Can someone explain large personal music libraries to me?

[bhanson]

I like listening to music, but I don't understand collecting huge libraries of music for personal devices. There are several things I'm not understanding:

1. How you can accumulate 100GB+ of music
a. That's literally over a month of music. With heavy use you can still go multiple months without listening to the same song twice.
b. How people can afford this. 100GB of music is conservatively 15,000+ songs. Lets assume these are all purchased as albums and each album (15 songs) costs $10. $10,000 seems like a lot for one normal person to spend on music.

2. Why is having a personal music collection vastly superior to listening to the radio, or other streaming services like Pandora? The latter is free and has sufficient variety.

Even if the cost of music was 1/10th of that, I fail to see how it is any better than simply using on-demand radio. :whiste:

Explain.

 

[mfenn]

Piracy

 

[Heller]

I have 16gb's of music. Its great especially in the car. I havent listen to my radio once in the 2 years i've owned my car, ipod is constantly hooked up. I want to be able to listen to anything/anytime i want. The ipod does that.

as for 1000's of GB's in music well some people like to collect, same reason people have 1000's of gigs of movies, they like to have them.

 

[skace]

I have 200 and something GB of music. But it's mainly because I store everything twice, once compressed and once uncompressed. This massively inflates the disk space. My compressed music makes up roughly 30GB I think. It was expensive but I do it because I like ultimately having control of what I listen to and when I listen to it. I also like experimenting into new musical territory that the radio and other devices won't go.

I will use internet radio stations to sometimes find something new, and then I will go branch out from there. They like 1 song from this guy, I'll buy the whole album, then I'll buy his closest 'competitor's album. And explore the genre that way.

 

[PottedMeat]

Piracy

yeah. when you can unzip a single file containing a band's discography, it adds up. someone isn't just going to delete the ~99% of songs they don't listen to.

plus 100gb/15000 = ~6MB/file probably low quality

 

[dighn]

Even if the cost of music was 1/10th of that, I fail to see how it is any better than simply using on-demand radio. :whiste:

Explain.

Better sound quality, availability (i.e. no reliance on network etc) and choice.

 

[Deeko]

It can be done. My entire music collection is legal, and if I actually synced it all to my Zune, its well over 100GB. Granted that includes a lot of crap from my HS DJ days that I'll never listen to again - but still. Haven't you ever seen someone's house with a huge rack full of CDs? People acquire their music collection over many years - even if it cost them $10,000, over the course of, say, 20 years, that's just over $40/month, or a CD/album every week or two. I know a lot of people who do that.

 

[Deeko]

Better sound quality, availability (i.e. no reliance on network etc) and choice.

Yup. I'm sorry, Pandora is a nice service and all, but I couldn't imagine replacing my music collection with it. The quality alone is enough to make it not worth it, not to mention availability and slectivity.

I have a pretty high end home theater system at home...a crappy MP3 already sounds bad on it. Pandora sounds like total ass.

 

[PricklyPete]

I have 32GB->5645 tracks of music that has all been purchased. I'm 32 and have been buying CD's for 17 years at least with mostly itunes being used for purchases over the last 3-4 years. If each song cost me $1 (which it hasn't)...it's has cost me $5,645 ($332 a year) to buy this music.

Why do I do it? Well since I've "itunized" my music, I'm very fastidious on ranking, grouping, and making playlists of my music. If I want to listen to my "Current Top 40" I can. If I want to listen through albums I've bought in the last 6 months...I have a playlist for that. I have a marathon...I create a special playlist for each one. On the spur of the moment I want to listen to all my favorite Radiohead songs...I can start listening to a shuffled list in seconds.

Sure there is radio and online sources...that I still listen to...but if you took my ability to listen to exactly what I want when I want...I'd go insane...it has become a luxury in my life that I'm not ready to part with.

