Our very own nj had a great way of describing music collecting:

Vertical listeners explore fewer artists, but dig deep into their catalogues.

Horizontal listeners look for what's on the "horizon", regardless of the artist, and therefore have music from a lot of artists, but rarely have an artist's complete discography.

Where do you fall?

I think I'm more of a vertical listener than a horizontal listener. I've just updated my music database, and I have a combined 2024 CDs, cassettes and vinyl records, representing 339 artists. That's 5.97 musical items per artist, which I think is probably a bit high. Lately I've been expanding my horizons more, so to speak, but in the back of my mind, I do this to find the next artist whose catalogue I can explore deeply (Siouxsie and the Banshees being the latest example).

I'm horizontal, and that bugs me a bit.

I have albums I really love, but have barely checked out any other album by that artist. But there are just too many to choose from.

I'm a little of both. There are a few artists I have (close to) entire discographies of, but also quite a few I only have one or two songs of even though I sometimes really like those songs.

I guess if I really had to choose one that fits me best it's horizontal, though.

I'm horizontal, and proud to be so, although my top 200 album list (with its 6 or 7 Springsteens, 5 Tom Waits, 5 Beatles, etc..) is rather vertical.

I love to discover new artists, but when I find someone I really love I can dig deep.

I have no full discography, even Springsteen's.

horizontal.

WAY horizontal. i'm trying hard to change.

Definitely horizontal for me. I was listening to "Are you Passionate" by Neil Young yesterday, and I was sorta thinking about this. I got it from the library, so I didn't shell out any cash. But I was asking myself if I should bother with albums that are sub-par from great artists. Maybe once I've exhausted all the highly acclaimed albums by different artists I'll have no choice but to dig deeper into each artist's cannon (canon?). That's a long ways away though. I'm not 1,000 plus album guy yet.

Vertical for a few artists (Beatles, R.E.M., Beck) but mostly horizontal. Just because I pick up so much music I will have at least 2 albums for many artists, but for some (like The Cars, a band I really love) I only have Greatest Hits collections. I look at my iTunes, and I have more albums from Gary Numan/Tubeway Army or Lush (bands I do enjoy but are not all-time favorites) compared to a scant few songs or one album from Elton John or Fleetwood Mac.

Horizontal for the most part.

bands which I am very very vertical for

The Beatles
The Clash
The Smiths
Blur
Talking Heads
The Velvet Underground
Jimi Hendrix
LCD Soundsystem
Arcade Fire
Joy Division
Wilco

and that's about it. Besides that, for the most part I'm pretty horizontal.

Horizontal.

The only act with more than three albums I have every main album by is White Stripes. For all the rest I'm either missing some of the very early stuff or left out their less notable stuff. Like, for Beck I'm only missing Stereopathetic Soul Manure, and I'm way more interested in finding some new thing by a group I've never heard of before than ever getting it.

I'm both. When i'm listening to an artist for the first time I select the best albums of the discography, if I love the artist I download the whe discography, bootlegs, live performances throw everything on my iPod! :]

I have this problem in reverse. I acquired about 4,000 CDs in a blind bulk sale. Some of the artists are represented by the entire catalog (excluding EPs and compilations). More often I have 1 or 2 titles per artist (100s of artists). As I worked through the stuff I had acquired, I was fortunate to find Acclaimed Music and also allmusic. But not lucky enough.

I already had about four-hundred albums on CD and vinyl. The stuff I had is the stuff I'll continue to listen to, mostly 70s with a handful of 60s and 80s. Most of the stuff I acquired is from the 90s and the 2000s. After selling a lot of the less 'acclaimed' stuff, I'm still hovering at around 1500 'acquired' CDs. I'd prefer to cut it back to about 500 (or fewer).

I've tried to approach this as if I was building a decent representative library of modern music (post 70s). But, it's just too much. Too much to store. Too time-consuming. Too easy to get obsessed about. (I'm approaching the 12 month point with no end in sight.)

I've tried to use an aesthetic principle, but this is not 'my music' so it all sounds like (good) noise to me. A bubbling album sounds as good to me as something in the top 5 for its year (seriously). What I need is the voice of reason, if not the voice of experience.

