Music / Archive Panic

Many classical musicians produce hundreds of hours of music over their lifetime — sample "Complete Works" sets include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (170 CDs), Ludwig van Beethoven (85 CDs) and Johann Sebastian Bach (155 CDs). The complete collection of Franz Schubert's songs take up 40 CDs. That's just songs, by the way; in this one genre alone — which doesn't include his symphonies, piano sonatas, character pieces, marches, waltzes, chamber works, masses, operas, overtures, and all the other things he wrote — he wrote almost as much as half of Beethoven's entire output. Now consider that Schubert died as young as 31 years (vs. Beethoven's 56 years) and that he had a drinking problem, and marvel. The guy was hardcore.
John Williams has over his 90 years of being alive composed several days worth of music for films, concert halls and solo instruments.
Many Japanese kankyō ongaku/New Age composers have tens or even hundreds of albums, most of them receiving nothing in the way of promotion, and the reason for this is Japan's economic boom in the 80s. This boom allowed corporations to commission a lot of this music for their offices, events and promotions, and the physical copies of a majority of these albums were given away for free either by themselves or with tie-in items. Takashi Kokubo's most famous album, GET AT THE WAVE, was given away with a Sanyo air conditioner; he also composed multiple series of albums for office workers, self-help books, cookbooks, and tourism guides amongst other things. Fumio Miyashita meanwhile has (by Discogs' count) at least 149 albums under his belt, including one for each Zodiac sign. Unlike classical composers, there's no accurate records anywhere of how many releases these artists have put out, as these pieces were considered disposable product. And because they were meant to be disposable, sadly many of them are lost media and many others require Keep Circulating the Tapes.
Many artists on ZTT (Zang Tuum Tumb) Records' 80s heyday (Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Art of Noise, Propaganda, etc.) fall victim to this. ZTT was notorious at the time for releasing different edits of each band's singles across every format available at the time. ZTT also maintained several catalogue numbering series (primarily Action and Incidental) that were applied haphazardly to a myriad of products, simultaneously giving the impression of a much larger catalogue while obscuring the myriad of remixes put out across formats. Many of these obscure singles are currently being digitized and re-issued by the label under their Element Series banner, including several edits not heard before. Many of these edits have also been renamed for their inclusion on new releases, as well.
Tangerine Dream has recorded over 100 albums and EPs, and has released over six dozen compilations and box sets, some of which have tracks not available elsewhere. If you're a sucker for getting the back catalogue of any newly-discovered band, this one might bankrupt you. Panic ensues until you realize a lot of them are EPs with two to four tracks. So if you can find a music download site that sells by the track, you can grab up to ten of them for under 20 bucks.
For fun, check out the discographies of Throbbing Gristle, Skinny Puppy and Cabaret Voltaire on Wikipedia. Particularly in the case of Skinny Puppy, try looking for all of their side projects — in addition to the original 30 or so albums, there's Download (10 albums), Ohgr (3 albums), The Tear Garden (8 albums), RevCo (10 albums), Cevin Key's solo work (3 albums), Doubting Thomas (4 albums), Hilt (6 albums), Cyberaktif (1 album), Ritalin or Rx (1 album)... that brings them up to 76 albums. With one in the works. On the Cabaret Voltaire side, that's not even getting into all the solo work of Richard H. Kirk (for which he used many pseudonyms).
Black Sabbath has released 19 studio albums, 8 live albums, an EP, and at least 16 other tracks scattered throughout their catalogue. ^Note And that's if you don't count the 2 disc deluxe editions too, which include more live tracks, radio edits, instrumental versions of songs, outtakes, alternate lyrics/mixes, etc. Most notably, disc 2 of The Eternal Idol is just earlier versions of its own songs, but sung by Ray Gillen during his brief stint in the band. And THEN you've got the solo careers of nearly every member in the band going on. Considering several of Black Sabbath's albums have been out of print for decades ^Note, good luck trying to track all of this down without resorting to piracy at some point.
Beck, in addition to his official studio albums, has several complete home recorded albums (on cassette), many radio sessions, b-sides, EPs, and compilation tracks that were not recorded on any of his studio albums, many recordings (including full cover albums) that were free downloads from his own website, and to top that all off, has a fair amount of tracks that were only performed live. This doesn't take into account his guest appearances or remixes for other artists, of which there are a huge amount. Beck has so many recordings that the website whiskeyclone.net was set up to document them.
Paul McCartney has released approximately 30 solo studio pop/rock albums. Add in Beatles albums, live albums, and classical albums, and it's closer to 60. (We will try not to think about the albums with multiple editions.) Fortunately, there is also at least one good Greatest Hits Album (and there was a period when All The Best! and Wingspan were both readily available). Unfortunately, you'll have to do a literal Archive Trawl to get many of his solo albums — they can be found on iTunes more easily than in stores.
