Glenn Marr listens to music constantly, whether he’s at the office, in his car, at home or even on the ski slopes.

Finding songs for his iPod or CD player is never a problem, however. The 49-year-old advisor with Winnipeg-based Investors Group Inc. just has to dip into his personal collection of more than 4,600 records, compact discs and cassettes — Marr buys 10 to 20 new albums a month — to sample a treasure trove of tunes that he has built up over a lifetime of appreciating and acquiring music.

“I still listen to it all, too,” Marr says. From classical music to rock, from jazz to electronica, Marr has a wide-ranging collection that reflects his eclectic and adventurous tastes.

“I listen to virtually every type of music — except maybe for thrash metal or any type of punk that’s really non-melodic,” he says. “But I do like punk, stuff such as The Clash and the Sex Pistols. And rap: Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls.”

And Marr’s tastes aren’t stuck in any particular musical era, either — he likes discovering new bands and artists. He samples new music on the iTunes website and reads online reviews and features; he consults the magazine Q, a British publication that reviews some 200 albums a month. Marr also listens to satellite radio in his car and keeps a list on his BlackBerry of albums he would like to buy. He also swaps CDs with other musically obsessed friends.

“If I’m in a restaurant and hear something interesting,” Marr says, “I’ll call the waiter over and ask who the artist is. If the waiter doesn’t know, I’ll ask him to get the CD.”

Marr’s collection, which is roughly one-third vinyl, one-third cassette tapes and one-third CDs, is stored in almost every room in his house, particularly the living room, in which the china cabinet is overflowing with CDs, not dishes. Marr quickly fills up every storage CD rack he buys, which is causing him to consider other solutions.

“That’s one of the reasons I recently started downloading from iTunes,” says Marr, who acknowledges that, nonetheless, he still burns songs onto CDs after he has downloaded them from the online music store. Marr, who is married and has a 14-month-old son, says that he is thinking about buying a large hard drive and digitizing at least part of his vinyl and tape collection.

“But I won’t convert them all,” he says. “What I’d do is pick my top songs from these formats and move them over to digital, which will extend the life of my records and cassettes. I’ll be able to put the songs on my iPod, too.”

One thing Marr won’t do is download illegally from music-sharing sites. “I believe artists should be paid,” he says. “These guys work their rear ends off, and I’m going to support them.”

Marr has been into music since his earliest days, when he listened to his parents’ records and eight-track tapes as a kid — artists such as Trini Lopez, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and Frank Sinatra. At age 10, his parents gave him his first long-playing records, including Meet the Beatles and the soundtrack to the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

When Marr was 13, he was hit by a car and broke his leg. He was laid up for eight months. To pass the time, his parents bought him a clock radio, a high-end set at the time despite the fact that it pulled in only AM radio.

“I listened to it all the time,” Marr remembers. “It really got me hooked on music.”

After recovering from the accident, Marr bought himself a complete stereo system — amplifier, turntable, cassette deck and separate speakers — with the money he made working. On Saturdays, he would head to the record stores with his friends, buying six or seven LPs at a time.

Although Marr played guitar as a kid, he has never been in a band. After his accident, he began participating in sports, including skiing, martial arts and running, and found that he liked doing those things. Today, Marr’s athletic pursuits include kayaking, scuba diving, cycling, rollerblading and weight lifting. And those sports form almost as big a part of Marr’s life as music does. In fact, he sees music and sports as closely intertwined.

@page_break@“With virtually everything I do — except whitewater kayaking or scuba diving, of course — I’m listening to music,” Marr says. “I listen to classical or instrumental jazz when I work, hip hop or dance music when I’m playing sports, and rock or different stuff in the car.”

Marr and his wife, Nathalie Russo, a French immersion teacher, suspect that their son, Aidan Noah, will also be into music when he’s older. “He’s so musical already,” Marr says, “When we put something on, he grooves and moves to the beat, dancing around already. We put a little iPod station in his room, for when he goes to sleep and when he wakes up.”

As for Marr’s collection, he says one of his next tasks will be to hire someone to update his computerized inventory of albums, which he keeps partly for purposes of insuring the collection. “There are several hundred albums I haven’t put in,” he says. “I’ve been a little lax.” IE