[Fun] - Listening time with large collections

[ajmitchell]

Hi all,

These posts of 20k 40k and 90k collections (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showth...01&page=11)got me thinking about listening times and habits. Assuming a mean track length of 4.5 mins, and typical listening of 4 hours per day / 50 tracks ( last FM stats tell me its usually much lower than this)......then here are some interesting stats for those with big libraries

If you have 1000 tracks, thats 2.8 days of continuous listening day and night.

If you have 10,000 tracks then thats 29 weeks of "typical listening" (see chart enclosed)

If you have 100,000 tracks [= 3 tracks from every CD released in the US for 1 year]** then thats 16.5 years(!) to listen to your collection 3 times (in a use typical pattern).

If you were mad enough to collect 1 million tracks [thats every track from all music officially released in the world in 1 year!!]** it would probably take 30 years to collect (manically collecting 33k tracks per year) and then 54.9 years to listen to once - ie an entire lifetime!!!!

thats food for thought

R

Alex

** Source http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/resear...03/optical.htm

[Mark Lanctot]

Very cool. So there's not actually much of a point to gathering up 100 000+ tracks because you'll never have the time to listen to all of them. Never thought of it that way!

Whenever I add new tracks, I always like looking at Settings - Information - Library Statistics. I'm currently at 206:42:21 of play time with ~2700 tracks.

Personally I can't understand how one can accumulate a 90K collection. First of all, was all this obtained legally? How much did it cost? Secondly how much storage space does it take? Sure "hard drives are cheap" but even with 500 GB HDDs, 90K will push it in terms of lossless storage. And finally, I guess my musical interests aren't as broad. I'm running out of ideas of music to collect at 402 artists, 2700 tracks.

[tomsi42]

Personally I can't understand how one can accumulate a 90K collection. First of all, was all this obtained legally? How much did it cost? Secondly how much storage space does it take? Sure "hard drives are cheap" but even with 500 GB HDDs, 90K will push it in terms of lossless storage. And finally, I guess my musical interests aren't as broad. I'm running out of ideas of music to collect at 402 artists, 2700 tracks.

At 90k, it is a good question if we only talk about bought CD's. I have bought about 1300 CD's in 20 years, that's about 18500 songs. If I had enough money, I would haved topped out at about 2500 cd's.

But I know of people who are able to record concerts legally, and there are also free (and legal) stuff out there, so should be possible to build a collection that large.

[geoffb]

Re: [Fun] - Listening time with large collections

On 7/24/06, Mark Lanctot wrote:
>
> Very cool. So there's not actually much of a point to gathering up 100
> 000+ tracks because you'll never have the time to listen to all of
> them. Never thought of it that way!

One thing to be said for a large collection is that it presumably
lowers your random-play collision chances (within, say a week) - even
if you were to restrict it to higher-rated music. Getting the ratings
in there is another thing, though!
In other words, I guess you don't have to listen to the entire
collection to get the benefit of having a large collection (I say
'guess' because my 10k tracks don't really qualify as a massive
collection). Plus there's just the raw bragging rights

Cheers
Geoff

[Mark Lanctot]

Plus there's just the raw bragging rights

That's what I suspect a lot of it is. It all comes down to "mine's bigger than yours." :-D

On the plus side, your comment about Random Mix is very appropriate. I always wanted to post something in the forum about how seemingly non-random Random Mix is. Of the 2700 (actually it's 2800) tracks I have, SlimServer Random Mix has ~100 favourites that I can almost guarantee I'll hear every time I start Random Mix. I also notice if Random Mix picks an artist, there's a better-than-chance likelihood (I give it 75%) that the next track it'll pick is by the same artist, although interestingly never from the same album.

I didn't post this because I assume Random Mix uses a Perl random function, so it can't be any more random than that. Doesn't sound random to me, but there's nothing that can be done to make it "more random" in that case.

That's primarily why I'm adding tracks - to dilute the pool and get a more random mix. Still, there are some albums I've ripped that Random Mix has never selected and I listen to Random Mix for 1-2 hours a day.

[radish]

I have something like 900 album-length discs (a lot are in 2 disc albums), and maybe 500 singles (mostly unripped). That's about 15 years worth of buying, but I still purchase at the rate of maybe 3 or 4 a week, there's so much great new music coming out, and still a lot of genres I need to explore properly. For me I can't see how I'd run out of stuff to buy when there's always new music coming along.

[Mark Lanctot]

For me I can't see how I'd run out of stuff to buy when there's always new music coming along.

Guess I'm getting old. I haven't heard really good music since Nirvana and I don't have many albums made after the mid '90s.

You know the term for inventions - "everything that will be invented already has been invented" (this was said in the early 1900s!), well I feel the same way for music. I know it's not true, but I haven't had anyone prove me wrong yet, for my tastes anyway.

This doesn't count new releases from old artists though, but those are few and far between, and a lot of it does suck. For example, aside from the rockin' 80s track She Sells Sanctuary, more recent releases from The Cult have been entirely unremarkable.

My brother's trying to get me interested in The White Stripes but I just can't get into them.

I feel the music industry has been going downhill for more than a decade now in terms of quality. It's 99.9% tripe.

