The Tameside Radio presenter has been sorting through his extensive book and CD collection before moving house this weekend...

The most difficult part of moving has been sorting out my book and CD collection. I know we live in an age where most music is available on streaming services, but every compact disc evokes a memory. It blows my mind that some people have never bought a single, let alone an album, on a 'proper' format. When going through my CD singles, I was totting up how much I must have spent over the years, and it was mildly scary!

A few still had price stickers on them, and £3.99 back in 1999 works out at close to £7 accounting for inflation. When you consider the likes of Deezer and Spotify are £9.99 a month, it must be one of the only things that has got cheaper over recent decades. This is in stark contrast to vinyl, which now comes in a variety of colours in many cases, and retails for daft money compared to the days when Our Price and Virgin Records sold it.

Artists have to make the bulk of their cash touring nowadays, and I imagine it must be really tricky to make streaming profitable, especially if you're just starting out, given the way the revenue is distributed. Some big name stars have been campaigning to redress this balance, and it's definitely something that needs looking at.

When sorting out my music, in a bid to downsize the collection a little, I made a pile for charity, a pile to sell, and a pile to keep. There are various apps that allow you to scan the barcode and ascertain a CD's value...spoiler alert, about 90 per cent are completely worthless! I have probably made enough to put half a tank of petrol in the car, though.

A lucky charity shop in Tameside will be acquiring a fairly sizeable pile of music later this week, too. I couldn't bear to part with my Mr Blobby single, especially given the recent bidding war on eBay for the original suit. Perhaps one day it too will be worth over £60,000.

I have hung on to some of the first CDs I bought back in 1992, when I was doing work experience at a radio station in York. I imagined I'd be put straight on air, but instead I was varnishing poster trailers and building shelves in the office. My '92 stash is a curious mixture of Tasmin Archer, rave tunes set to the Sesame Street and Trumpton themes, and Phil Collins. Phil has been a constant in my collection since school, something that definitely didn't win me many cool points in the playground.

I remember making radio shows in my bedroom on blank tapes, and enlisting my brother to do the weather and travel news. I always dreamed of making radio my 'job', and feel extremely fortunate to say it has been for the last 21 years. This isn't counting a six month stint on the York airwaves in 1994, when all the songs were played off CD and the internet wasn't really a thing.

I still have a few CDs from the old radio station record library, which I rescued from going into a skip some years later, and remember the peril of nipping to make a coffee, hoping that the song you were playing on air wouldn't start jumping!

These days, aside from the odd pesky Windows update, everything at Tameside Radio is a lot more plain sailing and our computer system holds all the music we need. Whilst I love streaming and audio books, as mentioned last week when reviewing the Audible version of 'Spare', I will always be a fan of physical media.

I will continue to rent films by post, for as long as Cinema Paradiso exists (it's a bit like Lovefilm by Post used to be). I still buy the latest numbered Nows on CD. My collection holds so many memories, and whilst I've whittled it down a bit during our house move, it's part of my identity. It would feel alien to me to have empty shelves and everything rented on an app on my phone or tablet.

I've just remembered I now need to sign off and sort my vinyl collection out before the removal van arrives, I'm definitely not parting with the Birdie Song, which was one of the first singles I ever bought...have a good week.

You can listen to Alex every weekday from 7am to 11am and on the 'Super Scoreboard' show on Saturdays from 3pm to 7pm, on Tameside Radio 103.6FM. 

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