The Beatles themselves qualify when you throw in all the different editions of their music. They only have thirteen "official" studio albums (if you count Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine) plus the two Past Masters albums to comprise their core discography, but throw in the fact that most of these have at least a mono and a stereo version, which often differ substantially (in particular, the mono version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band often differs radically from the stereo version, and is usually considered superior), and then all the supplemental material that has been released since (Let It Be... Naked, the The Beatles Anthology releases, etc.), and it gets a bit more complicated. And if you want to track down everything each musician did in their solo careers and, often, in collaboration with each other after the band broke up, good luck.
There's also The Beach Boys, who on top of 29 studio albums have the Pet Sounds and Smile Sessions box sets, many singles, plus various members' solo albums. And then there's a needless amount of Greatest Hits and other compilations to collect.
Coming in a distant third has gotta be Chicago, with 30+.
Latin Jazz musician Cal Tjader released over 70 albums in his lifetime, across a period of around 30 years. Luckily, "where to start" is pretty well defined as only a few of these albums have appeared on CD and they're usually the most popular ones.
Bob Marley and the Wailers. Hundreds of songs were recorded during the 60s and early 70s that were not released on album until the 90s. Whilst getting them on CD or digitally is manageable thanks to the compilations (a lot of which feature the same tracks and a few exclusives) acquiring the original 7" singles is a lifetime's work, not helped by the fact that Jamaican vinyl is not usually well looked after and can often have blank labels. And to make matters worse, due to the poorly managed copyright there are millions of unofficial CD compilations of poor sounding versions of material from the period, something which has caught out many a journalist/collector/casual fan. The official releases on CD don't collect all the band's work nor do they always present it in the correct order.
Bonnie Tyler has not only released an impressive number of studio albums, but also an impressive number of compilation albums. Listening to all songs back-to-back is a feat not taken lightly, since her discographical history has lasted for over 45 years to date.
Richard D. James has released 5 studio albums and several EPs under his most prominently known name (Aphex Twin), but has released two other albums and many other EPs under many different pseudonyms, some of which are just speculated to be him. Obtaining his entire discography can be an exercise in confusion and frustration, which only worsens when he also has older stuff leaked out on the net, old recordings of songs played on the radio, and remixes that were submitted for various contests or given to friends but have never seen the light of day on an official release. Even the artist himself suffers from Archive Panic with his own works, with having over 100 hours of material that remain unreleased. James once stated in an interview that if anyone left a message on his answering machine, it would record over a song he had put on the cassette beforehand.
Frank Zappa's discography is very large and confusing, especially since many of his albums sound very different. Knowing where to start is difficult to the point that some fansites have lists of albums they recommend as starting points. They also tend to advise new listeners not to be put off if they don't like a particular album, due to the aforementioned variety of musical styles. Zappa's live discography includes six two-CD volumes of concert performances and three volumes that consist entirely of guitar solos. Whilst Zappa's discography is large, it can easily be divided into groups based on what style of music he was playing at the time: The Mothers of Invention, Experimental period, Jazz period, Pop-rock/Jazz-rock period, classically influenced period. It's usually quite easy to tell what comes from what period. Hot Rats, Over-Nite Sensation and Apostrophe (') are more accessible records so fans are usually advised to start with those.
Factoring in live albums and EPs, Motörhead's 31 album discography occupies well over a full gigabyte. In all, that's a whopping 21 studio albums, 5 EPs, 7 live albums, and 8 complication albums. Their studio discography alone consists of over 200 songs, excluding bonus tracks and rarities.
Those curious about famed hippie-band The Grateful Dead and their legendary live performances may be a little intimidated by over 6,000 complete concert recordings (spanning from the late-60's to the mid-90's) at the Internet Archive. This is in addition to their 13 studio albums and their almost 100 official live albums.
Prolific noise-artist Merzbow will put most other artists to shame- in 20 years of making music, he's recorded about 300 albums, many of which are multiple discs long. One specific release he put out this decade is (by itself) 50 full (CD) discs long. And remember here, Merzbow is a noise-artist. His music is mostly composed of experiments with static and noise, toying with tape loops and all kinds of insane mastery. A download of all of his released material comes to 11.67 GB.
Boris has around 96 releases listed on Discogs. As if this wasn't bad enough, some releases differ depending on where you buy them and on what format. For example, the U.S. edition of their seminal album Pink extends the track Just Abandoned Myself to 18 minutes, as opposed to the Japanese version 10 minutes, all while the vinyl edition extends the tracks Pseudo-Bread, My Machine, and Farewell to Epic Rocking territories as well as making Farewell the penultimate track instead of the opener. Whew. To make matters worse, some albums aren't available on streaming services, and albums such as Flood and Heavy Rocks can go upwards for 30-70 dollars on Discogs. The afformentioned vinyl edition of Pink is only available as a 3 LP Deluxe Version, so expect to pay $50 if that's the version you want to hear. (Luckily, Pink is available on streaming services with the U.S. Tracklisting.)
"Wordcore" Group The Tournament Wraiths currently have over 25 albums, all of which are about 4 hours long a piece. Of course, being a group which simply records events of their lives, most of the albums consist of silence, random conversations, and in-jokes, but still. Some of their work can be found here.
