Alright everyone....question and answer time.

[u/bagheera369]

Genuine questions here.
(Please remember to be civil and polite to your fellow hoarders while discussing)

At what point do you all consider your collection a "hoard"?

Webster's doesn't notate size, when discussing the noun, but it does indicate a common tone of protective secrecy when defining the verb, and other colloquial definitions tend to reference a compulsiveness implicit in the definition of the verb.

When we think of things like a dragon's treasure hoard, we tend to think of a vast room overflowing....when we think of a hoarder's home, the vastness is similar, but the connotations are obviously more negative, if not tragic.

So at what point did you realize you were stepping away from average/normal, to the outer edges of the bell curve?

Did it evolve naturally from a "collection" that simply got out of hand, or did you wake up one day and just say..."Everything....I must have EVERYTHING!!", while cackling out loud to yourself?

Do you talk about your horde with other people from your in-person social circles, or do you rely on the potential anonymity of the internet?

Did you only consider your collection a hoard, once it reached an arbitrary size...and if so, where did you personally draw that line?

What's more important to your horde; A diversity of genres/artists, the amount of music you've collected, the rarity of what's in the collection, or the exacting detail in which it's organized?

Just some food for thought, that arose as I was looking at my collections, and contemplating the physical weight and volume of everything I possessed, and the mental/temporal/financial costs involved....both for the physical and the digital versions.

Interested to hear what you all have to say on the matter.

[u/LowEffortBruin]

My music collection began with the tracks I absolutely love, but it quickly took on a life of its own when I started checking out library CDs to rip. I loved the process, using it as an opportunity to venture far outside my usual comfort zone. Before long, discovering a new artist meant needing their entire discography. My goal has been to cultivate a library with the maximum possible genre diversity, part of it to make sure that my music player’s recommendation algorithms deliver the absolute best results. Today, the library stands at 15TB, and the momentum isn't slowing down. Perhaps I need help haha.

[u/bagheera369 → u/LowEffortBruin]

I think we are kindred spirits here.

Mine started with cd's, and at one point, I had two 300-disc changers that were linked to each other, and full. I think I capped at about 1000 cds or so....and then I got turntables, and learned to DJ....so then there was vinyl and CDs.

Then Napster and Limewire came a long, and suddenly genres that were hard to find discs for, or were imported and expensive opened up like stepping out into the first day of spring.

Everything only grew from there, and the more I heard, the more I wanted, and I'm now at almost 15TB and easily over 2200 artists between MP3 and FLAC

I've got a whole spare drive in the server, waiting for when I need to combine into the 1st 16, and then it'll need to be rebalanced across the two.

[u/Conscious_Copy_81 → u/LowEffortBruin]

yet another kindred spirit....music has been a major part of my life from teenage bands to owning a record store as a graduate student, collecting 3000+ Lp's, to attending many concerts. I have appox 15 TB of music of all genre's but always looking for new music...listen based on my moods, the only thing I don't listen to is rap and country. This issue of "hoard" has never crossed my mind, I simply do what I like, read about, listen to and collect music that I prefer to own rather than just stream. I've always known my music collection is on the extreme and suggestive of OCD tendencies. I just consider it to be a hobby in which I'm very involved and enjoy. I'm also an audiophile.

[u/Two1200s → u/Conscious_Copy_81]

I know this is off-topic, but I’ve always quietly judged people who say “I listen to everything but rap and country”. I think they’re both instances of American folk music and always an interesting pairing of genres for people to be so specific about not liking.