Should I purge my collection?
 

I think I have too much music.

My collection isn't as big as some, but it's sizable. I have 2021 albums, singles and eps that have been tagged and put into foobar, along with a few gigs still sitting my download folder.

The problem is I haven't listened to half of it. No, more than that, I haven't listened to most of it.

An example: I have the complete studio and live discography of the Grateful Dead, along with the complete ****'s Picks. I haven't touched it since I downloaded it. I like the Grateful Dead, I just haven't gotten around to listening to it.

I feel alienated from my collection. I listen to 10% of it 90% of the time. But I have a music-grabbing compulsion, and always feel there's something better out there that I have not yet heard, so I just keep getting more and more.

Just now, I put my library on random, and pushed play. A track came up from a group called Ancient Astronauts. I don't remember the name, I don't remember downloading it, but I have their entire discography. It was some really good instrumental hip hop that I could groove to. I played a bit more, and liked what I heard. But ten minutes ago, it might as well not have even existed, because I had no idea it was even there.

What to do? Should I force myself to stop download and listen to the lot? Should I trim it down to the stuff I know I like, and just assume there's nothing else out there?

Drive space is not an issue, so keeping it is totally OK. But I just don't think I'll ever get a solid grasp on what I have...

If you read this whole thing, bravo. Hope you can offer some insight :D

Speed listen to it.

If it doesn't grab your attention in 20 seconds, delete it.

If you accidentally delete something good you're bound to hear about that album again some other time.

I've more or less had this problem before, and what I've done is organize everything new into a list, pick 15 albums off the list, download them, then not download any more until I'm through 12 of those. It works pretty well for me, it takes me about a week to go through 12 new albums, as well as lots of time for all of my old stuff.

i saw purge it,....i purge my collection every so often depending on whats going on in my life,....instead of just having too much as you describe,....but it does allow me to focus more. i find that after i wipe it completely clean there are albums that come back time and time and time again,....thats kinda comforting

i like urban's 20 second strategy

Thanks for the replies.

The problem I have is that my "music mood" changes from week to week, month to month. Right now I'm really digging electronic tracks with female vocalists, but last month I was all about Soul Coughing and Modest Mouse. So what I love today I might not care to listen to again until March...

I guess what I need to do is just get a handle on what I have before I download more. It's going to be tough, I have a bunch of new stuff bookmarked over at What that I'm anxious to hear, but guess I should hold off for a while :)

Keep anything you haven't listened to, and only delete the stuff you KNOW you dislike or will never listen to again.

The way I see it, music isn't going to be free forever.

I have a word document 12 pages long of stuff to listen to in the future. I used to download albums willy nilly, but this keeps me actually working on the list, and keeps my computer cleaned up.

I just keep a playlist called "listen to this ****"; anything I download and don't plan to listen to right away, I drag into that playlist. Every month or so, I sort it by playcount and remove everything I've listened to.

I do something similar to what people have been saying in here. I download a bunch of albums and keep track of them in a word document. I usually listen to those throughout the next week, deleting them from the document as I go. I don't download any more until the list is clear. Sometimes I'll force myself to not download for a month or so and become more familiar with my current collection. I did that last month but now I'm feeling the bug again.

I say get rid of absolutely everything that hasn't been played at all. Just start fresh. As Urban said, if an album was worth it chances are you will find a reason to download it again.

My solution to this problem - Playlist on random. All the time. ALL THE DAMN TIME.

I live by that rule.
If a tune hasn't grabbed my attention by then, it never will.

It doesn't work for ambient though. And what about albums that grow on you?

Personally, if I download a big discography, I'll put it on its own playlist for a while and spend a while listening to that one artist but on shuffle. If its overall good, then it all goes into the main playlist.

The main playlist is literally everything I have, on random. In this way I don't limit myself to tracks that have slow intros being destroyed in my collection, and I still manage to more or less listen to everything I have.

No time for ambient.
If it's a grower I'll have picked up on the potential anyway.

^

Yeah, I can definitely tell when there is potential and when I'm just plain not going to like something. I used to not be able to recognize that, but I've been music obsessed for so long now it would be sad if I couldn't.