The Mountain Goats' nearly twenty year career has spawned dozens of releases, including some infuriatingly rare cassette only releases, tour only EPs, multiple versions of the same song and whole albums of unreleased material. All said and done, Mountain Goats have released 22 releases, most of which were recorded on frontman John Darnielle's boombox in his basement. The joys of Lo-Fi musicians!
They Might Be Giants (TMBG) have 18 studio albums, 8 EPs, 9 live concert CDs, 10 Compilations containing hundreds of B-sides and rarities, Dial-A-Song which ran from 1985 to 2008 and was restarted at the beginning of 2015. On top of all that they have done dozens of commercials and TV theme songs. Nearly every CD is packed to the gills, often containing 23 or more tracks. Even if you've never heard of the band you have probably had more than one of their songs stuck in your head!
Legendary British alternative rock band The Fall has 32 studio albums with no clear point of entry. What's worse is that all their "greatest hits" compilations are considered to be unreliable with the exception of one (50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong, and even that one has eclectic track choices and consists mostly of deep album cuts) and their definitive release is The Complete Peel Sessions, a six disc box set of performances they did on British DJ John Peel's radio show from 1978 to 2004.
Industrial Metal group KMFDM have been around for over 35 years and currently have 23 studio albums (two of which are collab albums with Pig and Thim Skold), 4 live albums, 11 compilation albums, and 5 remix albums, as well as 34 single/EP releases, many of which reach a half hour or more each.
El Paso's The Mars Volta are another brilliant example of this. A torrent of all their live bootlegs was over 50gigs in size. And even if you stick with just the studio albums, if you decide to delve into guitarist/mastermind Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's solo and spin-off albums (including At The Drive-In) then God help you.
Jazz musician Miles Davis has a very large discography of over 100 albums.
Jazz experimentalist Sun Ra, who was active as a musician from 1934 until his death in 1993, released well over 100 albums, comprising over 1000 songs. Good luck if you would like to tackle that one. Also try finding some of the seriously limited editions pressed and printed by Ra and The Arkestra themselves. They used to doodle on the album covers before it was cool. These releases often had tracks available nowhere else.
Viper the Rapper has over 900 albums on Spotify, having released 347 in 2014 alone. Granted, most of these are the same album with only small or no differences, but good luck going through this man's discography.
Sonic Youth made music consistently from the release of their first album in 1983 until their apparent dissolution in 2011. According to the Other Wiki, they have released 15 albums (16 if you count the album released under the name Ciccone Youth), 4 compilations, 8 EPs, and 8 Sonic Youth Recordings (SYR), a series of noise experiments with other musicians (one of which happens to be the aforementioned Merzbow). Sonic Youth is an interesting case, because of the way their music evolved. So for example, although their album Daydream Nation has some of their most accessible songs ("Teen Age Riot", "Candle"), it also contains long drowning feedback not found on some of their previous albums, such as Evol or Sister.
It is also worth mentioning that the seminal grunge band Melvins have released 19 albums, 7 live albums, 6 EPs, and 8 compilations, as well as Chicken Switch, the remix album of their work. And if you're really a completist, there's such oddities as a completely silent 7" single and a live album that was only released on 8-track (apparently just for the novelty of putting out an 8-track in the year 2000).
Tori Amos. Fifteen studio albums — a number of which are over 70 minutes — plus the b-sides, covers, official bootlegs, and even a musical. Good luck.
Bob Dylan has put out 39 studio albums, 13 live albums, and 16 editions of the Bootleg Series.
Phish have released 15 studio albums (itself quite a bit), but like The Grateful Dead, they're known best for their great live albums. So throw in all of their officially released live CDs and you have over 50 albums. But that's not even the start of it: The official soundboard feed for every one of the band's concerts since 2002 are available for download on their website. Let us not forget the fan tapes, either: Over 1500 of the band's concerts, roughly 85% of the shows they've played since their formation in 1983, are circulating as completely legal fan-taped recordings. The sheer amount of these tapes make Phish the second most thoroughly documented act in pop music history after the Grateful Dead.
Ali Project, a Japanese neo-classical band, got their start in the eighties. Not too long ago, right? Well, they tend to release singles rather frequently, totalling 29 as of July 2012. Next, their albums. 30 as of July 2012. Note that the tracklists are usually long, and over half of them are all new (meaning not containing songs from previous singles). Oh, and did I forget to mention Mikiya Katakura, the composer of the duo, does anime soundtracks? And then you forget that they perform at the Animelo summer concerts a lot... They also perform a "Gekko Soiree" — a classic-style inspired concert with respective remakes of their songs — almost each year. Surely, it is released as a studio album, too. Oh, and the DVD with the video of the concert goes along.
Prolific songwriter Robert Pollard has over 1200 songs in his name registered with BMI. This includes the 24 albums he recorded as the frontman for beloved indie band Guided by Voices, his 22 solo albums, and a myriad of albums he recorded with his many side-projects, such as Boston Spaceships, Airport 5, The Circus Devils, Acid Ranch, Go Back Snowball and Lifeguards. Guided by Voices' 2017 album August by Cake was Pollard's 100th album as a credited performer.
