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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
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Topic: Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians? (Read 12210 times) previous topic - next topic
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Why do lots of people keep all the albums & tracks of their favorite musicians?

A long time ago I noticed that many people keep all the albums and all the tracks of their favorite musicians and bands. It makes no sense to me because I often love to listen to my collection of music (~7K tracks) by shuffle and the least I want to do is to listen to tracks which I don't like. Out of all the albums I've collected so far, I have less than two dozens where I like all the tracks.

So, why do people do that? Why do you do that?

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

Reply #1 –
Quote from: birdie on
I often love to listen to my collection of music (~7K tracks) by shuffle and the least I want to do is to listen to tracks which I don't like.
That's the concept of "playlist".

I hardly ever listen to a shuffle of tracks. Usually, I put on an album (and not so often a compilation).
If I am in "track" mode, I usually just start an album there, and switch to another if I tire of the next tracks. I can hardly remember having foobar2000 set to do ReplayGain normalization by track other than for testing purposes. (That said, it falls back to track gain on various artists compilations, as I just deleted the album gain and album peak tags from those.)

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

Reply #2 –

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

Reply #3 –
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.

Plus, when I get a new disc, I rip it to the hard drive straight away. I can't remember the last time I actually played an album from the physical media.

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

Reply #4 –
Quote from: JabbaThePrawn on
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.

Plus, when I get a new disc, I rip it to the hard drive straight away. I can't remember the last time I actually played an album from the physical media.

It's usually vice versa for me: I regularly delete the old tracks which I liked but I've grown out of them. The opposite, when I started to like something after returning to it later, has happened less than five times during my entire life.

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

Reply #6 –
Quote from: birdie on
It's like coming to a restaurant and respecting and liking everything that the chief cook has made. No, not for me. I have my own taste and no one can dictate theirs.

It's like coming to a restaurant and picking apart the meal, refusing to eat/try anything except the french fries. "I like what I like and also I want my kobe beef well done."

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

Reply #7 –
Which of course is the customer's right - even though it qualifies as "bad taste galore"  :o

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

Reply #8 –
Tracks on an album sometimes segue into one another, or the cue points are not precise. I would need to open every album in an audio editor to check and split as best as possible.

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

Reply #9 –
I find myself listening to tracks that I used to not like very often and I dislike the idea of shuffle, especially shuffle within an album, I find it cheap and tacky.
If I want to play random stuff, I create a narrower selection of tracks that I want to play from and then play that playlist in shuffle mode.
Also, alot of my friends that may borrow my phone to listen something in the beach or the pool may enjoy some tracks from my collection that I don't, same when I'm driving in the car.

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

Reply #10 –
I keep albums as is.  I mostly have soundtracks from movies and games and keeping those intact makes for more completeness and something I can keep running.

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

Reply #11 –
I buy CDs, CDs of albums, or I buy and download albums. I tend to listen to complete albums. Some artists I just like one or two tracks but I'll buy the album that they're on. Sometimes I listen to my entire (25k+) library on shuffle....which makes for some interesting listening :)

Personally I don't understand why it bothers you? Everyone is different, why worry about why people want to listen to albums and just get on with enjoying the music how YOU want to.

You already said "I have my own taste and no one can dictate theirs." so why not accept that in others?

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

Reply #12 –
That's my way listen to whole discographies and most of the tracks of my music library that I never listen to, so  when I am at work and listen to how  F2K shuffle playlists like that - https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=119323.msg983869#msg983869

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

Reply #13 –
I noticed the same thing exactly two days ago when I started to rebuild my whole library.
(Searching for better masters, sources...)
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.
gold plated toslink fan

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

Reply #14 –
IMHO
I keep all tracks. No exception- period.
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.

Quote from: birdie on
I often love to listen to my collection of music (~7K tracks) by shuffle and the least I want to do is to listen to tracks which I don't like.

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 ;)


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

Reply #15 –
I dunno, I just unironically listen to whole albums sometimes. Including the entire Beatles discography. Yes, I even listen to Revolution No. 9. Number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine....
 

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

Reply #16 –
What is exceptionally amusing is that people defend full albums as "complete" works of art even though musicians often have their own most and least favourite tracks and most of them are OK with people not liking everything.

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.

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

Reply #17 –
Quote from: birdie on
defend full albums as "complete" works of art even though musicians often have their own most and least favourite tracks

I just don't see any contradiction to it. I also often find better or worse parts of a single track.

If I don't want the full album, I don't buy the full album. You could buy single tracks or listen to single tracks over your preferred streaming service.

