An Ocean of Noise
There's a lot of new music that comes out. Some of it is even good. So how to deal with it all?
First, what to... obtain. I download before I buy these days; I've bought too many bad CDs to waste money on more. Plus if I wait, I can buy CDs when I see the artists in concert and they get more money that way.
So then since money isn't an issue, at least not in the short term, the limiting factor is time.
So, things I download: new releases by artists I like; things that Pitchfork recommends, if they sound appealing or if Pitchfork recommends them particularly vehemently; things that friends recommend; or old releases I've always meant to check out, back catalogs of artists I just got into, etc.
These things go on the list. The list started out on a post-it on my desk at work, where I get a lot of this listening done. Then it was several post-its, then I finally finished by moving to a Google spreadsheet, which I can handily access from whichever computer I happent to be close to. Which I admit is terrificly nerdy, but hell, this is all about being a music nerd.
The list used to be a fairly loose concept, and after I decided I'd become sufficiently familiar, I'd cross something off. A couple years back Lauren had suggested (not aware of my list) that five listens were sufficient to decide whether an album was your cup of tea or not.
Which is close to the truth. So I try to listen to each album 5 times. At that point, it gets cut loose. Either I come back to it and listen to it, or I forget about it. Maybe I'll pick it back up; maybe I won't.
If I listen to it frequently, I try to buy it. If not, well, wait and see.
As of now, there are 132 albums on the list. So it occurs to me that I probably won't listen to them all five times. That's OK. If something is so completely uncompelling that I can't even listen to it 5 times, I'll let it be and it can either wither or age on the vine. Maybe a couple of years from now I'll just throw it away. Maybe I'll come back to it.
This is why I have 10,590 songs in my main digital music library, 28 days worth of music, 50 GB. This is why I had to upgrade from an 80 GB hard drive to a 160 GB hard drive in my laptop, at great expense to... someone else.
It's far from a perfect system. I need to listen to more old stuff. But it can evolve freely, and does.
First, what to... obtain. I download before I buy these days; I've bought too many bad CDs to waste money on more. Plus if I wait, I can buy CDs when I see the artists in concert and they get more money that way.
So then since money isn't an issue, at least not in the short term, the limiting factor is time.
So, things I download: new releases by artists I like; things that Pitchfork recommends, if they sound appealing or if Pitchfork recommends them particularly vehemently; things that friends recommend; or old releases I've always meant to check out, back catalogs of artists I just got into, etc.
These things go on the list. The list started out on a post-it on my desk at work, where I get a lot of this listening done. Then it was several post-its, then I finally finished by moving to a Google spreadsheet, which I can handily access from whichever computer I happent to be close to. Which I admit is terrificly nerdy, but hell, this is all about being a music nerd.
The list used to be a fairly loose concept, and after I decided I'd become sufficiently familiar, I'd cross something off. A couple years back Lauren had suggested (not aware of my list) that five listens were sufficient to decide whether an album was your cup of tea or not.
Which is close to the truth. So I try to listen to each album 5 times. At that point, it gets cut loose. Either I come back to it and listen to it, or I forget about it. Maybe I'll pick it back up; maybe I won't.
If I listen to it frequently, I try to buy it. If not, well, wait and see.
As of now, there are 132 albums on the list. So it occurs to me that I probably won't listen to them all five times. That's OK. If something is so completely uncompelling that I can't even listen to it 5 times, I'll let it be and it can either wither or age on the vine. Maybe a couple of years from now I'll just throw it away. Maybe I'll come back to it.
This is why I have 10,590 songs in my main digital music library, 28 days worth of music, 50 GB. This is why I had to upgrade from an 80 GB hard drive to a 160 GB hard drive in my laptop, at great expense to... someone else.
It's far from a perfect system. I need to listen to more old stuff. But it can evolve freely, and does.
Labels: music, technology
posted by L. Maxwell Ward at 9:55 PM