Electronica artist Machinefabriek has about 80 releases credited to his name, most of which are EPs with a few scattered albums and singles. This becomes slightly more amusing when you know his first release was only in 2004.
King Crimson have 13 studio albums, one or two EPs... and about a million live albums. They have recorded perhaps every concert they have other done, and put a new one up on their website which you can download for a price, so not too bad (until you see how many there are...) also their albums are rather hard to come by in shops. Said website also has everything Robert Fripp has ever done live as well.
Neil Young has released 42 solo studio albums. That's not counting live albums, video albums, his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, etc. The legendary Archives project, which Neil has worked on and spoken of for decades, is dedicated specifically to releasing even more stuff from the vaults. He took so long preparing it — mostly due to concerns about recorded sound quality — that fans began putting out bootlegs of his early and lesser-known work in a collection called Archives Be Damned. Neil began releasing official Archive box sets in 2009. In an attempt to give listeners the highest quality sound experience, he has provided his entire catalogue online, with already-released material available for free listening, in high-resolution audio by Xstream Music / OraStream.
Pearl Jam attempted to subvert the tendency of fans to bootleg live performances by creating the Official Bootlegs series, CD editions of those performances. This resulted in them setting records for the most albums to debut in the chart simultaneously; by the end of 2010, this series will amount to over 300 double disc albums.
Steven Wilson, most famously of Porcupine Tree, has released six official solo albums and eleven albums with PT, plus huge amounts of material under various names, bands and collaborations; a comprehensive list of his discography runs to 369 pages over twenty years. (Much of this is promos, 5.1 releases, samplers, etc., but there would be coming up to 100 original releases of any worth, which still makes a SW completist despair.) And the man has still had time to work on remixes of seven or eight other bands' classic albums.
Elton John has 30 studio albums. Add in live albums and the figure jumps up to 35. If you then include soundtracks on which he was the primary artist or primary composer, it increases to 42. And on top of that, he has enough non-LP singles and B-sides to fill several more. The title of his 1980 album 21 at 33 alludes to Elton having released 21 official live and studio releases at the age of 33. At his eleventh year of recording. And his output severely tapered off since 1976. If this doesn't point his prolificness out, nothing will.
David Bowie, according to The Other Wiki, has 28 studio albums (26 solo, 2 as part of Tin Machine). Then add live albums and movie soundtracks...then one-off songs for soundtracks, duets, etc...he really got around. It doesn't help that he was another artist who was fond of the New Sound Album. (Compilations are plentiful, at least.) This doesn't even get into his live performance films/videos, a lengthy run of music videos, and a side career as an actor.
Prince. He put out 23 physical albums in his 30 some year career. Add on that side projects (i.e. The Time, The New Power Generation, Madhouse, etc.), albums with tracks written by him, Internet only albums, vinyl only B-sides, remixes, and compilations, that adds up to around 125 albums (Source). If you think tracking down all those albums is going to be hard, it gets better. A majority of those albums are not in print anymore. And that's not including his unreleased material. A 34-disc compilation that presents a tip of the iceberg of unreleased material is circulating. If you are thinking of getting into collecting his live shows, good luck: Prince regularly held afterparty shows that went on for another couple of hours, then would get up the next morning and have full-on rehearsal/soundcheck shows that would also be recorded and archived.
English smooth jazz band Shakatak is a prime example of the over-saturation that eventually became synonymous with the genre. Record label Polydor released the band's first greatest hits album right after the band's third studio album, and seemed to release a new greatest hits album either in Europe or in Asia after each proper studio album. Japan also received differently sequenced and titled versions of some of their UK/European albums (Never Stop Your Love vs Manic & Cool, Let the Piano Play vs Let's Start Over Again, etc.), and their first Christmas-themed album was released in different versions in the US, UK and Japan. Once smooth jazz as a whole became fodder for infomercial companies like K-Tel, Shakatak's music would be endlessly repackaged on hundreds of compilations, including even more greatest hits albums that either looked like a legitimate new studio album or a disc designed for the bargain bin. Not even Discogs is caught up with their full catalogue.
The band Bull of Heaven goes above and beyond. Not only do they release many, many albums every year (including 148 in 2009 alone!), they are also responsible for some of the longest albums in existence (their latest, 210: Like a Wall in Which an Insect Lives and Gnaws, is 5+ years long). It should be noted that much of this is not exactly music by most people's definition; the exceptionally long tracks are just arrangements of ultra-slowed-down sound effects and loops thereof, or is algorithmically designed. Much of it has never even been listened to by the creator, simply queued with software and released.
- They have some songs or music pieces that would take literally over trillions of years to listen to, putting every other example on this page to shame. And that's not even considering trying to listen to them all one after another. That would outlive the Universe.
Bill Laswell (originally bassist for Material) is prolific as a recording artist, collaborator, producer and remixer. Check out this complete discography...but don't plan on doing a Wiki Walk through the links unless you've got a few months free off your calendar.
