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Poll

Do you keep/add all the tracks to your music library from the albums you like despite not liking all of them?

Mostly yes
Mostly no
Depends
Other option
Topic: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians? (Read 10064 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #25
I don't get "mostly yes", I never delete a song from an album because I don't like it. I don't even delete duplicate songs because they are on the studioalbum and on the best of or some sampler. It would incomplete otherwise.

Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #26
I voted "mostly yes" because there was no "yes" option. I'd hazard a guess that all those saying "mostly yes" also never delete an album track; which is me. So, yeah, the poll needed to have a "yes" and "no" option.

Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #27
No option for me, where I actually like whole albums, and don't have this "not liking some of the tracks" problem. But then, I probably listen to more shuffled randomly picked crap on Spotify than I do spending time listening to my local collection. (Regularly wishing Spotify would queue whole albums sometimes.)

Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #28
I have one media library/playlist, e.g. a directory on my HDD, which is neatly organized by genre -> musician -> album -> tracks. I can listen to it from any point and I will enjoy everything without the need to skip tracks which I could have mindlessly added because "it's a work of art" - wut? Even the greatest painters and composers loved some of their works and didn't like others. We, on the other hand, "must love and listen to everything" - wut? Really? Why?

Interesting that you start sorting by genre.  Most of the music I listen to could fall under any number of genres.  While I do include genre tags in my music files, I think it's a waste of time to do so most of the time.

Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #29
Interesting that you start sorting by genre.  Most of the music I listen to could fall under any number of genres.  While I do include genre tags in my music files, I think it's a waste of time to do so most of the time.
I have a separate section for classical music ... or rather, composer-oriented. Pop/rock and derivatives is focused on who plays the stuff: Jimi Hendrix covering Bob Dylan on a Jimi Hendrix release. But if I want a recording of Mahler's sixth, it is a "Mahler" release.

And surely I don't delete the second movement from ensemble X just because because I think ensemble Y did that part better.

 

Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #30
I don't delete tracks from releases I own by artists I follow, ever, but very rarely it can happen I just like a single song from an album of an artist I generally don't appreciate, in that case I just get the track, but more often than not I end up getting rid of that too.
WavPack 5.6.0 -b384hx6cmv / qaac64 2.80 -V 100

Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #31
I have a reasonably large music library. It's all entire albums, almost 6000 of them encompassing 67k songs. I don't even delete albums I actively dislike, so I certainly keep songs by artists I like, even if they aren't my favorites. Why?

  • Storage is cheap. Encoded at V0 (and about 2% at V2) that only takes up 568GB including large artwork. When you can pick up a 10TB HDD for $150, that's nothing.
  • I often discover new things in music I haven't listened to recently. Occasionally this means a song that was kind of meh to me becomes one I really like, or maybe it just means that I wasn't paying good enough attention when I listened to a song the first time (I listen to music while I work so this does happen if I'm super focused).
  • I'm not the only one who listens from my library. Friends/Family members may have different tastes than I do.
  • I obsessively tag who and what is in my library, and it's convenient when I discover a new artist to find where they've guested on other songs in my library without my being aware of it. This does sometimes lead to reappraising certain songs.
  • When I read an article/interview and they mention (for example) "being inspired by song X by band Y" I like to be able to cue that song up so I know what they're talking about, even if that song sucks.
  • I try and rate every song I listen to, so if I only want to hear the hits, I can easily cue up a 5* playlist
  • I don't listen on random
For the record, when adding songs to the iPod for my car I remove anything I rated 2* or lower, so I do filter my library at times.

Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #32
There are also songs which you may not like on first listen, but might grow on you later, or your taste in music may change over time.
True. I have grown to love songs and even entire albums that did nothing for me at first, but after revisiting them later, they eventually clicked. It would have been a mistake to delete them.

Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #33
Over the last couple years, I've been trying to clean up my music collection.  I was at about 17,500+ tracks.  I was thinking I have stuff I rarely listen to, or maybe not at all.  Stuff I'm not sure about, I've moved it to a different folder, out of my main collection.  Generally, if I like a few tracks on the album, I'll keep the whole album.  Eventually the other tracks might grow on me. I've had quite a few albums where maybe the radio single was good, but the rest of the album, not so much.  So I'll delete the album and keep the one track I do like.  There's also been times I've enjoyed several albums from an artist, so I blindly collect the others, maybe to realize I don't enjoy them.

