results would not be expected to be representative of the usual record collector, who is male. That being said, in this study, the price was found to be a key factor when buying records, which is true for all collectors no matter what they collect (Mueller, 2019). The other findings were specific to record collectors and not applicable to all collectors.

Summary

The literature included above suggests that record collectors are, in most ways, like collectors who collect in other areas. They treasure their gathered records and save them for posterity. While doing so, they enjoy them since records can be played and the music can be enjoyed. Some other collected objects, such as fine art or porcelain, can be appreciated visually but not actually used beyond that. Imagine serving tea in an antique pot that cost $30,000.00! It is, for most, unthinkable.

Record collectors see records as an extension of themselves, just as other collectors might live their life’s biography through their collections. For all collectors, collecting is a core part of social identity and a part of the life cycle.

In a word, record collectors are much like all collectors except that they collect records rather than the thousands of other possibilities.