Should I purge my collection?
 

I think I have too much music.

My collection isn't as big as some, but it's sizable. I have 2021 albums, singles and eps that have been tagged and put into foobar, along with a few gigs still sitting my download folder.

The problem is I haven't listened to half of it. No, more than that, I haven't listened to most of it.

An example: I have the complete studio and live discography of the Grateful Dead, along with the complete ****'s Picks. I haven't touched it since I downloaded it. I like the Grateful Dead, I just haven't gotten around to listening to it.

I feel alienated from my collection. I listen to 10% of it 90% of the time. But I have a music-grabbing compulsion, and always feel there's something better out there that I have not yet heard, so I just keep getting more and more.

Just now, I put my library on random, and pushed play. A track came up from a group called Ancient Astronauts. I don't remember the name, I don't remember downloading it, but I have their entire discography. It was some really good instrumental hip hop that I could groove to. I played a bit more, and liked what I heard. But ten minutes ago, it might as well not have even existed, because I had no idea it was even there.

What to do? Should I force myself to stop download and listen to the lot? Should I trim it down to the stuff I know I like, and just assume there's nothing else out there?

Drive space is not an issue, so keeping it is totally OK. But I just don't think I'll ever get a solid grasp on what I have...

If you read this whole thing, bravo. Hope you can offer some insight :D

Speed listen to it.

If it doesn't grab your attention in 20 seconds, delete it.

If you accidentally delete something good you're bound to hear about that album again some other time.

I've more or less had this problem before, and what I've done is organize everything new into a list, pick 15 albums off the list, download them, then not download any more until I'm through 12 of those. It works pretty well for me, it takes me about a week to go through 12 new albums, as well as lots of time for all of my old stuff.

i saw purge it,....i purge my collection every so often depending on whats going on in my life,....instead of just having too much as you describe,....but it does allow me to focus more. i find that after i wipe it completely clean there are albums that come back time and time and time again,....thats kinda comforting

i like urban's 20 second strategy

Thanks for the replies.

The problem I have is that my "music mood" changes from week to week, month to month. Right now I'm really digging electronic tracks with female vocalists, but last month I was all about Soul Coughing and Modest Mouse. So what I love today I might not care to listen to again until March...

I guess what I need to do is just get a handle on what I have before I download more. It's going to be tough, I have a bunch of new stuff bookmarked over at What that I'm anxious to hear, but guess I should hold off for a while :)

Keep anything you haven't listened to, and only delete the stuff you KNOW you dislike or will never listen to again.

The way I see it, music isn't going to be free forever.

I have a word document 12 pages long of stuff to listen to in the future. I used to download albums willy nilly, but this keeps me actually working on the list, and keeps my computer cleaned up.

I just keep a playlist called "listen to this ****"; anything I download and don't plan to listen to right away, I drag into that playlist. Every month or so, I sort it by playcount and remove everything I've listened to.

I do something similar to what people have been saying in here. I download a bunch of albums and keep track of them in a word document. I usually listen to those throughout the next week, deleting them from the document as I go. I don't download any more until the list is clear. Sometimes I'll force myself to not download for a month or so and become more familiar with my current collection. I did that last month but now I'm feeling the bug again.

I say get rid of absolutely everything that hasn't been played at all. Just start fresh. As Urban said, if an album was worth it chances are you will find a reason to download it again.

My solution to this problem - Playlist on random. All the time. ALL THE DAMN TIME.