Renard Queenston. They released 26 albums in 2010 ALONE. They have 74 albums in total on their own record deal. They're also a cofounder of another record deal... and then this is for just the past five years.
Backseat Goodbye. He has B-sides and covers and unreleased for download on his Purevolume, over one hundred songs on iTunes, more music on his website, and this is all from an indie pop-folk band who has only been active for six years. Good luck. And bring some electronic cash. Thankfully, he loves his fans and sporadically gives away free copies of his albums. With The Good Years, he gave away FREE to 100+ lucky people. He is that productive.
Muslimgauze was so prolific that there are 210 releases as of 2010... and he (yes, he) died in 1999 (when there were 114 releases out).
Rapper Lil B created his own Archive Panic in one swift move: by releasing a 676-song mixtape. In 2012, he dropped an 855-song mixtape of freestyles. Discounting these two abnormally long mixtapes still leaves you with nearly 50 others stretching anywhere from 20 to 100 tracks each.
Country singer Johnny Cash has released 67 studio albums in addition to 16 live albums and 105 compilations.
As of 2012, the Canadian band Rush has released 19 studio albums, 8 live albums (including 2 double- and 2 triple-CD sets), 7 live DVD's (3 of which were remastered from VHS), and an EP. Perhaps a dozen compilations of singles and videos have been available at different times as well.
The Rolling Stones. As their web page says: "92 singles, 29 studio albums, 10 live albums and more songs than you can count."
The Funk Brothers. They were the studio band for nearly all of the Motown Records releases between 1959 and 1972, including nearly every #1 song from that time period from an American artist.
The official solo discography of classically-trained, sometime Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman includes "over 100 solo albums" as of 2012 (according to The Other Wiki), most of which can be seen here. And that's not counting his gospel albums, DVDs, compilations, etc. Adding to the frustration is that the rights to many of his albums, including his groundbreaking, best-selling A&M albums in The '70s, are tied up in legal hassles, and have been out of print for years, are notoriously hard to find, or have yet to see release on CD or online. A Greatest Hits Album covering the A&M era, called Recollections: The Very Best of Rick Wakeman, has been released, but little else.
Yes. 21 studio albums, ten live albums, thirty-two compilations, and that's not even getting into all the side projects formed by the various band members. Good luck if you ever want to tackle that herculean task.
Jandek has over 40 albums, not counting his live albums and DVDs. He puts them out through his own label, and neatly numbers them all for you, though confusingly starts with 0739.
Sunn O))) already had an extensive discography, but in June 2015 it got even worse: the band started to release an archive of their live performances since 2002. As of August 2015, they've already released 81 albums. And this is Sunn O))) we're talking about: most of these consist of a single track clocking well over one hour.
A unique example is Argentinian songwriter Juan Mutant. What happens when you have access to CDbaby, a mental health fund from the government and no job? You release all your back catalog on over 150 unique releases which are a minefield to traverse. Don't Panic. Get Extreme File X first, it's his version of a greatest hits, all 97 tracks of it. And have fun trying to fix the tracklist if you don't know his catalog.
Go look up the discography of Aerosmith. 15 studio albums, 5 live albums, 12 compilation albums, 2 boxsets, 70 singles, 6 reissues of singles, 7 music video VHS and DVD releases, and 36 music videos. In total, that's 153 releases by the group.
Black Metal bands can sometimes fall under this trope, not so much for the releases of the bands themselves (although they can be hugely prolific — Darkthrone has released sixteen albums and a rather large quantity of EPs and demo recordings, for example), but because the musicians in the scene often form solo projects or collaborate extensively with musicians from other bands, leading to numerous side projects that are often difficult to track down for people who want to hear everything the band members have recorded. It doesn't help, either, that the releases often tend to be pressed in extremely limited quantities, making it difficult to track down physical copies.
- U.S. black metal Njiqahdda are an example of a particularly productive black metal act. Since their founding in 2005, they've produced fourteen full-lengths (many of these double-disc sets), a "box set" which is basically another hour of music, and more than forty EPs, splits, and demos. That's just as Njiqahdda, mind you - they also have more recordings released as Njiijn, Oaks of Bethel, and Funeral Eclipse. The discography of Funeral Eclipse isn't too big yet but Oaks of Bethel has seven full-lengths (again, some are double sets) and fifteen EPs, while Njiijn has four albums and an EP. You can stream their discography here.
- The Dutch musician Mories, who is the sole musician behind such projects as Gnaw Their Tongues, Cloak of Altering, De Magia Veterum, Aderlating, and other projects, is another example of an absurdly productive metal musician. Gnaw Their Tongues alone has seven full-lengths and more than twenty EPs/splits (many of which are themselves as long as most full-length albums) since 2005. Most of the other projects aren't as prolific yet, but it's still a massive output for one man.
- Polish project Hellveto, the work of a man going by the name of L.O.N., was, for awhile, close to the output pace of the two groups above, although he's slowed down somewhat - he didn't release anything in 2011, for example. Still, he has fifteen full-lengths released starting with the first in 2002. There are also a handful of EPs and splits, plus the several demos he recorded before his proper albums.
Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal has an extensive discography, having worked on countless albums as a musician, producer, arranger or songwriter, not counting his own solo albums. He also wrote a book with 367 brand new songs, one for each day of the year plus one, and has over 3000 unpublished songs. And yes, he's still active, writing at least one song each day, and not only working on his solo projects but also with his girlfriend, a big band and orchestras. His shows are also full of jams and songs that are played once to never be played again.
The output of Russian industrial/doom metal/ambient/electronica musician Senmuth, though, dwarfs most of the projects listed above. He has been releasing music since 2004 and has more than one hundred releases, most of which are full-lengths. And if that's not enough, many of these are multi-disc sets, with at least one, Ахет Мери Ра (Akhet Mery Ra, or roughly, The Horizon [That Is] Beloved of Ra), being a four-disc set running roughly three and a half hours. All of his material is released for free on the internet, too (albeit only in mp3 format), so it's not entirely clear how he makes his money. Valery Androsov (the man behind Senmuth) has said in interviews that he works as a graphic designer and wants to keep the Senmuth project entirely free. A small number of albums may get a physical release (such as Weird), but they will also remain free on his website regardless.
Moby got this bad. As of 2013, he's built up fifteen studio albums, with various singles from each album, plus some non-album singles, which makes for an absurd amount of remixes and b-sides. That's not enough? Well, many of those studio albums come in deluxe editions that add a second disc, usually of an hour or so of ambient/new age workouts. And then he's recorded a few albums under the name Voodoo Child, consisting of old school rave music.
Ayumi Hamasaki has a discography of about 1000 songs if you count orchestral versions and remixes (not counting her 20+ concert releases). She just celebrated her 15th career anniversary in 2013. 15 original albums, over 20 remix albums (including 6 orchestral albums), over 50 singles, a couple EPs — you do the math. She also has over 100 music videos.
Yoshida Tatsuya, mastermind behind Japanese zeuhl bands such as Koenji Hyakkei and Ruins, has an utterly gigantic discography when you count everything he's written, performed on, and contributed to. Ruins alone has dozens of releases, and Yoshida has nearly as many under his own name and as collaborations with others. A complete listing of his releases is here.
Yoshida's primary inspiration Magma has a reasonably sizeable discography as well (about twelve main studio albums and at least twice as many side releases including live and archival performances), but that's only under the name of Magma. When you factor in all the side projects the band members have been involved in, the number increases substantially. Dedicated listeners will at least need to track down recordings by Christian Vander, Offering, Jannick Top, Univeria Zekt, Weidorje, and Zao if they want to hear all the band members' zeuhl-related material.
The British industrial group Zoviet France have a total of 22 studio albums, 6 live albums, and 2 EP's. That wouldnt be so bad if most of them werent limited, hand made editions that commend a premium in online auctions.
Subverted with Bad Religion. While their discography (which spans over thirty years) includes sixteen studio albums, most of them only clock in at just over a half hour, some of the early ones you might even mistake for EP's given their length, due to the band's fast-paced nature.
Devo have a bit of Archive Panic in their own right, just enough to drive Spuds crazy. Nine studio albums between 1978-2010 doesn't seem too strenuous, but there's also the pre-record deal EP, the CD/two cassettes of easy listening music they put out, the soundtrack to their rare PC game, the live albums/DVDs, the soundtrack contributions, the Hardcore Devo compilations (thankfully re-released in 2013), the Recombo DNA compilation of demos, and a wealth of bootlegs, a scarce few of which have hard-to-find songs. Pioneers Who Got Scalped, a double-disc anthology, gathered up a few of these scattered tracks and works as a career retrospective in its own right, and is highly recommended for collectors.
Anyone trying to get through the collective discography of Danish industrial/EBM artist Claus Larsen — who records under the pseudonyms Leæther Strip and Klutæ — is gonna be at it for quite a while. Scattered between both handles, you currently have something along the line of 20+ EPs, 8 compilations, 15 single LPs, 5 double LPs, limited edition bonus CDs of original content packaged with the double LPs, remasters of the first three albums packaged with re-recorded versions of the albums, and a handful of stand-alone singles and tracks that have only been performed live. And he's still going!
The Smashing Pumpkins have just ten official studio albums as of 2015, besides a colossal vault of B-sides and reissues. The Rarities and B-Sides digital compilation has 114 tracks with over eight hours of material, and it was released incomplete. Gish, Siamese Dream and Pisces Iscariot were reissued with a bonus CD and a bonus DVD, representing around three to four hours of material for each album. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was given three bonus CDs and a DVD, expanding its running time to over seven hours. The Aeroplane Flies High was given about three CDs' worth of bonus material (although, owing to the way the material was broken up on the original compilation, only one CD was added to the box set) and a bonus DVD, expanding its running time to nearly eight hours. Adore was given five bonus CDs and a bonus DVD, expanding its running time to over nine hours. In short, good luck. It's no exaggeration to call Billy Corgan one of the most prolific songwriters of the 1990s, with at least 50 songs from that period still in the vaults.
