From my twitter, a little bit ago :
“Small and impeccably curated is the new huge and miscellaneous.”
I can’t say if it’s a new trend, or my own tastes changing, but I am discovering more venues of objects or information that are tightly focused with a lower volume than I used to.
Even a couple years ago, my goal was to just collect as much music and video as I could, once the cost of aquisition dropped to near zero. I didn’t account for the cost of consumption and storage in that goal. Now, I am trying to reduce my music to a very focused collection. It means making decisions about obscure or near obscure acts near the fringes of their genres, but the tradeoff is less selection anxiety with the iPod. Do I need a dozen bands that sound like Bad Religion or yet another psychadelic pop throwback album (Fleet Foxes aside)? How many Sabbath worshipping bands need to live on my hard drive?
The answer is always less than I have now. It comes back to enjoying what you’ve got, instead of stuffing your life full of more distractions, and more decisions.
I’m trying to narrow everything down, physical and information. I currently have around 400 feeds in google reader, a bunch of social media accounts (which I will probably leave alone, seeing as I make a good part of my living from this), a lot of books, a lot of records, too many shoes, and I may even have too many bikes.
I predict more curation and less aggregation as the future of successful ventures, from bloggers to businesses.