No longer an Amazon geek!

A half a year ago I wrote an article about my Amazon habits. While I still keep on buying stuff from Amazon and checking recommended items now and then (probably less and less in the future), I don’t mark things “owned” anymore.

Why?

First of all, it’s a huge job. Keeping your collection at least somewhat up-to-date in Amazon takes time. The different editions in Amazon are a burden as well. Should I mark them all owned, or just keep with one edition, and which one is the right one?

Since you can’t remove any purchased items from your Amazon collection, I’ve left all my purchased items as they are, with their ratings, so I’ll still keep getting recommendations based on them. It is still clearly better and easier to work with than with a huge, 500-item, collection.

Just as a remark, I’ve bought all in all 83 items from Amazon for myself.

Getting back to what it is about

I realized that constantly looking for recommended items in Amazon is taking up my time with my music, narrowing the selection of bands I will ever get to know as well as little by little adapting me to a more mainstream selection. (Also, Amazon undeniably tries to make me buy more and more from them, or via their service.)

While the recommendation system is generally good, it just can’t deliver the genuine joy of doing elaborate research on new artists and finding a hidden gem. (To be fair, Amazon hasn’t recommended me even a tiny bit shinyish, way too popular, charcoal bits lately.)

Now that I have one obsession less, I hope to be able to focus more on things that matter. Most of all I hope that I could spend even more time away from my computer.