(Of course I understand a different attitude if one py-r8s an image+cue from [unmentionable source] just to get a single track, but ...)

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

Reply #18 –
Quote from: Porcus on
Quote from: birdie on
defend full albums as "complete" works of art even though musicians often have their own most and least favourite tracks

I just don't see any contradiction to it. I also often find better or worse parts of a single track.

If I don't want the full album, I don't buy the full album. You could buy single tracks or listen to single tracks over your preferred streaming service.

(Of course I understand a different attitude if one py-r8s an image+cue from [unmentionable source] just to get a single track, but ...)

The question is about storing the entire albums regardless of whether you like them fully or not. E.g. I may share my entire playlist with anyone because I like/love all the tracks in it, period. How do people even remember which tracks they really like or not?

Again, there's just too much music in this world to store everything in your music collection at the chance that you'll like something new later. Do people even have time relisten thousands of hours of music? I settle down on what I like after five listening rounds at most. It's vanishingly rare that I'll like something after listening to it for more than five times.

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

Reply #19 –
I collect music, and I'm agnostic when it comes to tracks versus albums since to me, it's all just tracks. Not to say I don't enjoy a 'concept' album, but truthfully there are so few it's really not a factor to me. What are factors are comparison, contrast and relativity; listening to every track on an album, even the ones I don't care for, has the psychological effective of make the ones I do like seem better, by contrast and comparison. Often, the song will compare favorably or not from the last song. Also, every song is related, that is it occupies a relative position to other songs on the album, when you eliminate the bottom songs you flatten both the album and the overall depth of your collection in terms of diversity, which might encourage taking the songs you like for granted and not realizing how much you like them because you have nothing to compare them to. Nothing stands alone.

As well, albums are easy to tag and organize, tracks, not so much. Also, it makes a collection less open, since there may be songs I don't like and eliminate, that others do like, and would miss.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  ;~)

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

Reply #20 –
I have almost my entire music collection of about 18,000 songs on a few different computers and on my 160GB iPod classic which "lives" in my car.   ...I think about the only thing missing is some outdated political comedy CDs.

Most of my collection is from CDs and most of my downloads have been full-albums too.  

Of course, I can select by genre or artist (or album) plus I've made several "smart" playlists.   Then I have playlists by decade (which exclude "special" genres like Christmas) and I have an "early 60's" playlist, etc.   (I always try to tag the songs with their original release year.)

For the past several years I've mostly listened to a smart playlist that I call "Rock and Popular" and I have the iPod set to shuffle.    It probably contains 75% of my collection, so mostly it excludes Christmas & Classical and stuff that I don't want to hear everyday.  And for the last couple of years I haven't listened to much music at home (I can't listen at work) and at home I have a shelf-full of concert DVDs and I'm more likely to play one of those if I'm in the mood for music.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I spent a few evenings going through everything artist-by-artist and I rated songs I "like" with 5-stars.  I've never used ratings before.    Then I made "Doug's Playlist" with all of those songs.  It's almost 4000 songs (about 20% of my library).     ...Now that I've started listening to my "favorites" I've decided that I don't really like some of them and I'm removing them from that playlist.  :D  :D

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

Reply #21 –
Quote from: birdie on
The question is about storing the entire albums regardless of whether you like them fully or not. E.g. I may share my entire playlist with anyone because I like/love all the tracks in it, period.
Just to be sure: you are aware of the distinction between "storage", "media library" and "playlist"?  And you are aware you can easily have more than one "playlist"?

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

Reply #22 –
Quote from: Porcus on
Quote from: birdie on
The question is about storing the entire albums regardless of whether you like them fully or not. E.g. I may share my entire playlist with anyone because I like/love all the tracks in it, period.
Just to be sure: you are aware of the distinction between "storage", "media library" and "playlist"?  And you are aware you can easily have more than one "playlist"?

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?

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

Reply #23 –
Quote from: birdie on
We, on the other hand, "must love and listen to everything" - wut? Really? Why?
Why not? "We" are not a homogeneous entity and therefore have different likes and dislikes....

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

Reply #24 –
Quote from: birdie on
I have one media library/playlist, e.g. a directory on my HDD
For your information, some of us use media players to set up multiple playlists. If you refuse, that is your choice - just don't assume that the rest of us have to delete files in order to remove them from a playlist.

Quote from: birdie on
"must love and listen to everything" - wut? Really? Why?
Straw man and fake quote - wut? Really? Why?
I assume the answer is that you depend upon it.