I have 700 albums representing everything I’ve enjoyed since childhood as well as new stuff I’ve yet to explore. They’re all digital files. Going by what I actually play, I think I could easily cut this in half. How about you?
god, i dont even want to count. seriously. i used to carry 20 cd cases in my car (shouldve gotten those big disc holders). there are at least 4 rotating shelves, a few nightstand shelves, a few smaller desk shelves, and some strewn about around the cd player. then theres vinyl. boxes full of them, probably would reach the ceiling 3 times over if i stacked the vinyl on top of each other. and then my digital library is around 45k tracks saved. i wouldnt cut any of it
You’re set for life anyway
I don’t own any physical albums. And, after the hard disk failure, my music collection has been rebuilt as links in my notes app. It’s currently at over 4500 items, although a lot of them are individual tracks — particularly when it comes to old songs from my youth and before.
These are almost all already curated to have some meaning for me, and I do reach for odd corners of that pile pretty regularly, especially when discussing musics on the web or posting it here. Plus, importantly, this whole assemblage defines why my taste is what it’s like, so ain’t nobody gonna touch my trash!
Roon server says I’m at 7,548…It’s too much, way too much.
I went to music school at that perfect time just before streaming kicked off, and a few of us traded our collections around. I probably only go through 200 albums a year really listening these days. But honestly I’m not sure I could give it up. I love sitting with the music, bringing back the memories of that person and our time together.
Plus I’d miss the ridiculous experience of hitting shuffle on the whole thing, not knowing whether the next track will be Miles Davis, Thundercat, Meshuggah, or the Berliner Philharmoniker!
my playlist has legitimately gone from taylor swift to slayer. at a party 🤣
It sounds like a lot of that collection has history and meaning to it, very nice. Music school - I’m envious! Do you play still?
Still playing, but definitely not as much as I thought I would. Tough (and well paying) day job means I can afford music and instruments without much of a thought, so I play mostly for stress relief these days: holiday concerts, musical pits, occasional jam session.
I know musicians who did well for a while but just couldn’t make the anti-social hours that goes with it work for them. Best of luck with it.
Agreed, I’m getting too old to keep those hours.
And on the music collection, I say keep what makes you happy but don’t let it get overwhelming. I’m content to manage a couple servers in my basement, but it’s not for everyone. What ever, enjoy the music!
Oh fuck.
In my main cabinet, each drawer holds… Ahhhhhhh, I wanna say just under a hundred? That’s times six drawers. Of CDs. I have fifty here in my room, plus another hundred-ish boxed up.
Vinyl, I haven’t counted since I put them in storage when our last record player bit the dust. But it was around 140? Ish? There’s a dozen or so cassettes shoved in a closet of local bands I can’t replace, so they got digitized.
Digital purchases, I stopped counting once it got hard to scroll through. I was an early adopter of burning discs, so I wasn’t worried about shelling out for digital goods back then. I just made plenty of backups. But it had to be maybe 200 back when I got disabled and couldn’t spend on such things often.
I’ve only bought a double handful since then tbh. I’m fucking poor, so I only spend on small artists. I pirate the rest.
Soooo, that’s what? A little over a thousand? Right around there anyway.
If you count pirated stuff, and I don’t call that owning in the same way, there’s two terabytes currently on my main drive of just music, though it isn’t all albums. Maybe 20% of that is singles or a few tracks.
I actually end up listening to most of it over time. My phone and music players tend to only have maybe a few hundred gigabytes on them what with sd cards in the tb range being expensive for my budget, and only my newest devices support that big anyway.
But when I’m really in the mood, I crank up my old gaming PC and just hit play. Since musicbee is set up for it, alli have to do is remember where one the alphabet I was, and start from where I left off.
I reckon I end up cycling through it all maybe once a year to every other year or so.
Reduce it? Fuck that. I could get rid of stuff I pirated for other people, but we’re talking about maybe a dozen or so gigs. Why bother?
Some of the vinyl was my parents’, so I wouldn’t actually play them at this point. Which means I could get rid of the stuff I have in digital format. But, again, fuck that. Vinyl is much cooler to handle. I like having them, despite not needing them. Besides, only a few were worth any money back when I stored them.
Sounds like you’ve got something for every occasion there! I don’t know how you managed to listen to most of the 2TB collection - that’s impressive! I have a total of 256GB of music - mostly FLAC - and I still haven’t listened to most of it yet.
There’s a dozen or so cassettes shoved in a closet of local bands I can’t replace, so they got digitized.
Ah, this reminds me of the cassettes I had of a local band I absolutely loved. I let them go when I had other stuff going on in life and I regret it so much to this day. I must try and track those guys down and see if they still have copies.
I’m a music fiend. If there’s nothing preventing it, I would have music going 24/7. There’s times I do, though not as much as I used to.
To answer the original question, I have about 1500 CDs, 200 records. If required, maybe I could whittle it down to 250. It would be painful though.
And actually that doesn’t take into account a lot of my own local music collection. A lot of digital stuff, a mail bin full of CDs and another full of cassettes.
I love local music and I love hearing stuff from short lived bands. So I’d love to hear anything you could share as far as names with locations.
The local band I’m thinking of was called Sprog, from Galway, Ireland. They were so, so good. I had two of their cassettes: Scratch ‘n’ Stiff, and Reg Holdsworth, but they seem to be unobtanium now https://www.irishrock.org/irodb/bands/motivesprog.html
a) the artwork on those is great. I’d love to hear them one day
- that site is fantastic! can’t wait to lose time to it!
I’ve got about 650 or so, also all digital MP3 files, so congrats OP 👍
I enjoy probably only around a quarter of them, but I’ve got terabytes of storage, so I ain’t about to trim out the ones I don’t necessarily enjoy.
650 sounds manageable. For some reason, when I had more than this I found it a bit frustrating choosing what to play. Enjoy!
As I said elsewhere, my physical collection is probably around 2000 albums in all. In the last 6 months, I’ve worked on digitizing. organizing, and tagging it all. I have it on a Navidrome server and use Symfonium on mobile.
Yes, a large collection can be overwhelming, but now I can just have my entire collection shuffled or pick from a list of random albums. When I go the album route (most times), I make an effort to select something that I haven’t listened to a thousand times.
I’m currently at 1350, give or take. I could probably stand reducing it to an even thousand, but the collection keeps growing due to me continually exploring new music.
Nearly double what I have. How many would you say you listen to regularly (or semi-regularly)? I’m noticing I get so much enjoyment out of a certain 10-20 albums that I’m finding it hard to justify the entire collection.
It varies with mood and season. I do have periods when I recycle a couple of albums over and over again, but most days I tend to put the whole collection on shuffle and do deep dives into certain artists or genres along the way.
I have a bit less than you and except for the whole collection shuffle I do the same.
Some albuns i know i won’t listen as often but i like it to be there in the future.I’m a seasonal listener too. I turn to very different stuff in winter than in summer, etc.
I have a lot of stuff I haven’t listened to yet, so shuffle doesn’t suit me so much at the moment. But I might move a lot of those out and introduce them more gradually next time instead.
