Music
Impressive vinyl collections from around the world
Think you’ve got a load of vinyl records? These people have all got way more.
Check out these enormous record collections
© Chris Parkin
Has our newly renewed obsession with vinyl records reached its peak yet? After successive years of growth, sales figures are beginning to slow down in 2017. But still, people continue to enlarge their vinyl collections. The official figures don't take into account the world's obsessive crate diggers, either. The catalogue completists, amateur archivists, musicologists and nerds that hang around second-hand record shops and house clearances looking for new additions.
To celebrate the art of record collecting here are a few of our favourite collections, from the truly massive to the perfectly formed.
Radio France
The "discotheque" housing Radio France's massive collection of records is bursting at the seams. The station has amassed a collection of around two million records and its discotheque is actually a massive hangar on the outskirts of Paris filled with both obscure and classic records. The custodians of the collection have, in recent years, been raising funds to digitise the collection. In 2015, they auctioned off 8,000 records with a rare copy of Syd Barrett's Octopus and Gilbert Safrani's Les gens s'en vont dans le ciel going for big bucks.
Zero Freitas
You've probably heard of Zero Freitas. The Brazilian tycoon hit the headlines a few years ago after it was discovered his record-buying addiction had made him the happy owner of over six million records. It all began when Freitas decided he didn't like the idea of huge private collections going unlistened to. So he set about building a public collection, seeking out hidden stashes, taking donations and buying up stock when record shops go bust. He even bought Paul Mawhinney's massive haul of 3 million records. Freitas has a team of people cleaning each record in order to turn the collection into a vast listenable archive.
Joe Bussard
Joe Bussard's record-collecting obsession began at the end of the World War II. After playing his parents' phonograph to death, Bussard was hooked and set off around the US on collecting trips through the '50s, '60s and '70s, buying up jazz, bluegrass, blues, country and other early music on 78-rpm records. Over the years he's reduced and refined his collection to a more manageable 15,000 pieces, but it remains one of the most important collections of 78s in the world. No wonder Jack White is a fan.
@Dadsdiscdelights
It might not be the biggest record collection, but this is certainly one of the most poignant. A few years ago, London-based photographer Zoë Timmers embarked on an Instagram project with her elderly dad, sharing his passion for jazz music with the rest of the world. Zoë took the photos of her dad – and he is only ever called "dad" – picking out records from his insanely valuable, 10,000-strong, 70-year-old collection, while her dad wrote knowledgeable captions and responded to comments. Jazz (and vinyl) fans were hooked. Sadly Zoë's dad passed away a few years ago. But the feed, no longer updated, is still a joy to scroll through.
Gilles Peterson
Not only is Gilles Peterson an award-winning broadcaster (BBC 6 Music), radio station boss (Worldwide FM), label owner (Brownswood) and headlining DJ, he's also a vinyl fanatic. Peterson doesn't just buy any old records – he's very picky. And yet he's still ended up with a collection so large that he had to buy a second home… just for his records. He recently donated hundreds of his 30,000-plus records to charity, but it remains an enormous treasure trove. Just don't expect to find any cassettes: "I’m not on cassettes. They’re just rubbish. Hipster stuff."
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