This is pretty much the definition of a First World Problem but here goes. I’m sure I’m not alone in having a ridiculously large music library (250k tracks and counting) and various streaming services with millions of extra tracks. And yet – when I’m sitting in front of my hifi setup, how do I go about choosing what to play? The tendency is to go with familiar playlists or albums, which is great, but I feel I’m missing out in discovering new or forgotten music. I seem to remember an interview with Joe Boyd where he said he chooses every 13th album from his shelves, which seems as good a method as any. Any suggestions?
Who’s Next?
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I’m currently trying to listen to albums I’ve hardly heard. Picking up so many cheap cds in charity shops can mean I don’t get round to listening to them. This week I’ve caught Sister Lovers by Big Star and Billy Joel’s Nylon Curtain. Next few days I need to give a second listen to Seven Psalms. Perhaps we should start a thread where we announce a few albums we will listen to this next week.
I can spend 20 minutes or more staring at the shelves asking “what shall I listen to?” and then fancying about not making a decision,whilst the increasing pile of new purchases remains at a count of one listen.
The random/blind choice may stop this – I did a series of blog posts where I did a random selection from the spreadsheet and re-discovered some partly forgotten sounds (although I did end up playing a Bucks Fizz album at one point).
The Randomizer will be wheeled out again
So you had trouble making your mind up?
Boom tish!
If I ever get through the piles of unplayed LPs/CDs of recently bought (last 18 months) I’ll do what I used to do. That was going to the shelves where they are stored and blindly reaching out left/right/up/down* and the first album touched gets played. After playing that album I may continue with the same artist or repeat *
First I need to get through the unplayed piles which never seem to go down.
Confess I’m a bit like Baron, finding my purchases end up waiting for the time to be played. This isn’t helped by having a simultaneous list of “to be reviewed”, which, c/o deadlines, means they end up taking precedence. Thankfully, by and large, the two coincide, as my editors let me choose, up to a point, the artists I want to hear/review, with, perhaps, 50% of the time, the PRs coming up trumps and delivering the goods I want to have/hear anyway.
It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it..
I’m currently engaged in an endless project to rip my entire CD collection and it’s a bit sobering how many of them are still in their plastic rappers. The majority of my collection was bought in the 90s and 2010s. It’s also quite an eye-opener seeing how much I paid for these CDs back then – £14.99 upwards etc.
I often swipe my finger up the screen on the Sonos app a few times and wait for it to stop. I then pick an album from the screen it stops on.
Press the random button
Yup. Presuming your own 250k tracks are digital, just shuffle them and resist the urge to press “next” unless you really have a good reason to do so.
A playlist for the things that ARE your favourites (no matter how big that is) means you can can shuffle the stuff that isn’t so you’re not falling back on familiar ground. When you want familiarity, just shuffle that playlist.
Keep the zillion of tracks you don’t actually own for brand new stuff to give it a try.
If it’s not digital, I have no idea
The trusty old Randomiser is helpful with choosing from a digitised music collection.
I have a randomised five track automatic playlist set up on my player. Whatever ends up as track three, that’s your album to play then and there. Unless one of the five is from a previously-unplayed album, in which case that album takes precedence. I’m of the opinion that if what this method throws up is something you really don’t want to play, then you need to think hard about whether it should be in your collection at all.
Currently, I’m not playing anything from my digitised collection, as I’m doing a fresh complete backup of everything, after discovering my previous backup disc was on it’s last legs.
Started the new backup on Friday morning and it probably won’t finish until mid- Monday morning.
It took until 10 this morning in the end. Four whole days.
I’m so glad it isn’t just me who has a pile of unplayed cds.
No unplayed/undigitised CDs chez moi, but there’s a largish box of ’70s-’80s cassettes, of which only about half have been digitised.
I also have several boxes of 2002-2003 minidisc radio show recordings that are in need of digitising. Most of those haven’t ever been played since I recorded them.
Every good boy deserves favour..sad to say that my CDs approach is to start at A and listen through to Z. I’m on my third run through and it just cuts the choice down. I am currently on K to M, so Kraftwerk, Leftfield, Natalie Merchant and Van Morrison amongst others. Takes about 3 years to do all of them so may be in search of another methodology after this one gets up to Neil Young and ZZ Top.
I find that if I put my music player onto random play, and just leave it, Last FM listens for me and I don’t have to. At the end of the month, I have the statistics on what I have ‘listened’ to, without having to put in the hours of actually doing the work myself. I’m looking to download an online book reader app to do the same thing for my Kindle collection.
I got into this position and the answer is … buy fewer CDs. Unless it’s someone I really like I listen on Spotify, which I think of as borrowing the album off a mate. If it’s a real gem I’ll buy it eventually. I’ve bought about 4 CDs this year and play them regularly. Old stuff I do the picking randomly from the shelf method. I also got rid of a load of stuff I never played.
**AW keels over**