 

[LtPage1]

1. Audio quality. Once you know the difference (half-decent speakers or headphones + good quality MP3s or CD-quality lossless audio files, or better), it's really difficult to go back to 128kpbs MP3s, or streaming internet radio, which is even worse. Accumulating a huge personal library means you can throw it on shuffle, or use services like Apple's genius to quickly put together a playlist, with all the benefits of actually good-sounding music.
2. I like music, and I like to listen to it as the artist intended. That means full albums, not individual songs. I prefer to listen to the whole album, and then pick out which songs I like the most; sometimes that means I don't go back to the ones I don't, but either way it's nice to have the back catalog. I really don't understand people whose music collection consists of a few dozen, or even a few hundred singles. Ugh.
3. I like listening to specific songs, when I want them. Even if you pay for Pandora's ad-free service, you're still at the mercy of someone or something else choosing what you listen to. If I'm in the mood for Ludovico Einaudi's Divenire, or Anti-Flag's For Blood and Empire, or the new Rodrigo y Gabriela album, I can hear any of those right now, in perfect CD-quality audio, instead of hearing something that Pandora thinks sounds similar, or searching youtube for shitty-sounding videos. Music is very rarely just background noise for me.
4. Either we're very wealthy, spend most of our paychecks on CD purchases, or we acquire it some other way. How do you think we got to 500+GB?

 

[oddyager]

Regarding the large volumes of music its really no different then people who own large libraries of cds and dvds. I owned alot and converted them all to mp3s. Over the years it easy to build up a hundreds of gigs of music.

Pandora is not going to work when im on my hike through some area with no service or in a tunnel on my morning commute to work. Wheres the convenience?

 

[Daedalus685]

It is pretty simple....

One likes a song by artist X.

One goes onto a torrent and downloads the entire collection of songs artist X has ever recorded throughout time.

Do that for every song you have ever liked...

It is not that hard... Now if your question is "what kind of person needs 100GB of music" ... a radio station I suppose.. I'm sure there is legitimate case for not ever having to listen to the same song twice in a memorable time while on random though.. And many people have very different tastes... a collection of country, collection of classical, etc.. Obviously if it is all legal the collection is over a large amount of time. I bet if i ripped all of my parents/grandparents/my CDs I'd have a fuckton of music.

 

[boomhower]

I have less than 10GB's of stored music, just stuff I really like. Generally I will listed to shoutcast or Sirius.

 

[waggy]

i am willing to bet the majority are torrents.

but a buddy of mine has over 100gb of LEGAL music. he spends well over 100+ a month on music for long as i have known him (well over 20 years).

he likes every kind of music. he has nice house with large basement full of racks of cd's.

 

[frostedflakes]

Compulsive hoarding. Some people download a lot of stuff that they're never going to get around to watching or listening to. I've never understood it either, but whatever.

That said, FLAC can use up quite a bit of space if all your music is in that format. I buy probably 2-3 albums a month on average and rip them to FLAC, so over the years I've accumulated a few hundred albums. 2000 songs takes up about 56GB. 100GB of MP3s or other lossy music files is pretty nuts, but some people like variety.

 

[MJinZ]

I like listening to music, but I don't understand collecting huge libraries of music for personal devices.

Wait, you don't just torrent gigabytes of collections at once that will never be listened to because "collecting" is about as difficult as putting on pants these days.

No one buys that much music. If you have a huge collection, well you put the 2 and 2 together.

 

[Saint Nick]

About two years ago, I went through and erased a lot of music I never listen to. Got myself about 30GB back.

 

[amdhunter]

I have 5TB worth of 96k mp3's.

 

[DaveSimmons]

> 1. How do you acquire...

I've been buying CDs for over 20 years now and own over 1,000 of them. That's a bit over 300 GB of lossless FLAC files on my music server, or ~80 GB on my iPod Classic 120GB for just the pop/rock/folk/blues songs.

> 2. Why is having a personal music collection vastly superior ...

Because with my music server I like to listen to full CDs by artists that I like, exactly when I feel like hearing them.

For my iPod while riding my lifecycle, it's picking the songs that will motivate me to keep riding for the full half-hour. Some days it's Temple of the Dog or Stone Temple Pilots, some days it's Richard Thompson or Kate Bush, some days it's Chris Whitley or Sonny Sharrock. With all of my music a few spins and a click away I'm not at the mercy of someone else's taste in music or a playlist that fit yesterday's mood but not today's.

