Zero Freitas

José Roberto "Zero" Alves Freitas (born ) is a Brazilian businessman whose record collection of over eight million discs is said to be the largest in existence. In addition, he has more than 100,000 compact discs.

Early life Freitas was born around 1955, and acquired the nickname "Zero" at school. When he was a child, his father bought a hi-fi stereo that came with 200 albums, thus kindling Freitas's interest in the area. The collection was damaged in a flood and Freitas later recreated it. His mother, who had a collection of 400–500 records, also influenced Freitas. Freitas studied music composition at college then took over the family transport business which ran buses in the state of São Paulo. By the time he was 30, Freitas had acquired about 25–30,000 records. The collection of around three million records took eight semi-trailers to move.

As Freitas has become well known, collectors have begun to offer him their collections. In October 2014 alone he acquired one million records from another collector for 200,000 reais. In 2015, Terence McEwan of the San Francisco Opera gave Freitas 6,500 classical LPs. Freitas continues to maintain agents around the world, including in Mexico, New York and Nigeria. These enable him to buy a diverse range of material such as the collection of the late Bob Hope and the 100,000 albums of Cuban music he has acquired. His staff joke that the island of Cuba must be rising due to the weight of material that Freitas has removed.

Future plans Freitas is building a warehouse to store his collection which he plans to call the Emporium Musical.

Business activities In addition to transport, Freitas runs a business providing audiovisual systems for concerts and other public events.