Is the best strategy to just cherry pick the albums near the top of the rankings? ie. year-by-year, decade-by-decade? Or is it better to try to have adequate representation for each subgenre? I could establish an 'all-time' cutoff number (top 500, etc). Or, should I concentrate on top artists and make the collection primarily vertical?

Any opinions?

If there are no storage problems, what's the rush? Take your time. Throw everything you have absolutely no interest in in a box and put it in the garage or wherever. Then go through the rest at your leisure; music shouldn't be a chore.

And maybe you'll find yourself one day looking through the box of music you had absolutely no interest in and you'll find some more gems.

You know what... as a collector, I'm actually more vertical. I tend to buy albums of my favorite bands. But, as a "collector of digital files" or maybe more accurately as a music fan/listener I'm horizontal. So, I guess I listen to tons and I like a lot, but when it comes down to what I love... it's an elite membership.

I guess spending time in a forum like this and learning from it, rather than simply sermonizing that "NN is better than any other artist" indicates a considerable willingness to at least check out the horizontal aspect.

I have the entire bloody catalogue (except for absolutely unobtainable rarities) of Santa Dylan and Warren Zevon, and rather large chunks of a few others (notably Nick Cave and Bruce Cockburn), but after that it spreads out horizontally rather. There are many excellent artists of whom I have only one or two disks.

Well, probably I am/was a vertical that is getting more and more horizontal with time. I don’t regret having dig deeply in Beatles, Dylan, Bowie or Clash catalogs many years ago but now I prefer to diversify.

To be fair, it isn't particularly difficult to have the entire discography of Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, and Joy Division. Even Hendrix and the VU aren't too hard.

I'm horizontal. I only have the complete discographies of either my very favorite artists or artists with small discographies.

Yeah, that's true, some artists only have like 3 or 4 albums, it's not that hard to have all, but some others like Ani DiFranco, who releases one album every year since 1990, excluding live albums, it's kinda hard to find all, and it gets worse knowing that not every one of them share the same greatness, some are pretty bad, others are terrific, some are good, others disappointed. No one had a torrent of her discography, i had to download one by one at filestube, 26 albums.

One of my favorite artists is Liz Phair. Her debut rocked, critics love it, i love it, it was awesome, her sophomore effort, was awesome too, and largely underrated, at the time people like it, but it was largely forgotten since then. Her third album was good, too poppy, and latter we all know she made a pop record, and that turn me off, but what it matters is: i looked everywhere for something old and good of hers, and i found it: bootlegs, live albums, demos, rare tracks, the girlysound tapes. Because of that i saw this chick as genius, she had edge and completely meant every word she sang. After that experience, i started haunting bootlegs everywhere of every other artist i love. I'm not american, and the chances of some of them come sing in my small town in south america, is just as small as my town. Maybe that's why i like bootlegs so much.

Horizontal mostly.

I am always trying to find the next "great song" that I don't know about.

There are a handful of artists I'm vertical on:
The Beatles
The Beach Boys
Adam Again
Daniel Amos
Bob Dylan (starting to be that way...)

Let's see some stats, peeps!

I think I'm a vertical collector, but in a different sense. When I find a song/artist that I like, I want to dig down into all of the influences and influences of influences that led to the song/artist. I also like to find the original versions of cover songs.

As a kid, I discovered Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry through the Beatles. I discovered James Brown through the Who. I discovered Robert Johnson through the Rolling Stones. In college I discovered The Velvet Underground and Big Star through R.E.M. and the Replacements.

I think of this as a vertical process. I am not looking for different sounds so much as more information about the sounds I already love. Of course, the result ends up looking kind of "horizontal."

I'm vertical for:

The Beatles
The Velvet Underground
Nirvana
Wilco
Nick Drake
Jeff Buckley


That said, I've come across several favorite artists based on just getting their most acclaimed albums; even though I'm missing about 15 Bob Dylan albums, I still have 30, and consider him my #2 artist behind The Beatles. Same thing for Neil Young, David Bowie, Elvis Costello and Van Morrison.

I done something like that too, but it was with some covers albums, i looked for the originals. I also love to search influences, you get to know more about the artist's sound and if the artist is only influenced or a copycat, so disappointing when you find out that he/she is more the later than the first! But this is cool Paul, you're kinda like diagonal line or something.