Collecting music (Discogs / Musicbrainz / RateYourMusic)

[Espy 4,995]

Anyone else use any of these? How's your experience? And what do you like to collect?

They're all primarily user-generated music databases for physical media, though there are entries for digital media too.

Discogs has a marketplace added on top of it.

They all also let you organize your collection.

But I generally prefer Discogs, though I do appreciate the Musicbrainz open database approach and the more social approach from RYM.

Although with RYM it feels like too much emphasis on socializing and other weird stuff like rating releases. TBH I rate what I really like as 5 stars, but apparently that's a no-no with RYM.

 

Anyways... I like to collect Drum & Bass releases, more specifically from 1998 - 2008. That time period appeals to me a lot and it's also relatively accessible for me as it's not so expensive despite limited pressings and availability in the States compared to the UK or EU where it was more popular at the time. I also don't mind collecting promo white label releases with generic sleeves instead of the main release. Represses are also fine as long as the pressing isn't complete wack. Hell, if the seller says it's a DJ-owned copy then I'll take it as long as it's affordable, and usually it is. These sites have been really helpful for that and I'm very thankful these exist.

I tend to throw all variants of a release into my wantlist because of how I collect (you can see that below on my Discogs profile). So it's really messy, I promise I just want one copy of a release not several! I might also accidentally not remove something from my wants when I already have it, it happens. 

I think with Discogs, it's really interesting to see what the street price on some records are vs. what I paid for it. I keep a note of how much I paid for a record and when I got it, and so far I've paid an average of $10.63 for all of my D&B records ($202 total / 19 releases). It doesn't matter to me that much what these are valued at, but I do want to try to get that average under $10. I think that's a good average for me to stay around as much as possible; the lower, the better. 

 

Here's my Discogs profile: https://www.discogs.com/user/EspyV

and my RYM profile: https://rateyourmusic.com/~EspyVibe

in case you want to be nosy, you can see my collection on both of those sites.  The CD's might come and go because I've begun marking them as needing to go through it later since I have a lot of loose CD's (like, at least a few hundred... maybe a thousand, don't ask) that I want to sell. Exceptions ofc if I really like it or bought it intentionally on it's own. I wonder if I should write about any standouts, since I should listen to them to make sure there's no issues before selling, it also gives me the opportunity to listen to music I wouldn't otherwise listen to properly. Maybe that could be a 2026 thing.

I'm not sure if I will use RYM much, but it does have some of my record collection there.

 

[Samurai Equine 58,404]

I use Discogs. 
Well, I haven't bought anything from that site, but I have a number of things bookmarked. So when I am ready to increase my music collection and reclaim some things from my childhood that I lost; I know where to go.

[Espy 4,995]

Mini rant: It sucks seeing when people try to inflate the value of a record for no reason. Especially when it's not even that rare.

Why on earth would this seller be asking $85 when it gets repressed every so often? It would actually be cheaper to import it from overseas instead of buying it domestically.

I hope nobody buys it because it's ridiculous.

Spoiler

 

 

Like, here's the reissue. it's more realistically priced (which I'm pretty sure buying it directly from Signature is $10 anyways but right now they're just out of stock).

Spoiler

 

On 2025-12-20 at 4:47 AM, Samurai Equine said:

I use Discogs. 
Well, I haven't bought anything from that site, but I have a number of things bookmarked.

@Samurai Equine some things when buying stuff on Discogs:

- it won't charge your account automatically if you decide to buy. Think of it like a temporary reservation. There's a grace period that they give for buyers before the seller will cancel the order because you didn't pay in a reasonable time. Make sure it actually charges ASAP if you don't want any issues (some sellers don't allow anyone with a poor buyer rating to buy from them if you have a lot of low buyer reviews because you didn't pay in time).

- Images you see are globally from the database; they are not going to be entirely representative of specific listings like other sites such as Ebay. The image could be clean of any writing but the record you buy might have writing on it if the seller says there's writing on it. That won't be their fault. It would be their fault if the seller specifically said it's a clean label, but you receive a record that has writing on it.

- a lot of sellers sell on multiple platforms, including at a physical location. So what they have listed on Discogs might not be 100% accurate since they have to manually update everything. If they don't have it then they will just cancel and refund. This has happened to me a handful of times.

[Samurai Equine 58,404]

1 hour ago, Espy said:

@Samurai Equine some things when buying stuff on Discogs:

- it won't charge your account automatically if you decide to buy. Think of it like a temporary reservation. There's a grace period that they give for buyers before the seller will cancel the order because you didn't pay in a reasonable time. Make sure it actually charges ASAP if you don't want any issues (some sellers don't allow anyone with a poor buyer rating to buy from them if you have a lot of low buyer reviews because you didn't pay in time).

- Images you see are globally from the database; they are not going to be entirely representative of specific listings like other sites such as Ebay. The image could be clean of any writing but the record you buy might have writing on it if the seller says there's writing on it. That won't be their fault. It would be their fault if the seller specifically said it's a clean label, but you receive a record that has writing on it.

- a lot of sellers sell on multiple platforms, including at a physical location. So what they have listed on Discogs might not be 100% accurate since they have to manually update everything. If they don't have it then they will just cancel and refund. This has happened to me a handful of times.

Thank you! 
I shall keep this in mind for the future.