Why is This Brazilian Bus Service Owner Buying Millions of Vinyl Records?
A Brazilian man who has been compulsively buying up millions of vinyl records from around the world is now using a brick-and-mortar library to breathe a new life into listening to his old records.
The New York Times identified the man, Zero Freitas, 62, who has been purchasing records around the world under various aliases in order to maintain anonymity.
What started as a childhood fascination grew into an adult obsession, which he has actually gone to therapy for but can't shake.
He began to actively pursue a collection after a divorce with his first wife, according to the NYT.
"Maybe it's because I was alone," Freitas said. "I don't know."
Freitas operates a family-owned private bus business, which expanded about 20 years ago, significantly increasing his profit margin and giving him the freedom to buy more records.
By the time he was 30, Freitas had about 300,000 records, and since then he has lost count but estimates several million.
He has been able to purchase many collections from former record shops and private collectors through negotiators in places like New York, Mexico City, South Africa, Nigeria and Cairo.
Recently he realized that about 30 percent of his collection consisted of duplicates, and agreed to sell them.
Since the collection has grown significantly, he has had to hire interns to create a database of his inventory, which he intends on making available to the public in a library format.
Freitas told the New York Times he will create the Emporium Musical in his warehouse and set up listening stations for the vinyl. He also wants to digitize some of the rarest Brazilian music dating back to the early 1900s.
But his first order of business is to ensure the preservation of the durable music recrods.
"Vinyl is very durable," he told the NYT. "If you store them vertically, out of the sun, in a temperature-controlled environment, they can pretty much last forever. They aren't like compact discs, which are actually very fragile."
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