Unplayed Music

So how much music have you actually listened to in your library? I've listened to ten days worth.

That means I have 23.1 days of music I haven't played. I just made a playlist of all of it and I'm not going to add anymore new music until I get through the entire playlist.

edited 2nd Nov '12 9:31:24 AM by Completion

I... I've listened to everything on my playlist at least once in my life, but with HD transfers and plays just outside the library, my Winamp says nearly 4 hours of music have no plays.

On the other hand, including music played just once ups it to 12 and a half hours.

I'm just going to say the majority of my music and leave it at that. I need several free weeks in order to go through all the unplayed music I have.

I try to listen to everything I put on my computer once I have it, because I feel overwhelmed by unplayed music - but I've still got about 1.7 days, though a bunch of that is just individual songs, not full albums.

edited 2nd Nov '12 1:30:28 PM by MikeK

I've cleaned out my library by removing artists I do not like. I was left with 21.4 days of unplayed music. I am now at 20.8 with 6605 songs to go.

I've made a vow to myself that I will not download anymore music, with exception of new music from one particular artist, until I listen to every single song that's unplayed. If I listen to an average of 130 songs a day, I can have every song in my library listened to in 50 days - December 22nd.

Good luck there buddy.

Personally, I don't like removing things from my music library. I always feel like I might need it all someday (and there have been times where I needed some certain music for some reason but I'd ended up deleting it in the past). I just prefer to have any and all music with me at all times (possibility willing, of course).

I have a few things I haven't played yet even though I've downloaded them. And a few album tracks.

I don't put music into my foobar2000 library unless I intend to listen to it immediately.

Going further I rarely even download/buy music I don't intend to listen to in the short term.

Rarely doesn't mean never though; I have by my count two downloaded albums and two physical CD albums that I haven't listened to.

I do own some LPs I’ve never listened to. Notably: this one, which I bought after one of the channels on my turntable conked out. There’s a few tracks on Youtube so at least I know sort of what it sounds like.

I've heard most of the songs on my iPod, mostly because I don't have that much music on there. My old computer only had like 2 gigs of free space, so I couldn't afford to download a bunch of songs I never listened to.

I don't typically own music that I don't listen to. Meaning that I tend to run in a musical figure 8 and I'M HAPPY THAT WAY, STOP TRYING TO FIX ME. I DON'T NEED YOUR 'NEW MUSIC'

edited 4th Nov '12 1:12:42 PM by Ryuhza

Fuck this, I'm purging my iPod.

EDIT: And the hearts of every rockist cried out in rage.

edited 4th Nov '12 8:20:51 PM by Completion

Raaaaaage. (Happy?)

Quite.

A little more please.

edited 4th Nov '12 11:01:20 PM by Completion

I might have to add some adamantium to this rage.

A lot of my music wont have any plays because it wont count unless I play it all the way. I usually skip to the next song during the last few seconds. Be aware that some of my music can be around 10 minutes long.

Yeah, I don't like to skip a song at the very end for that reason. I like having accurate (to a point) stats on my music-listening.

Inspired by this thread, I have created a Word document on my computer with four lists in it:

List A: Listen to this!
This list contains all the music in my iTunes library which I have never once listened to in its entirety. I have a rule that I must have listened to everything in my library at least once, so this is high-priority stuff. Fortunately, this list contains only four or five albums.

List B: Listen to this more!
This list contains music which I haven't listened to very much, but which I know to be enjoyable and intend to listen to more. You see, when I add music to my library, I want to add it to my "mental library" as well - I want to really get to know it all. I want to be able to name any given song from my library when I hear it, and then hum along. Of course, this is an ideal I can never completely live up to, but I think I can say I've nailed it for most of my library. List B is for the songs for which I haven't made that effort (or haven't succeeded), but know I should. It's a lot longer than list A.

List C: Maybe get rid of this!
This is my Cut List. Like List B, it contains music which I haven't listened to very much, but with the music here, I strongly doubt if I'm ever going to. If something is on here, the chance that it will indeed end up in my computer's Recycle Bin is pretty high. Not that I necessarily think it's bad music - I just don't want it sitting in my library gathering dust.

List D: Start listening to this!
Here, I list music which isn't in my library yet, but which I should definitely check out sometime. Currently, it contains the awesome recommendations I've gotten in reply to this post: The Decemberists, Monster Truck, The Rival Sons and The Sheepdogs.

Anyway, there are exactly 5200 songs in my iTunes library right now. The number has fluctuated wildly between 5100 and 5300 over the past month; I've added a lot of new music, but thrown even more away - and List C is still longer than List D. With the "mental library" requirement as described above, there's only room for a finite amount of music; I think my collection will stabilise at 6000 to 7000 songs eventually.

edited 5th Nov '12 5:27:34 PM by MidnightRambler

Wouldn't it have been easier to make playlist in your iTunes library?

Nah. That would become cluttered up very quickly as there are often entire albums or artists on each of those lists... Also, it's not like I always know down to the song what I'm considering for deletion; sometimes I just think 'huh, I hardly listen to this artist and yet I have three of their albums, maybe I should throw some of it out.'

I purged even more. 3115 unplayed. 5917 total.

I listen to everything I download immediately if I haven't already heard it before, specifically because I dislike having tracks in my library I haven't heard. It's like filling the shelves in your (book) library with books you've never read. It's also a let down to root through unheard tracks and discover you don't actually like most of them, which is why I listen first and store later.

Obvious exceptions to this are fresh releases by artists I expect quality work from; I grabbed the Alchemist EP without a second thought.

edited 6th Nov '12 11:18:40 AM by Sarkastique

The Decemberists—excluding The King Is Dead, which is exceedingly bland—are all kinds of amazing, especially Castaways and Cutouts (which you may or may not enjoy greatly) and The Hazards of Love (which I get the feeling you will like a lot).

P.S. My favourite album of theirs is actually Her Majesty the Decemberists, but that's harder to get into for most people, and in terms of favourite song, it's a toss-up between "On the Bus Mall", "The Tain" (listen to it!), "The Bachelor and the Bride", "California One / Youth and Beauty Brigade", and the "Crane Wife" cycle as a whole. (The Hazards of Love is really one big song, but "The Rake Song" is especially memorable.)

edited 6th Nov '12 1:38:52 PM by JHM

Okay, thanks for the tips! I'm going for Picaresque first - the one mentioned in the QC newspost that inspired my essay. I've listened to some of the songs from it on YouTube ("The Infanta", "The Mariner's Revenge Song") and loved them.

On a side note, my respect for the Decemberists has grown a lot since I learned that their name was taken from an actual historical movement. Before, I assumed they'd just picked a month and slapped on '-ists', creating the classic "weird faux-artsy band name" that seems to be disturbingly popular among indie rock bands.