Finding music

I was talking to one of my young staff members the other night about music.  He's really into obscure, offbeat bands in the same way I am and he told me that he discovered most of the music he likes by checking out what other people who bought the records he likes bought on Amazon.

I thought this was genius!  If Amazon had existed when I was growing up and discovering music, I'm sure I would have done the same thing.  He asked me how I discovered the music I loved and I explained the eccentricities of my music collection.

When I found a band I liked, I would then go and find out what other bands the members had been/were involved with and listened to those bands too.  And thenI found out if the members of that band had been in any other bands and listened to that.  So my music collection is kind of a series of interlocking spirals spinning outward from various starting points.

As a result, my partner despairs of ever understanding the way I shelve my CDs....  While his are all neatly alphabetized, I shelve mine the same way I pick what to buy.  When a thread peters out, I start a new one.  Anything that doesn't have a connection to anything else goes on the bottom.  Solo albums by band members go before the band ones.

It's probably not logical, but it's the way I relate to music.  And I tend not to be very logical in my approach to most things.  I mean, I'm the one who generally starts writing a book from somewhere in the middle and works both toward the beginning and the end from there.

How do you choose what music to listen to?  Is your process as wacky as mine?