 

[vshah]

I have 5TB worth of 96k mp3's.

ouch...they don't sell high bitrate in the ghetto?? :awe:

 

[KeithTalent]

I just went through and re-ripped a bunch of my old CDs that I had not listened to in a long time. Unfortunately I cannot fit everything on my MP3 player now.

I listen to so many different styles of music and have been doing so for such a long time, I have ended up with a lot of music. I like to throw my entire collection on shuffle and listen to whatever comes up. I love it!

KT

Edit: also, I never know what mood I am going to be in, so I want to be able to listen to whatever I want at anytime.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

> 1. How do you acquire...

I've been buying CDs for over 20 years now and own over 1,000 of them. That's a bit over 300 GB of lossless FLAC files on my music server, or ~80 GB on my iPod Classic 120GB for just the pop/rock/folk/blues songs.

> 2. Why is having a personal music collection vastly superior ...

Because with my music server I like to listen to full CDs by artists that I like, exactly when I feel like hearing them.

For my iPod while riding my lifecycle, it's picking the songs that will motivate me to keep riding for the full half-hour. Some days it's Temple of the Dog or Stone Temple Pilots, some days it's Richard Thompson or Kate Bush, some days it's Chris Whitley or Sonny Sharrock. With all of my music a few spins and a click away I'm not at the mercy of someone else's taste in music or a playlist that fit yesterday's mood but not today's.

This, though I'm now over 1tb of FLAC and my tastes are different, hehe.

 

[AstroManLuca]

I hardly ever listen to my music collection. It's way bigger than it needs to be, and I'm too intimidated to go through and delete the probably 80% of it that I don't really like. And when I do try to listen to my music it is always something I've heard before. I don't like that.

I don't care about listening to an entire album in order even if I only like one song on it. If there is only one song I like I will get rid of the rest. Or I would, if I could find the time and motivation to do so.

Sometimes I feel like just deleting all of my music just to be rid of it and relying entirely on Pandora or other services for music. I rarely listen anyway, so I'd be able to use a free account on Pandora and never go over my monthly allowance. I don't have good enough speakers to notice or care about the difference in quality. I just like the variety and not having to worry about making playlists or spending hours tagging, organizing, ranking, and sorting everything.

 

[slayer202]

music is one of the most overrated "things" in the world

 

[Nik]

I like listening to music, but I don't understand collecting huge libraries of music for personal devices. There are several things I'm not understanding:

1. How you can accumulate 100GB+ of music
a. That's literally over a month of music. With heavy use you can still go multiple months without listening to the same song twice.
b. How people can afford this. 100GB of music is conservatively 15,000+ songs. Lets assume these are all purchased as albums and each album (15 songs) costs $10. $10,000 seems like a lot for one normal person to spend on music.

2. Why is having a personal music collection vastly superior to listening to the radio, or other streaming services like Pandora? The latter is free and has sufficient variety.

Even if the cost of music was 1/10th of that, I fail to see how it is any better than simply using on-demand radio. :whiste:

Explain.

Music collections aren't attained instantly. They're collected over the years. I'd love to see your lifetime's bill for buying new pairs of underwear. I'll scold you for spending what would seem like a ridiculous amount of money on nut huggers.

My own music collection began before Pandora existed. My own music collection began when I bought my first HDD, a 13gig back when HDD's were $10 per gig.

I wake up to a musical alarm clock, hit play and listen to music while I get ready for work, listen to the radio on the way to work, listen to my iPod for my 12 hour shift, listen to the radio on the way home, and then listen to music (my own collection or Pandora, most evenings I leave up to Pandora) in headphones either with one headphone off while I watch the news or both headphones on while talking on skype or playing games or goofing around on the web.

I almost constantly have music playing.

One month of music is nothing.

I've known folks with 500GB in their music collection.

Shit, I know people who go buy a metric shit-ton of $2 records at the local music store (even stuff like Ramona Falls still comes on vinyl, noobs) and will rip it to his collection.

$2000 seems much more awesome for that much music than $10,000.