Dear Pennies & Pens,
In this post, K Penny: How to Start a K-POP Album Collection, I’m going to share tips and advice on how to start a K-Pop album collection. I started collecting K-POP albums about three years ago and it’s been absolutely amazing! I love collecting K-POP albums, there’s nothing like a K-POP album.
K-POP albums stand out from other albums because they come with a photobook and additional inclusions like photocards, bookmarks, stickers, and posters. In essence, a K-POP album presents its own unique and original listening experience. I love flipping through the photobook and photocards while listening to my albums.
If you’re looking for advice on how to start a K-POP album collection, you’ve come to the right place. I wanted to share these tips to help those who are new to collecting. Check out the tips below.
Focus on your ultimate Group(s) or Solo Artist(s)
When starting your K-POP album collection, it’s best to focus on your ultimate group(s) and solo artist(s). The reason why is because K-POP groups and solo artists release a lot of albums. This means that collecting their albums can get expensive and since we’ve all got important things to pay for like rent/mortgage, car note, insurance, groceries, gas, etc. you have to prioritize the albums you really want.
That said, make a list of your favorite groups and solo artists. From there, narrow it down and really decide whose albums you truly want. Don’t buy albums just because the group or soloist is popular or because you like their social media content. Buy the album because you genuinely love the music. Remember, physical albums cost money AND take up space, so if you buy simply because of FOMO or another frivolous reason, you’ll regret it later.
Decide where you’ll buy albums from and when
Now that you know which group(s) or solo artist(s), you’d like to collect, decide where you’ll buy the albums from and when. For a list of recommended places, check out this post K Penny: Where to Buy K-POP Albums.
I personally like to buy albums from Gmarket and Ktown4u. They are both local Korean retailers so the prices are cheaper than U.S. retailers. I use a package forwarding service called Delivered Korea so I order albums from either Gmarket and Ktown4u then ship them to Delivered Korea. Then once I have at least 3-4 albums, I get the packages consolidated into one box by Delivered Korea. After that, I pay to have the package shipped to me in the U.S.
I find that this is more cost effective than shipping each album to the U.S. Plus, this allows me to do hauls so I can get several albums at once. That makes it more fun because then several albums by different artists arrive at the same time.
Also buy albums when it’s comfortable for you to do so. Meaning buy albums after you get paid and have paid all of your bills. This way, you don’t overextend yourself trying to keep up with the K-POP joneses. It’s okay to buy older albums, you don’t have to buy the album as soon as it comes out. You can wait!
Create a Budget
When buying K-POP albums, remember to create a budget so you still have money for bills and other fun stuff like traveling. Creating a budget for K-POP albums to buy albums is not nerdy, it is responsible. The thing is, buying K-POP albums is not a necessity so you should do it when it’s comfortable for you to do so.
To create a budget, write down how much the album(s) cost, tax, and shipping. It’s important to note the final “out the door”price. The “out the door” price includes the album cost, tax and shipping. You should include all of this in your budget because that presents the final cost i.e., how much you actually end up spending.
If you’re an international K-POP fan like me, you spend more on shipping so it’s important to account for that. I personally have a budgeting notebook (I prefer to create my budget by hand) and in that notebook, I have separate columns for personal and business bills. I calculate how much my bills are each month then with what’s left over, I sometimes buy K-POP albums.
Listen to the album on digital to decide whether or not you want to buy it
If you’re not sure if you want to buy an album, listen to it on your favorite streaming platform first. This way, you can decide if you actually like it and want to buy it. I do this all the time.
As I mentioned earlier, albums cost money AND take up space. So don’t buy albums just for the sake of buying it. Buy albums because you plan to listen to them.
Listening to an album on digital before buying it is a beautiful benefit of the digital music era. It allows you to support the artist by streaming the album but also it helps you decide if you truly want to spend money on the album and add it to your collection. Music hits different when you buy physical copies so it’s important to only buy albums that are worth having.
After a few months or years, your album collection will grow and you’ll find yourself being more selective about what you actually buy. This is because once your album collection gets to over 20 or 30 albums, you now have to make space for them on a bookshelf or find another way to store them.
These days, I only pre-order albums from my ults MONSTA X, MAMAMOO and CRAVITY so with everyone else, I wait until the album drops on digital then I listen to it and decide if I’m going to buy it. Remember, I actually play the CDs so if the album isn’t good, I don’t care how pretty the photos are or cool the packaging is, I am not buying it.
Organize Your Album Collection
Once you start your album collection, you’ll want to organize it. I personally use bookshelves and wicker baskets (that I bought from Target) to store my albums. Since I actually play the CDs and flip through the photobooks while listening to the album, I’m not as picky about how I display my albums.
I live by myself and hardly ever have company so no one’s really going to see the albums anyway. So for me, storing my albums is just about how I like to do it. I use baskets for a lot of my albums because I filled up my shelf space and with all the posters I have on my walls, I didn’t want to buy any more bookshelves as they would cover the posters. So I use the baskets because they are cute, sturdy and they actually hold a lot of albums.
My collection consists of 200+ albums so as you can imagine, ya girl had to do some serious organizing. I also don’t store albums in alphabetical order, by group or anything specific really. I believe that everyone collects differently for a variety of reasons. So for me organizing the albums in alphabetical order or by group takes the fun out of it. So I just put albums wherever they will fit. I do take into account album size so I don’t store bigger albums with smaller ones.
Also, I store album inclusions like photocards, bookmarks, and stickers inside of the fanclub kit box or the Season’s Greetings box. This way, I can keep my inclusions without having to buy something to store them in.
My main tip is to organize your albums and inclusions in the way that works for you. If you are happy with it, that’s all that matters!
Final Thoughts: Why You Should Collect K-POP Albums
It may seem pointless to collect K-POP albums in 2024…after all, there are countless streaming services that will allow you to listen to the album for free. Even I recommended listening to the album on a streaming platform before deciding to buy it.
So why should you collect K-POP albums?! First of all, it’s fun!!! Collecting albums is the best hobby I have ever had. It’s so satisfying, finding albums both old and new, buying them, unboxing them, etc.
It’s honestly something I can’t really describe in this post. You would seriously have to experience buying an album, unboxing it, listening to it and looking at the packaging to truly understand the joy that being an album collector will bring you.
However, I will say that the reason you should do it is because physical music needs to make a comeback!!! The reason why so many K-POP artists only make mini albums and single albums is because everyone “adds a song to their playlist” without even bothering to listen to the full album.
So why should the agency and artist invest time and money to create something that no one is going to buy or listen to? To me, that’s why so many artists are releasing mini albums, single albums and digital singles. The modern music industry is too TikTokish and I do not mean that as a compliment. If music is being created to sound good for 30 seconds or less, then it’s going to be pretty basic and simple.
So if more fans would collect physical albums AND actually listen to them, they would see whose albums are actually good and who is just popular on the internet. Real music will always be worth buying and listening to.
I literally just sold 3 albums because the music wasn’t that good in my opinion. I was caught up in the internet hype so I bought a couple albums and when I realized I hardly ever played them, I sold them off. I bought wine and bread with the money and lived happily.
In conclusion, you should collect albums so we can bring real music back. I’m tired of mini albums, single albums and digital singles. And let’s also end dance challenges while we’re at it. If I see one more artist trying to go viral with a 30 second dance challenge, I will scream.
I hope this post helped you, Pennies & Pens! Please take my rants with a grain of salt. It’s just my opinion.
Thanks for reading de la Pen…All Pen Everything and checking out my YouTube channel, Penny Black!
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