In 2014, Buckethead became this. Up until then, he had released a steady stream of music, with output steadily increasing. In 2014 though, he released 55 full length albums (most of them via digital distribution on his website) bringing his album count to around 123. Since he only took two weeks to release his first album of 2015, his rate of output doesn't look like it's slowing down any time soon.
Bands that allow audience taping will inevitably be subject to this for their live recordings. The Grateful Dead, mentioned above, are the most famous but by no means the only example of this. Even bands with small official discographies, like The Mars Volta and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, will amass probably hundreds of bootlegs.
Lee Scratch Perry has been recording since the late 1960s and has released over 60 records, not counting all the musicians he wrote singles or produced albums for.
John Zorn: His catalogue has over 400 albums, including projects with other bands. Practically every two months there is a new Zorn album in the stores.
Genesis' fifteen studio albums and two EPs don't seem too bad. But then you start getting into compilations and boxsets (which often contain things like alternate versions of songs, demos, B-sides, and the like), live albums, concert films, two documentaries, at least one music video compilation, and the many, many concert bootlegs that exist. Oh, and did we mention that at least seven of the band's members^note have their own solo careers? Some of which can themselves get rather extensive and/or are still releasing new material to this day? Steve Hackett is the most prolific, with 26 studio albums (mainly progressive rock, but a blues album, multiple classical albums and even two albums worth of Genesis covers) and and over a dozen live albums to date. Long story short, those who want to experience everything Genesis and its members have to offer have their work cut out for them.
So you want some beach music for a party, and want to explore Jimmy Buffett. Shouldn't take too long, right? After all, he was just a one-hit wonder...What do you mean he's made 25 (or 27) albums?!
The French music label Classics were in business for less than 20 years, yet they released 965 compact discs of classic jazz and R&B ranging from the 1920's through the mid 1950's. Among the best represented performers were Fats Waller (21 discs), Louis Armstrong (23), Benny Goodman (36), and Duke Ellington (46!).
- Also bear in mind that Classics had only gone up the mid 1950's when they went out of business. Other than Waller, the aforementioned artists' recording careers extended into the 1970's.
Death Metal frontman Chris Barnes is undoubtedly one of the busiest and most prolific vocalists in the history of the genre. His studio albums alone with both Cannibal Corpse and Six Feet Under amount to over 200 songs, and that's not including SFU's Graveyard Classics albums and the unreleased rarities from both bands. Add that to his live DVDs and early demos with CC and SFU, plus his session vocals for at least 8 to 10 other bands, and he's arguably been a part of more songs than any other big-name death metal vocalist in the world. Listening to all of his material without stopping would take at least 15 hours, if not more. As of 2022, he's performed on 22 studio albums, which while far from the most a death metal musician has done, exceeds that of everyone at his level of popularity (he's one of if not the only one to surpass 20 albums as of now).
- Cannibal Corpse themselves, including their post-Barnes era, are on the light end of this, but their 16 studio albums alone run for more than 10 hours with over 170 songs. In combination with their live albums, a few EPs and a documentary, it's easy to spend an entire day listening to them.
- George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, Cannibal Corpse's current vocalist, is possibly only second to Barnes in individual death metal singers, as including Cannibal Corpse, he currently has vocal credits on a total of 19 albums with five different bands, plus a solo album from 2022, not to mention that he has some of the most guest vocal spots in all of extreme metal.
The reason the members of Priestess hadn't already cited Thin Lizzy as an influence despite gladly owning up to listening to all the other big-name hard rock bands of that time? "There's such a catalogue to investigate," said one member. Indeed: 12 studio albums, 12 live albums, dozens of singles, and various miscellanea such as an eight-disc archive set.
Chris Rea: 25 albums, including Blue Guitars, an 11-disc album with over 9 and a half hours' worth of music.^note
British DJ Pete Tong has been hosting weekly 'The Essential Mix' since 1993 and 'The Essential Selection' since 1991 on BBC Radio 1. Most episodes are two hours in length, but some live mixes from festivals that feature more than one DJ can run upto 4-5 hours.
Multi-instrumentalist Zach Hill (of Hella and Death Grips fame) has released music with more than 35 different musical talents throughout his career, with some of them being near-impossible to find a copy of, due to the obscurity of said talents.
Autechre were active since 1991, and from that year, they kept consistently producing one track after the other. Their later albums, along with accompanying EPs (some of which go well over an hour of running time), basically make their collection denser and denser in a geometric progression:
- Tri Repetae: Nearing three hours, if we count Garbage and Anvil Vapre EPs, as well as mail-order only We R Are Why/Are Y Are We? which, while it was released two years later, shares the same design language as Tri Repetae's cover art.
- Chaistic Slide: A bit over two hours with Envane and Cichlisuite EPs.
- Quaristice: Clocks in at five hours, with the main album, Versions, a few Japanese-exclusive tracks and Quaristice.Quadrange.ep.ae, the latter of which has Perlence subrange 6-36, an ambient song that itself goes for about an hour.