As far as storage space, that hasn't been an issue.  For me, the larger my collection becomes, the more tedious it can be to manage, such as converting from lossless to mp3 or m4a for my car stereo, and modifying tags as necessary.   When listening to music in the car, it's a pain to keep scrolling through stuff I'm not listening to.  My current vehicle's radio has a 9999 track limit, so I've really had to think about what I'm not listening to lately, or at all.

Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #34
Over the last couple years, I've been trying to clean up my music collection.  I was at about 17,500+ tracks.  I was thinking I have stuff I rarely listen to, or maybe not at all.  Stuff I'm not sure about, I've moved it to a different folder, out of my main collection.  Generally, if I like a few tracks on the album, I'll keep the whole album.  Eventually the other tracks might grow on me. I've had quite a few albums where maybe the radio single was good, but the rest of the album, not so much.  So I'll delete the album and keep the one track I do like.  There's also been times I've enjoyed several albums from an artist, so I blindly collect the others, maybe to realize I don't enjoy them.

As far as storage space, that hasn't been an issue.  For me, the larger my collection becomes, the more tedious it can be to manage, such as converting from lossless to mp3 or m4a for my car stereo, and modifying tags as necessary.   When listening to music in the car, it's a pain to keep scrolling through stuff I'm not listening to.  My current vehicle's radio has a 9999 track limit, so I've really had to think about what I'm not listening to lately, or at all.

Do you really have the time to listen to all this amount of music?  ;)

Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #35
Over the last couple years, I've been trying to clean up my music collection.  I was at about 17,500+ tracks.  I was thinking I have stuff I rarely listen to, or maybe not at all.  Stuff I'm not sure about, I've moved it to a different folder, out of my main collection.  Generally, if I like a few tracks on the album, I'll keep the whole album.  Eventually the other tracks might grow on me. I've had quite a few albums where maybe the radio single was good, but the rest of the album, not so much.  So I'll delete the album and keep the one track I do like.  There's also been times I've enjoyed several albums from an artist, so I blindly collect the others, maybe to realize I don't enjoy them.

As far as storage space, that hasn't been an issue.  For me, the larger my collection becomes, the more tedious it can be to manage, such as converting from lossless to mp3 or m4a for my car stereo, and modifying tags as necessary.   When listening to music in the car, it's a pain to keep scrolling through stuff I'm not listening to.  My current vehicle's radio has a 9999 track limit, so I've really had to think about what I'm not listening to lately, or at all.

Do you really have the time to listen to all this amount of music?  ;)

I try to find the time. 

Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #36
Do you really have the time to listen to all this amount of music?  ;)

But that's not the point, you don't continuously try to listen to all of your music at the same time. I like everything I have, I can listen to what I own when I want, it's not like it's costing me money to keep everything so I still don't really understand the reasoning behind deleting music just because you don't like it or listen to it at the time you chose to delete it but that's up to you. I have my entire 25k+ library available on my phone as well.

Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #37
In short... I tend to agree with the OP because as ones collection grows it becomes more important to weed out the junk from the true gems as to not waste ones time and get maximum enjoyment for ones time spent (this becomes more-and-more true the older a person gets ;) (one starts to make a more efficient use of ones time which when one is younger this tends not to be as much of a priority etc)). because it's not often a random artists whole album will be largely good etc. even artists that stand out from the pack you will usually have at least some songs that are not up to a certain standard and it's easy to get rid of them etc.

to comment further...

