World’s Biggest Collection Of Vinyl
With 6 million discs, Zero Freitas has built the biggest record collection on the planet – and now he is building a new home in Brazil for the hoard so that he can share his passion with the world. Three homes are being demolished for the five-storey structure. A team of archivists is busy cleaning, photographing and indexing crates full of 33, 45 and 78 RPMs. Meanwhile, his buying spree is gathering pace. When music shops go bust, Freitas snaps up the entire stock. His agents swoop on every major record auction in Europe and the US. Container-loads of singles and LPs arrive at his warehouses each month. Associates affectionately describe the owner as crazy, but for the 60-year-old with flowing grey hair, it is simply the continuation of a compulsion. With his first pocket money he bought Canta Para a Juventude, by Roberto Carlos, in January 1965. Then came LPs by the Beatles and the Stones, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Doris Day and the artists of Brazil’s own Tropicália movement. By the end of high school he had 3,000 records. A decade later the collection had mushroomed tenfold.