- Exai: Sold on two CDs or four vinyls, goes for two hours, with another thirty minutes provided by L-event.
- AELIVE: Since Autechre themselves tend to improvise during their live performances, each concert would certainly grant them hours worth of material. In this case, every edition of AELIVE makes up for nine whole hours of songs.
- elseq: A series of five individual albums with no more than five tracks each, but in total, they take up four hours.
- NTS Sessions: Four albums, each has the running time of exactly two hours, making it eight in total. The final track, all end, itself runs for about an hour.
Ecuadorian singer Julio Jaramillo, during all his musical career, has had more than 5000 record productions, making him the Ecuadorian artist who has recorded many times around America and Europe. However, archiving the entire discography is extremely difficult, even in Ecuador, as several productions recorded in Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela and Spain remain unreleased in Ecuador. According to The Other Wiki, Yoshinori Yamamoto, a Japanese man, has the largest collection of Julio Jaramillo's record productions in the world. Also, his last recording, destined for the US Hispanic market, is one of the rarest and most infamous productions in his history, due to how it was produced and Julio Jaramillo's health.
John Cage, while not that prolific, is a master of Avant-Garde Music and he gives us a rare single song example. There's a version of "As Slow As Possible" being played on an organ that will take 600 years to finish (helped by how the song has no tempo notations written).
Since 2005, Gucci Mane has released fourteen official albums, most of which are rather long in themselves, which might qualify him for this trope on their own. However, his discography also includes three full-length collaborative albums, a soundtrack album, seven EPs, and the real kicker - seventy-two mixtapes, bringing his catalogue to hundreds of songs in total. And that's not even getting into his guest appearances...
Kevin MacLeod is the most prolific composer in history, or at least the person who has the most credits on the IMDb, at over THREE THOUSAND.
Charles Wesley, an English leader of the Methodist movement, was credited with roughly 6,500 hymns in his lifetime.
Blind songwriter Fanny Crosby has been credited with writing over 8,000 hymns and gospel songs.
SiIvaGunner has uploaded over 18,000 currently available videos, which can range from less than one second to over FOUR HOURS! Most of these are high-quality music rips. There also exists album-exclusive content, as well as hundreds of blocked, lost, deleted, restricted, unlisted, or otherwise missing videos...and that's ignoring the now-deleted spin-off channel Flustered Fernando and countless fan channels. That's alotta music!
Mariah Carey has fifteen studio albums, plus compilation and remix albums.
Pink Floyd has 15 studio albums, a few live ones, and quite a few tracks that can only be found in compilations, box sets, special editions of albums, etc. And good luck for those delving into the bootlegs, known as ROIO's, or Recordings of Indeterminate (or Illegitimate) Origin.
James Brown, during a recording career lasting over 50 years, released 63 albums (solo or with the Famous Flames) and 13 live albums, not counting complations and albums by groups he was heavily involved with, such as the J.B.'s, which would push the total to over 100 albums.
George Clinton: Put together, Parliament, Funkadelic and George's solo discography make up to 33 studio albums, and besides those, there are also 9 live albums, and about 34 compilatons. And if you add the albums by artists closely associated with the collective, like Parlet, Bootsy Collins and the Brides of Funkenstein, the count can get even higher.
Rogga Johansson is a Swedish vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who, while not a household name, is pretty well-known among fans of death metal music for his prolific work in the genre. How prolific, you ask? As of 2023, he is or has been part of 60 different bands and counting. Yes, "and counting", because just when you think he's done, he introduces a new project. His discography consists of more than 110 albums, mostly with underground musicians, though he has worked with a handful of notable figures such as Massacre's Kam Lee and Benediction/former Bolt Thrower singer Dave Ingram, and his work is generally considered to be enjoyable if nothing original, which is no mean feat for someone with so many projects.
R. Stevie Moore, who many people claim as the "godfather of home recording", since the introduction of the cassette in the United States during the mid-1960s, has released over 400 albums in his lifetime, with over 500 releases on his Bandcamp page, including compilations, live albums, collaborations, and preserving media from his friends and family. His website recommends beginners to sift through 31 albums, which is still an exhaustive bunch. Even though he claims he retired from recording on New Year's Eve 2019, he still manages to upload material to this day.
IOSYS is a prolific doujin group that has released over 300 CDs in various series (mostly Touhou Fan Music). As of The New '20s, however, its output has slowed down considerably, so you at least have a chance to catch up.
SOUND HOLIC is a Touhou Fan Music circle with over 100 albums under its belt, most of which will take you 40-50 minutes to listen to. Even ignoring the Greatest Hits Albums, there are still a lot.
Touhou Fan Music circle Yuuhei Satellite has released almost 50 albums and over 30 singles. On top of that, there's a plethora of limited CDs — while some of their songs have been re-released, many still fall under Keep Circulating the Tapes. And good luck if you also want to follow their sister circles Shoujo Fractal and Yuuhei Katharsis, which do similar things.

Archive Panic / Music

Previous

Index

Next

Archive Panic / Music

Edit Locked

Previous

Index

Next