Challenging myself to listen to every song I own

I wasn't trying to be a wiseguy, but what if you decide to "binge" on a certain artist--and that derails or prolongs your experiment?

 

Oh yeah, that totally happens! It is happening now with Bowie, I owned a few CD singles and the Nothing Has Changed comp, but nothing else really. Then I got a good deal on the Five Years CD box, so picked that up and finally got what everyone else had been hearing in his music all these years. So then I found a deal on the Who Can I Be Now? CD box and bought that. I listened to Station to Station three times in a row the first night, it was great!

That's why I tag things as "Researched" when I'm done with it, so I can easily sort by what I've done and what I haven't. If I binge on Bowie for a few days, no worries, when I'm ready for something else, I just pop over to my "Not yet Researched" playlist and pick my next title to work on.

 

Now now, we gotta check your work here...quick, name three songs each, containing:
1) Jews Harp in waltz time
2)Toy Piano (NOT including ANY Beach Boys!)
3) the Viola da Gamba
4) any '80s song with a Roland D-50 (but...NOT an Urban hit with those "clap-clap-clapclap" samples!)

GO!

 

I get you but I prefer to avoid such hackery which only becomes necessary because metadata support is pretty inadequate and rudimentary in all these players. One reason is that I sometimes using scripts cross-reference my collection against various best-of of lists to make playlists based upon them, so it's important that the artist, album and title are "canonical" and not futzed with.

 

I'm guessing btw that some of you guys, who really "get" this stuff and enjoy it, are software developers like me or in related numerate fields...?

 

Why in the world would you do that instead of just making sure your year column is activated in iTunes?

 

Why not just make sure the grouping option is activated and add specific dates to it? You could then sort it all by exact date instead of just by the year.

 

That's a good idea. I think it would work most conveniently by release month; it's difficult to pin down a lot of album & single release dates to a specific day.

 

Yes, I am a second shift iTunes Database Administrator!

 

Good luck with that...I couldn't do it because there are albums that I don't like,and some[45's]too.

 

Have you had any startling revaluations or epiphanies? Any particular artist where you've had a "what on earth was I thinking!" or "I can't believe I only own a part of their releases" moments?

 

Like the OP, I have done this exercise.

Highlights:
*Been listening and writing down stats since 2006, only CDs.
*Continued to buy and listen and now I have 6,042 titles (categorization is a little different than OP, one title is one CD - a 4CD box counts as 4 titles).
*Total songs I own: 40,963.
*This year I have listened to an average of 7.10 CDs per day (not entirely accurate).
*Every time I listen I rate the song and have averages and rankings of all artists listened.
*I have therefore listened to all CDs I own IN FULL and all have been listened for the last time during 2015 or 2016 or 2017.
*I do admit that I listen carefully only in some instances and many more times as background music when I am working or doing other things (such as writing as I am doing now).
*Most CDs owned by artist: Beatles 150, Kinks 93, Who 64, Stones 55, Joni Mitchell 54.
*Most essential songs by artist (ranked 9.3/10 at least): Beatles 34, Buffalo Springfield 11, Who 10, Bob Dylan 10, Jefferson Airplane 9.

I can't believe it but I can't stop...

 

Alan, in which format do you have your data base? I have it in Excel. I rate from 0 to 100 each song. I indentify variants as much as I can, no matter how small the differences are.

 

"what on earth was I thinking!" = I have way more Britney Spears CDs than I thought? There are four of them. I remember maybe buying two, the other two might belong to my girlfriend, she's added her (very small) collection to my shelves. The singles are good, but the deep cuts were mostly ballads and filler, her first Greatest Hits set would be more than enough for me.

"I can't believe I only own a part of their releases" = The only New Order I have is Substance and (the best of), I really really enjoyed both so I plan to get their entire discography in the future.

 

I'm doing everything in JRiver (it's a player like iTunes, but way more advanced, you can designate custom fields and library views, etc). When I first started I tried using Excel, but found I was duplicating so much data/work between JRiver and Excel that I just trashed the Excel file, everything I need to account for can be done in JRiver's default fields and a few of my custom fields.

 

I thought I needed to get a life.

 

Boo.

Listening to and reading about great music - how could life get any better?

 

Wow, what a project!
As to have I listened to everything I own? Absolutely, though I don't have anything close to what you do.

 

I’d love to be able to listen to everything I own, but I don’t think I have enough lifetimes for it.

 

My goodness. Four Britney albums? Kudos for getting through them! Good to think you can just cherry pick the decent songs hereafter!

New Order's most recent album, Music Complete is a very enjoyable late entry despite the lack of Peter Hook.

Good luck with the rest of the project!

 

I use iTunes "Sort Album" field to add the release date, e.g.. if the album is Dark Side of the Moon the "Sort Album" field has "1973/03/01 - Pink Floyd" (the artist also added in case multiple albums were released on the same date, to avoid they get mixed, eg. Music for the Masses and Strangeways Here We Come both came out on September 28, 1987).

This way if I'll always see all albums chronologically.

 

There's probably not much sense in owning some music if you don't listen to it, at some time. Having some method of getting through them is probably a good idea.

For the last twelve years or so, my usual form of background or travel listening is filling up an iPod alphabetically and playing it through, and then when that's finished a few weeks later, doing it all over again with the next alphabetical list of songs. And so on.

It used to take about a year to get through them though as I've gained a digital version of a record or tape or another CD then the library has increased and then the time taken to play through them has also. If I have a remastered edition of an album ( a few) I don't include the "remastered" versions of recordings, only mono, stereo, remix, edit - so in effect each version is noticeably different.

This method does ensure that I get to listen to them all sometimes and provides great variety and sometimes interesting contrasts. I also get an opportunity to appreciate some artists in small doses, when a whole album might be most of an album too much.

There are some downsides to it - I don't cringe so much when Metal Machine Music comes around, though 37 versions (almost 4 hours) of "I'm Waiting for the Man" in various studio and live versions across 4 artists, is still an awful lot of waiting.

I do exclude the Christmas songs from this background approach, and savour them for two weeks commencing sunset on the 24th December.

 

I strive for balance in my life. Family, work, car club / museum, multiple historical societies, recording studio,
the list goes on. Music is just another pleasant experience. I spend as much time attempting to create music as I
do listening.