Building a digital music library in 2025

A year back I began my journey of rebuilding my music library with a view to leaving streaming services behind. To the surprise of nobody, I've spent a fair bit of time, tweaking the technical setup. I'll cover what I've ended up with in detail in a later post. Here, however, I will focus on collecting music aspect of rebuilding my library.

Not one to bury the lede, the library hasn't been growing as quickly as I had hoped.

I've met some unforeseen challenges along the way. Like when I tried to acquire a digital version of Brian Eno's Music for Airports. But I've also discovered some useful services for building a digital musical library. Bandcamp is perhaps the leading option, but I was happy to discover other options like Highresaudio when I wanted to purchase music outside of Bandcamp's catalogue.

Nevertheless, my library remains miniscule. As a result, I still find myself turning to Spotify ¹ more often that I'd like. Mission failed!

This boils down to three reasons:

1. I'm a perennial cheapskate.
2. The library should only contain music I've obtained through legal means.
3. I don't have access to a decent music tracker.²

Points two and three might seem at odds. But, I have a decently sized vinyl collection and I consider acquiring digital copies of these fair game. Access to a decent music tracker with proper quality control would let me expand my library fairly quickly. Alas, much of the albums I own are difficult to find "out there" — especially as I'm conscious about the music quality.

I recently made a discovery that I believe will accelerate the expansion of my digital music library. A perfectly legal way to acquire almost any album in high quality (lossless!) for the price of a small cup of coffee. What's this secret trick, you ask?

Well, let me introduce the compact disc. Otherwise known as a CD, it was the preferred medium of acquiring and storing music back in the day. Everyone had CDs lying around everywhere. In their living rooms and in their bedrooms. In their cars and in their backpacks. Yes, there were CDs everywhere.³ I did, in fact, own more than a few myself back in the day.

As storage options expanded, purely digital solutions of acquiring and storing music took over. By the time streaming services went mainstream in the early 2010s, CDs had lost their metaphorical shine and had fallen out of favour.

Where did all of these discs disappear to? A large portion, I'm sure, went to the landfill. "What good are these when music is available everywhere at the touch of a screen?" we thought. That was in the early days, before we became concerned about things like ownership, data, algorithmic brain rot and, well you get the picture. The good days, as I like to call them. When we truly believed that technology would liberate art, for the artist and the fan.

Fast forward to today.

Turns out quite a few people actually held on to their CD collections. Many more than I would have imagined. And, best of all, some of them are looking to part ways with their albums for a totally reasonable price. Just search for your favourite artists on your favourite classifieds site, and you'll find steals everywhere.

The other day I found someone selling hundreds of CDs. I bought six albums off of him for half the price of a single vinyl. Dylan, Pink Floyd and Coldplay are all soon to be part of my digital library. Because that's the beauty of CDs: They are digital by default, and all you need to get the files on to your computer is a cheap, external CD drive. Easy as!

As a disclaimer, this approach of building a music library probably works best if you're primarily interested in music released before 2010. For newer music, you're probably better off buying the digital releases directly off some of the earlier mentioned platforms. That's also true if you want to support the artists!

I believe my digital music collection will grow at a terrific rate over the next year, having discovered this simple "hack". To be honest, I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner. If that's true for you, too: You're welcome and happy ripping!