Can someone explain large personal music libraries to me?

[Jeff7]

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.

Compress those uncompressed files to FLAC. You won't get as much compression as MP3, but it's lossless.

 

[Old Hippie]

When Allofmp3 was Alloftherage...

It's now MP3Sparks and I can still use it normally.

 

[Anubis]

It's now MP3Sparks and I can still use it normally.

 

[SLCentral]

It's very easy to have a large music collection...if you have access to what.cd/waffles.

 

[Old Hippie]

Does not compute.

 

[rcpratt]

I only have about 15GB of music (high-bitrate mp3's, no FLAC). I'm not huge into music, but I enjoy it.

I do have nearly 2 TB of 720p/1080p tv shows and movies, though.

 

[dfuze]

I'm going to guess people have a variety of genres they like to listen to

 

[lxskllr]

I'm going to guess people have a variety of genres they like to listen to

I have over 100gb of digital music, and that's only approximately 40% of my collection. I want to hear what I want to hear, when I want to hear it. OTA radio eats shit for the most part, and I don't always have internet access, so I like having my own music.

 

[Kadarin]

I have just under about 20GB of music, mostly collected from iTunes and Amazon. I just tend to collect music that I regularly listen to so there's a lot of electronic music, smooth jazz, 80s, 90s, classic rock, and so forth. I just can't see the point of a 200GB collection personally.

 

[Wyndru]

I run streamripper when I'm listening to streams, without realizing it, I accumulated 30gb's of music in 2 months. Probably a lot of duplicates though.

I also ripped my cd collection from my busted 400cd carousel a long time ago. It was nice to get rid of that tank from my audio rack.

Napster accounted for a lot when I was in college.

Between that, purchases and free techno/trance mixes from various DJ's websites that last over an hour for each mp3, I have well over 200gigs on my PC.

 

[WelshBloke]

That's the problem. Until Spotify (yes I think it's the best option) becomes readily available in the US, people will need libraries. I've been testing it and it really does not make sense for me to collect albums/MP3's anymore.

Spotify is awesome.

 

[bignateyk]

There's really no reason for it unless you are a professional DJ. I don't even have a personal music collection anymore. I have an iPhone, but I don't have any music on it. I just use Pandora.

 

[NutBucket]

You must be young.
Back in the 70's people had whole rooms filled with vinyl.
In the 90's people had whole shelves full of CD's.
In the modern world, people have hard drives full of MP3's.
Thats just the way it is. And the cool thing with modern tunes is you only need to buy the songs you like, instead of an album of 20 songs with only 3 good ones.

Disagree on the your last point.

I tend to buy vinyl only. At any rate, albums released 20 years ago tend to have lots of good songs in addition to the "hits". This completely justifies owning full albums. These days, with few exceptions, most of the stuff on the album is filler except for the hits.

The ability to only buy specific songs just amplifies the issue. The real issue is, the music industry simply doesn't care about music anymore; only $$$$.

I'll go back in my cave now, light my oil lamp and throw an LP on the turntable.

EDIT: Streaming music sucks because of the quality. I tried Pandora for a few days in my car. Couldn't stand the shitty quality so I haven't touched it since.

 

[lxskllr]

I don't support bands that release crap music. If the album sucks, I don't buy it. If a band can only manage 2 "good" songs on an album, those 2 "good" songs probably aren't that good.

 

[Homerboy]

I don't support bands that release crap music. If the album sucks, I don't buy it. If a band can only manage 2 "good" songs on an album, those 2 "good" songs probably aren't that good.

This. And also Nutbucket's post.
As I stated earlier in this thread (and got laughed at by the resident idiots) music "singles" are the worst thing to ever happen to music. Period.

 

[WelshBloke]

Disagree on the your last point.

I tend to buy vinyl only. At any rate, albums released 20 years ago tend to have lots of good songs in addition to the "hits". This completely justifies owning full albums. These days, with few exceptions, most of the stuff on the album is filler except for the hits.

Absolutely agree there.

EDIT: Streaming music sucks because of the quality. I tried Pandora for a few days in my car. Couldn't stand the shitty quality so I haven't touched it since.

Spotify premium is 320kbps which is fine, im not sure what the free one is.

 

[Wyndru]

EDIT: Streaming music sucks because of the quality. I tried Pandora for a few days in my car. Couldn't stand the shitty quality so I haven't touched it since.

If done right, streaming can sound good. I mean if it is possible to push HD video with audio streaming through internet pipes, pushing decent bitrate audio should be easy. Most of the streaming apps/stations purposely compress the shit out of their music to save bandwidth though, which sucks.

 

[kami333]

Probably somewhere around 100GB or so, and I have a couple boxes of CDs (200ish maybe?) that I haven't even ripped.

I've probably only bought 20 CDs in my life, but I have a lot of CDs. A bunch I picked up from the dorms after students left (I found a 500 CD wallet full of CDs one year), a few CDs that my old roommates left, a couple boxes of old CDs that the radio station I used to volunteer at was throwing out, and I used to buy scratched used CDs by the box from a friend who worked at a music store (I'd Disc Genie them and ebay the ones that were still good).

 

[NutBucket]

If done right, streaming can sound good. I mean if it is possible to push HD video with audio streaming through internet pipes, pushing decent bitrate audio should be easy. Most of the streaming apps/stations purposely compress the shit out of their music to save bandwidth though, which sucks.

If they try, anything can be good.

I really want to try some SACDs but don't really want to invest in another format....

 

[Old Hippie]

I'll go back in my cave now, light my oil lamp and throw an LP on the turntable.

I'll be over with my lava lamp and party supplies.

 

[Chryso]

I can hear unlimited music on the radio.

 

[nace186]

People don't delete trash.

 

[NutBucket]

I can hear unlimited music on the radio.

Its not unlimited if its the same 50 songs on rotation....

 

[meltdown75]

it's called freedom to do whatever the hell i want, and you having to deal with it.

 

[Homerboy]

it's called freedom to do whatever the hell i want, and you having to deal with it.

whoah calm down there tough guy. I dont think he was saying that you CAN'T and SHOULDN'T do it, he just didn't udnerstand how or why people get to that large of a collection. Take a breather.