I have been cutting back on that stuff lately, especially for music for which I know my collection won't grow since I pretty much stopped listening to that genre in general by the early 2000's (the 1990's was the peak of it) it pretty much died. so a while ago now... I went through all of the FLAC's for those albums and cleaned out the junk from the stuff I actually still like which freed up plenty of storage space and as a bonus, it helps so that when I listen to those music files the average quality of the songs is much higher now vs before when I would put the entire albums there etc.

but even putting that specific genre stuff from above aside... when it comes to other music that my collection is growing a bit from time-to-time, if it's a artist where I like a good amount of their music, ill typically just keep the full FLAC albums intact even though when converting to lossy files for example, ill usually tweak things so that I am only converting the higher quality songs that stand out to be (or thereabouts) for listening on portable device. this helps trim-the-fat and keep the average song quality higher across the board.

hell, come to think of it... while I got one central FLAC folder on my HDD (pretty much) (and obviously a backup of that on another hard drive), I might consider making another FLAC folder soon that keeps the higher quality stuff only as this way it will be easier in the future to convert from those should I need to otherwise ill have to waste more time sorting through each album individually again and if I ever do want a full album for whatever reason in the future, ill still have that option to by keeping the original FLAC folder untouched.

but like the OP also said... it does seem to be more on the rarer side in general where a whole album (or even nearly a whole album) is worth keeping intact since there is almost always a good percentage of the songs that are nothing special that are worth going out of your way to listen to.

off the top of my head, putting aside the small amount where pretty much the whole album is solid enough... I think even the better artists in general still have a fair amount of songs I could easily go without. so even these kinds of albums, off the top of my head, I can probably dump half of the songs or so on each album, or at least 1/4th to 1/3rd of them.

OP said, "For me it's just wasteful and not logical - oftentimes I like a single track out of the musicians' entire discography - why would I store all the albums and tracks if I don't enjoy them in the slightest? Makes absolutely zero sense to me." ; I completely agree!

OP said, "Do you really have the time to listen to all this amount of music?" ; that was directed at another user, but I got to agree with you here as 17,500 tracks would be quite time consuming. just doing some simple math, 17,500 tracks at lets say 15 tracks a album that would be roughly equivalent to 1,166 albums, which is A LOT. hell, I doubt there would be anywhere near that amount of music worth going out of my way to listen to. but I think some people almost become obsessed with collecting a bunch of crap they will rarely or never use which comes back to my general point of getting rid of the crap that's nothing special for the listener (or thereabouts) as once a person does that, I would assume those 17,500 tracks would drop quite a bit (probably less than half of that figure at the minimum). or to put it another way.... take any random person and out of all music they are likely to hear in their lifetime, how much of it is good enough for them to go out of their way to listen to here and there? ; I would assume a small percentage (and as a bonus this helps increase the quality of the stuff they do keep which makes better use of ones time in the long term).


@JabbaThePrawn

Quote
There are also songs which you may not like on first listen, but might grow on you later, or your taste in music may change over time.

I seen the OP say in a reply to you here that it's rarely happened for him. I might mostly agree with him, but... I do think what you said can happen to for at least a fair amount of people.

even for myself... I remember back in the day when I was in my teens etc, basically the 1990's, that I never thought I would like any other music than 'gangster rap' type of music but it finally happened when I was basically in my mid-20's or so (about 2005 or so) and now the 'gangster rap' stuff I use to like, while I still do like some of it, a good portion of it has dropped off (which is how I freed up quite a bit of storage space in regards to my FLAC collection) as I dumped a large chunk of it and only kept the songs I still like. so in this regard I am pretty much like the OP in that usually my like of a song declines with time and does not increase (but this probably is not always the case). but only time will tell how I feel about music outside of rap since I know I won't outgrow that as a whole and, at least so far, while some of it I liked when I started getting into other music has declined some, I noticed the tracks that stood out for me back then pretty much still do now except now I tend to see that most of it is not really worth going out of my way to listen to now and I just keep the more higher priority songs, or at least close to this standard, and then pretty much dump the rest.

but with that said... I do think there will be some music I liked years ago and still do and probably won't outgrow it even though it's possible some of it I might eventually as I am in my early 40's now and it will be interesting to see if/how my taste in music changes over the next 10-20-30 years. still, I think there are some songs I would be surprised if I outgrow like some classical music or other types of rock songs etc as some music tends to be a bit more timeless and stands the test of time.

p.s. hell, I think in general I am more into movies than music on an average even though some music can be great. but even in terms of movies, I have seen 2,350+ total movies but only about 6.5% (or 8.5% if I count movies just shy of favorite movie status)) stand out (i.e. 154 movies currently) and only about 20% tops is worth re-watching here and there. I typically re-watch my favorite movies (and thereabouts) AT LEAST once every few years or so.

