How familiar are you with your own music collection?

As may be indicated by my new and growing trade list, I am re-evaluating a ton of my CDs to see what I want to get rid of.

I used to get a couple of albums (yes vinyl) a month or so, and I would get totally immersed in them, reading the inserts and lyrics and junk. This still held true when CDs came out, and for a while after that. But at some point through used CD shops and trading and eBay, I began to collect music at a much faster rate. Yeah, this seems "better", but I ended up owning a ton of CDs which I never really evaluated. I guess it has somewhat to do with being a grown up and having limited listening time. I don't really listen at home a lot, cause my wife is not into most of the stuff I like. Also, I have always had a tape player in my car, so I have to make a tape before I can listen in the car.

I would say I am VERY familiar with probably only 25% of my collection. Somewhat familiar (listened to at least a handful of times and know I like) with maybe another 50%, and probably totally unfamiliar (listened to from zero to maybe two times) with the remaining 1/4 of the music I own. That's a rough estimate...and a sad statement IMO.

How about you?

ack

I am similar to you. I am VERY familiar with 35% or so. I own a lot of CDs I have heard a few times and like. I'd say another 35% - 50% are like this. The rest is stuff I have only heard a handful of times which would be (gotta do the math) 30% or less. I actually have boxes of CDs I have yet to review because I listened once and they didn't bowl me over, or they fall outside of my area of expertise, or something like that.

While my collection has grown in leaps and bounds in the last few years, I periodically go through and thin things out. Once I hit the 1,000 mark, I needed to really evaluate what I purchase and what I listen to. I'm pretty good at circulating through what I have and getting rid of the stuff I don't listen to anymore. There has only been a handful of times I've regretted what I traded/sold off or had to re-purchase.

If I had to put a percentage to it, I'd say I'm familiar with 75%-85% of my music. That is to say, if someone came in and randomly started playing something from my collection, I could identify it. I have a good memory for that sort of thing.
While I might seem like a piker in reference to some of the other members of this board, amongst my buddies at home, I'm a regular Eddie Trunk.

I'm probably very familiar with about 65-70% of my collection. I'm moderately familiar with 25-30%, and only about 5% of it that I haven't visited enough.

Being relatively young on this board (no offence meant or anything), I have a "small" CD collection - around 100 or so. I'd say I'm pretty familiar with most of what's there as I tend to slow down my CD buying when I realise I've got too much new stuff to listen to at once.

I have the luxury of being able to listen to music as loud as I want at work all day long, I usually bring 5-7 cd's a day & listen to them all before the day is done, I have about 200 I keep in regular rotation but I have listened to them all at least 5 or 6 times, I can honestly say I dont have any right now that I would part with.

I'm in nearly the same boat, HAMER, and have about the same # of CDs. Anything much more than 200 requires a thinning out...

I try to keep the majority of mine in regular rotation.If I feel like theres something that I'm not familar enough with I go through and try to give it a few listens.There are only a handful that I dont listen to much.but at around 450 cds its much easier than alot of you with larger collections.

I'm with ult and AchrisK. I simply own too many CD's, and only listen to 1 or maybe 2 a day.... I own nearly 3000 Cd's, you do the math on how long it would take me to listen to my entire collection. Then I add anothe 10-20 new titles each month. It is starting to seem pretty stupid, but I just love that I have all these memories on silver disc. Becasue that is what it is to me.

Back in my teens I was VERY familiar with all of my CD's. I'd say that up to the 100 albums owned mark, I could easily recite 90% of al the lyrics on all my music. Today I'd be lucky if i could even remember half of the Cd's I used to own back then!! LOL

I think I have at least 100 unopened discs today, and maybe 500 that I've yet to lsten to....

In some (many?) ways I miss the old days.

ack

AchrisK wrote:

In some (many?) ways I miss the old days.

ack

Amen to that!

Its the same with me, have also to many cds and lps to realy be familiar with the record. I remember the covers most of the time and if i am lucky a couple of songs on each album. Their must be around 1000 albums i know very well but my collection is very big.

kmorg wrote:

I think I have at least 100 unopened discs today, and maybe 500 that I've yet to lsten to....

500 original CDs without even 1 spin?!?

I am familiar with at least 90% of my CDs. I have around 6,000. I don't know the handful of rap CDs I have that well, and I have some albums picked up from the used bin that I never cared much for, but generally everything gets listened to consistently.

That sounds crazy, of course, considering how many CDs I own. But over the past few years with these new MP3/WMA compatible car stereos, I have about 500 data CDRs in my truck. That means one CDR has upwards of 15 albums on it. I listen to music at home, at work, and while driving. Music is constantly going. Plus, I have about 70GB of music ripped from my CDs to my PC. Here at work I have 36.3GB of music on my PC! I don't have a wife or kids, so music is still my woman, and I love her dearly.

I'm no good with lyrics, though. Never really have been. I don't pay enough attention to them. The music is what I remember. Back when I first got into music, I absorbed the lyrics like crazy. But back then I had very few CDs. I have an old notebook from 1993 with my CD List written down in it. I owned 64 CDs then. Haha. Kind of hard not to learn the lyrics when you listen to the same CDs day in and day out.

Yeah, I have somewhere around 770 metal CDs, not including a bunch of CDRs of demos and my other genre CDs, plus tons of cassettes.

I lost track of lyrics a long time ago. I think getting into death metal also had something to do with that.

ack

I don't consider that I really "own" a CD until I've listened to it enough to process which songs I really like or don't like most. I then burn my favorites unto theme compilations (for example I always make a compilation of my fave Euro-powermetal songs every spring out of that winter's new collection). I don't listen to the compilations all that much, but they are sort of a reference point for keeping me in touch with the best of my collection.
In the last two years I just went hog wild buying proto-hard rock from the late Psych era, and I am still working on processing all that. It's hard because a lot of it sounds alike. Sometimes it feels like work, and you guys are right, in some ways the old days were better when I could just groove on a few faves, and not worry about "collecting". But on the other hand I would have missed out on a lot of great music.
I hope to process most of the recent purchases this summer, so then I can go back to just sitting back and listening for pleasure without making a job out of collecting.

I am pretty familiar with probably liike 90% of my collection....

Shiney wrote:

I am pretty familiar with probably liike 90% of my collection....

About what size is your collection?

ack

Just for the record, I've got just over 650 discs.

I am very familiar with about 2% of my collection. Most I listen
to once, and never again. I have about 800 I have not heard yet,
and I listen to about 5-8 cds a day. It seemingly never ends, but
I am going to be selling about 7000 of them starting this fall.

Dang Saxy, how many do you have? What does 2% mean in numbers?

ack

I guess 2% would be about 150. The collection is about
8500. If I can get it down to 1000, I will once again be able to
get familiar with some of them, which I am actually looking forward to
- haha.

SAXON1500 wrote:

I am very familiar with about 2% of my collection. Most I listen to once, and never again. I have about 800 I have not heard yet,and I listen to about 5-8 cds a day.

Same as that, some CDs I've bought I'll never listen out of dislike.

Quote :

I am going to be selling about 7000 of them starting this fall.

Good man J. thanks for the heads up, I'll start saving,

You live in a castle, L., with your very own pet leprechaun. You don't need to save.

I have around 1200



Saxon...when you begin to purge your collection..I expect a heads up....