The first thing is fair enough, but I think you're totally missing out.

The second thing...I can understand learning that to an extent, but don't you think its a little arrogant to assume you know everything thats ever gonna grow on you? I mean, that would imply you already know everything you'll ever like...

If you've got the space I don't really see the harm in archiving a collection, I mean just because you're not going to listen to it doesn't mean someone you meet wouldn't, invite friends over and tell them to bring their laptop or their own hard drive and let them browse through your collection and pick out what they want. I mean my dad left me a collection of old vinyl's but when it comes to my own child I'll most likely end up showing them what's on my old hard drive and give them music from my past that way.

Basically stop being selfish :P

I think I do know everything I'm ever going to like.
This isn't arrogance. More confidence with the type of music I enjoy based on my personal preferences and taste in music.
I don't think I'm missing out on anything that doesn't appeal to me exclusively.
Listening to music is a very personal thing, as I think you'll agree.
What I like may not appeal to a different ear and visa versa.
This doesn't mean I'm limited to certain types of music, although it is true in some instances.

After years of enjoying music I can confidently say that 20 seconds is more than enough for me to make an accurate decision on whether or not I will like that particular tune, irrespective of it's genre.
There are several prerequisites I use to determine if I'll like a particular piece of music.
I happen to think that the vast majority of music has all been done before, one way or another.
And with that in mind, for something to grab my attention it has to be original, or at best generic, but with a decent attempt by the artist/band of making a convincing effort at doing what has already been done before...their own.
There's no bigger turn off than hearing a new tune that I've heard somewhere before, with little to no attempt at being original. If you know what I mean?

As someone who's collection has been involuntarily annihilated twice, I dare not delete anything. Besides, I like scrolling over my music folder and observing the growing number of items held within it (for purely egotistical reasons.) But of course, that's just me and my stubborn ways. I share a different philosophy about music from the rest of the posters here advocating the '20 second rule', but I'm less experienced in listening to music than them and I still don't know why I like what I like or if I will like something based on a qualitative description. With experience this may change, or it may not. As it stands right now it takes time for me to form an opinion, but I'm not everybody, so go by your gut feeling I suppose.

You should really take some time to check them out before purging your whole music collection. My favorite is Harpur College Binghamton, NY 5/2/70. The acoustic set opening with Don't Ease Me In is really great.

Having said that, I've purged/lost my entire music collection quite a few times. I'd recommend it to anyone, especially if your just talking about hard drive space; Go for it. Rebuilding the collection is at least twice as much fun as never listening to half of the stuff you've managed to accumulate and allow to collect proverbial dust on your hard drive

I just have a folder called 'albums' (I have seperate folders for seperate tracks, compilation albums etctera). In this folder are folders with artist names and in those folders are folders with album titles.
Works for me. I don't mind not having heard everything.

Definitely purge it. What I do is get an album, check it out, if I like a couple songs I'll save it for maybe a month. If I don't enjoy it all that much, I get rid of it. I think discographies are a sort of waste, but that's probably because I've never liked one artist enough to have every one of their albums. I don't see that happening either.

Yes!!! :thumb:

I'm the same. I love when people ask if they can see my iPod. I'm like, "hell yes you can! You'd better enjoy it too!"

Haha, when people come in here they go
"You really have a lot of records, and I love your tapedeck, it's like the one in Pulp Fiction".
It's not the same, but that doesn't matter ;).

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...o/IMG_1473.jpg

:-o

For me it's more about variety than size. That's probably why I have so many artists and such a small collection. I can count the amount of artists I have more than one album from on one hand. Though I was born with six fingers. Don't laugh. I have hand image issues.

See? Works every time :)

Same here. Check the link beneath my postings :)
Prettie varied, eh?

Wow cool, thanks for the replies.

I think one of my biggest problems right now is my compulsive need to collect discographies. It explains why my collection has grown so much in the last year. I used to keep my collection down to 30gb so I could fit the whole thing on my iPod, but when I realized that was silly, I sort of lost control of the whole thing.

Someone mentioned ambient. I went on a big ambient kick a few months ago, and have quite a lot of it. But I'm not often in the mood to listen to it, so I don't know it very well.