@Markuza97

Quote
My philosophy was "I have "infinite" space, why not keep the whole album"
I had ~7000 songs. After deleting music that I never listen to I have ~2000.
Playing on shuffle used to be "good, skip, skip, skip, skip, good".
After cleaning up I no longer have this problem.

Exactly ;)

just looking at myself... putting aside a certain portion of my music that I already tuned pretty well (which is about 629 tracks(I might be able to tune that a bit further though)), at the moment I got somewhere in the ball park of 2,750 tracks of which I am sure I can shave that down quite a bit. to guesstimate after tuning... ill probably have more than 1,000, but who knows beyond that point.

@.halverhahn

Quote
Every track of a Album, even on a compilation CD, is part of the whole picture.

If you rip it apart, it's like just watching the "best of/key scenes" of a movie.

No offense, but I definitely disagree here as while I don't just skip to random parts in a movie(when I watch a movie I like I always watch it from start to finish), I don't see that being the same as just listening to certain tracks on a album. those two examples can't be compared if you ask me since watching a movie from start to finish is much more important than listening to a album from start to finish.

because with a movie, it flows better (like the collective thing makes the good scenes better etc vs just skipping to a particular scene that may stand out) unlike a typical album where your much more likely to have a bunch of 'filler' just to get to the tracks that stand out. it's not like one needs to listen to the average/forgettable songs in order to further appreciate the good songs on a  typical album.

I think you get the gist of what I am saying ;)

Quote
There are plenty track rating plugins out there, e.g.  5 stars for your favorite, 1 star for the bad ones.
You can achieve your goal just by playing the 4-5 Star tracks. Or if you're brave, start listening to the 1-2 star tracks

Even here I would say is basically pointless (with the 1-2 star stuff) as I can use a movie type analogy here. I have watched a lot of movies (2,350+) and only about 20% (tops) is worth re-watching from time-to-time (only about 6.5% or 8.5% of all movies I have seen stand out from the pack to be among my favorite movies).

so with that in mind... it would not make any sense to listen to songs you gave a 1 or 2 star simply because if one is honest with the rating system (like say 2.5/5 star would be average and then things scale up and down from there), a 1-2 star would basically mean they are crap/not worth going out of ones way to listen to here and there.

like in terms of movies... I use the 1 through 10 rating scale (which is same as 5 star scale with half-stars) for example and 5/10 is middle-of-the-road/average. but in simple terms... any movie I score a 5/10 or less = Thumbs Down (i.e. not worth re-watching). anything I score a 6/10 or higher = Thumbs Up (worth re-watching). with that said, the 7/10 score is where my favorite movies begin. I use the 6-6.5/10 rating, which is the only special rating I got outside of the standard 1 through 10, which is reserved for movies just shy of favorite movie status.

that should get the gist of things across ;)
For music I suggest (using Foobar2000)... MP3 (LAME) @ V5 (130kbps). NOTE: using on AGPTEK-U3 as of Mar 18th 2021. I use 'fatsort' (on Linux) so MP3's are listed in proper order on AGPTEK-U3.


Re: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

Reply #39
Why do you do that?
Well, in my case, first of all it's that I just don't have an interest in "one-hit-wonder" sort of dealios. If a band/artist has one or a relatively small number of hits, I will check out the rest of their discography, and if I end up liking it, I will add them to my collection. This, for example, is how I discovered the stunningly unique and wonderful music of Shivaree, who were/are known for pretty much nothing other than Goodnight Moon. And I still can't get over how sad that makes me.

Second, my personal listening habits don't involve creating a mixed playlist featuring my favourite artists (a "mixtape", if you will) and then listening to that. When I listen to music, it's because I felt like "receiving" a certain mood or feeling or je-ne-sais-quoi which a certain band's/artist's album (or discography in general) provides.