Thrift Store CD Finds

Thrift stores are great: they're usually 1 to 2 bucks per CD, with a super random selection. Often it's stuff that's not that great (to me): budget classical, Christmas music, older pop, random stuff. But there's also lots of good stuff in there.

Using an LLM (Claude, ChatGPT, etc.), you can set up a project with your musical tastes and instructions like "Call out 'essential' tier albums regardless of whether they're my general taste". Then take a photo of the shelf or shelves, upload it to the project, and you find some pretty interesting stuff. Electric guitar flamenco, Max Q, Afro-Celt, chant, African guitar, Sun Ra - are all examples of things I've found over the months.

The LLMs also make finding things outside your own knowledge much easier. There are tons of classical albums in thrift stores, but often dubious recordings on budget labels, and picking out the high-quality versions takes a lot of research that you can basically skip. For me that's a 'good enough' way to get into it, and if you really get into it, you can do your own research of course. I've found I really like some of the nice string quartet recordings, for instance. Same thing with jazz and blues for me: lots of chaff for my tastes, so it helps winnow through it quickly.

I also managed to accidentally buy some albums that are worth more than the typical 5-10 bucks CDs go for at slightly more upscale places like Half Price Books or eBay. I'm not someone trying to run a CD flipping business (seems like you'd barely scrape by, honestly), but they're fun finds. See below.