I suppose the best thing to do will be to leave it alone and just spend more time listening. Maybe I need a new rule says I have to listen to and rate five albums for every one I download!

Of course, I'm moving in 6 weeks and will be losing my amazing-ultra-fast-astonishingly-cheap internet connection, so another part of me is saying I should grab a few hundred more gigs before I go, just to be on the safe side :D

I'd say just limit yourself on downloading for the next few weeks.

Instead of feeling obligated to arbitrarily listen to albums in succession, try putting your library on shuffle and listen until something grabs you. Listen to that album it's from and bingo. Sometimes things don't grab you until you've experienced more musicially, that's always been the case with me - sometimes I just don't hear the right song to get me into a band, or maybe just haven't grown to appreciate their sound just yet. But if you "discover" music you've already downloaded by putting it all on shuffle, I'd say in time you'll feel much closer to what you have.


just my 2 cents.

Maybe it's just the hoarder in me saying this, but I wouldn't purge any music unless you need the space. Keeping only what you think you'd want to listen to (or could feasibly listen to given time constraints) would be fine, if not for the fact that your preferences change over time, and you often can't judge some releases until you've heard them several times IMO. And maybe I'm just weird but I sometimes like to take an album I think I'll dislike and listen to and evaluate it.

Having said that, I do understand your desire to downsize your collection to eliminate the niggling feeling that half of it is foreign to you.

I never thought of doing that before but t sounds like a really good idea. I feel like I constantly have the problem of wanting to listen to some album I downloaded recently but not being able to remember the name of the artist.

I'm surprised nobody else has said they just keep all their music in one massive playlist on random. Am I the only person that does it?

And out of interest, how large are the collections people are working with? I'm working with about 26K of songs lasting 12 Weeks in total, so I find that leaving it on random forever is the best way to ensure everything gets an equal listen over time.

I do that when I can't decide what to listen to, but generally I listen to specific albums. I have 21,313 songs, 60.7 days worth of music.

I'd just delete some of it to be honest. I used to have a ridiculous amount of music. Not sure the exact numbers as it was years ago, but it was right around the time I first started using torrents. So I just downloaded the discography of basically every band I had heard of. Then sometimes I'd feel guilty about not listening to some of the stuff I downloaded. Like you, I started listening to the same stuff 90% of the time. Eventually I just deleted a bunch of it... cause really I was never gonna listen to it more than once anyways. Most the time I listen to music I wanna hear a specific artist or song or type of music. I'm not really a person who sits there and just lets songs songs randomly play.

Shuffle is pointless with such a large collection. If I'm in the mood for trip hop, I don't want Built to Spill popping up in the middle. I do shuffle within genres (I use a two-level genre system) which alleviates that problem, but it's still not a good way to "get in touch" with my collection.

I am going to commit to listening to and rating at least two albums each day, chosen from the genre of music I am in the mood to hear at that moment, with strong preference for stuff I'm not already familiar with. It's a start :)

In the meantime, I've already grabbed 4 new albums today, and I'm still at work!

Sometimes I just use shuffle as a jumping off point when I'm not sure what I'm in the mood for. If it lands on something I don't feel like listening to I just skip, skip, skip until something strikes me. A lot of times this leads to me just listening to the whole album of the songs I skipped to.

I do! Most people on here prefer listening to full albums. I guess we be in the minority.

The difference being I love discographies.

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Listening to: RushEsque Complete RSE [foobar2000 v1.0.3]

Yeah, I guess we're kind of opposites in that regard.

I get too overwhelmed if I download a whole discography in one go. I do shuffle on occasion, though. In fact, this thread just inspired me to shuffle right this very moment...

Yeah my need to grab discographies is definitely a bad thing. I've tried to stop, but I can't just grab one album I enjoy while knowing there are others out there by the same band that I would probably also enjoy!

I did delete one discography last night, so that's a start. It was Delerium. I had Karma many years ago and I remembered liking it, so I grabbed the lot. That was maybe a month ago. I finally sat down to give it a listen, and was not amused. So I did what I never do, and hit DEL. *shudder*