[radish]

Guess I'm getting old. I haven't heard really good music since Nirvana and I don't have many albums made after the mid '90s.

Well I never much liked Nirvana, so I think it's a matter of taste.

I feel the music industry has been going downhill for more than a decade now in terms of quality. It's 99.9% tripe.

I think that's an overbroad generalization. Whilst certain areas may be in decline, others certainly aren't. There are whole genres which I listen to which didn't exist 20 or 30 years ago, just like when Rock & Roll came along in the 50's, or Punk in the 70's.

Music is a cyclical thing and always has been, as each generation has grown up they've bemoaned the crap music "kids" listen to "these days" because it isn't the same as what they listened to a few years previously. Then their kids grow up - lather, rinse, repeat. Whilst Grunge certainly seems to have run it's course (likewise, thankfully, 80's Stadium Rock) - there are plenty of artists doing amazing things in the various dance sub-genres (house, progressive, trance, etc), world music, Hip Hop, and crazy fusions of all of those. From my musical viewpoint it's an exciting time to be alive.

[danny6869]

Re: [Fun] - Listening time with large collections

> Mark Lanctot Wrote:
>> Guess I'm getting old. I haven't heard really good music since Nirvana
>> and I don't have many albums made after the mid '90s.
> Well I never much liked Nirvana, so I think it's a matter of taste.
>
>>
>> I feel the music industry has been going downhill for more than a
>> decade now in terms of quality. It's 99.9% tripe.
> I think that's an overbroad generalization. Whilst certain areas may be
> in decline, others certainly aren't. There are whole genres which I
> listen to which didn't exist 20 or 30 years ago, just like when Rock &
> Roll came along in the 50's, or Punk in the 70's.
>
> Music is a cyclical thing and always has been, as each generation has
> grown up they've bemoaned the crap music "kids" listen to "these days"
> because it isn't the same as what they listened to a few years
> previously. Then their kids grow up - lather, rinse, repeat. Whilst
> Grunge certainly seems to have run it's course (likewise, thankfully,
> 80's Stadium Rock)

^^^ Indeed...a matter of taste

there are plenty of artists doing amazing things
> in the various dance sub-genres (house, progressive, trance, etc),
> world music, Hip Hop, and crazy fusions of all of those. From my
> musical viewpoint it's an exciting time to be alive.

[joncooper]

Guess I'm getting old. I haven't heard really good music since Nirvana and I don't have many albums made after the mid '90s.

While some people accuse Dave Grohl being a bit too pop and "samey", I have come to really like the Foo Fighters. They don't have the raw edge of Nirvana with Kurt's talents, but still produce memorable music IMO

[ajmitchell]

Time wasted in track adminstration?

Now the point about ratings in itunes is interesting. I dunno if you noticed but itunes only allows a certain speed of data entry (say 10 seconds to click and move on) [unless applying mass ratings of the same no.]. Also say it takes 30 seconds to preview any particular track.....and 5 second thinking time. Thats 45seconds to rate a track. (You can seem where I am going).

So say with 10,000 tracks thats 125 hours. It would be crazy inputting more than 8 hours per day.....so thats 15.6 days to rate your 10k database. No say you want to add album art (60seconds); track gain (10 seconds) and re-title.....wow thats another couple months in admin time.

You guys don't have full time jobs do you!

Ps. My collection is 9,000 tracks but unusually its stuff I like.....ie, I delete 80% of every album and just keep the good stuff, that way random play is usually fun.

alex

[snarlydwarf]

Hrrm.. according to last.fm, in the roughly a year or so that I have been using them (wow, has it been that long?) I have played 51,765 tracks.

Since it has been 363 days that I have been reporting (minus a couple weeks where I broke scrobbler... but that is another story. :P), I play around 140 tracks a day.

Of course, that does mean that I do listen to music at work, that I listen to music almost all the time at home... so I guess my hours are abnormal.. :P

[zooropa320]

For example, aside from the rockin' 80s track She Sells Sanctuary, more recent releases from The Cult have been entirely unremarkable.

In that case you missed out on their spectacular 1989 release "Sonic Temple". I really liked "Beyond Good and Evil" from 2001 as well although it is much heavier than their other albums (that's a good thing, to me).

[Mark Lanctot]

In that case you missed out on their spectacular 1989 release "Sonic Temple". I really liked "Beyond Good and Evil" from 2001 as well although it is much heavier than their other albums (that's a good thing, to me).

Yeah, I gotta check those albums out. I'm going by the self-titled album The Cult and it's, as I said, entirely unremarkable. Decent but not eminently listenable, unique or catchy.

[stinkingpig]

Re: [Fun] - Listening time with large collections

On 7/24/06, Mark Lanctot <
Mark.Lanctot.2bgdyz1153750501 (AT) n...limdevices.com> wrote:
>
>
> geoffb Wrote:
> > Plus there's just the raw bragging rights
>
> That's what I suspect a lot of it is. It all comes down to "mine's
> bigger than yours." :-D
>
>
I prefer to say "I'm lazier about deleting things than you are"
--
"I spent all me tin with the ladies drinking gin,
So across the Western ocean I must wander" -- traditional