It's taken me nye on 3 months to digitise my CD collection. I bought an iPod about 4 years ago and got about 25 albums in and then got bored so am now very familiar with that playlist. For some reason I just never got my arse in gear to sort out burning the rest, I guess it was because in reality I don't use my iPod as much as I thought I would, I haven't had a typical commute as such, so there's been little opportunity.
However, I wanted to get rid of the CDs from view so slowly and methodically they've been going on to the hard drive. It's tken a bloody age, but it's paid huge dividends and has completely revitalised my passion for music, which kind of got put on hold when Eben was born. It's a crying shame because it means to date, there hasn't really been music in the house. However, with iTunes I just whack on shuffle and the whole collection gets dipped in and out of. It's fantastic and I've discovered that there are some albums I owned that I don't even remember, some that I'd forgotten how much I love and others that really should never have darkened my door 'Spiceworld anyone?'
10 things that have come to light since starting to burn my collection:
1. How much I've paid for music over the years looking at the price labels in comparison to how much you can buy music for now. Utterly depressing.
2. How Olympian by Gene is the best song ever recorded
3. How little reggae I had in my collection. Quickly rectified with one not so short visit to Amazon marketplace and £160.
4. How little classic soul I had in my collection. Quickly rectified by a not so...
5. How this seems to be costing me a fortune - but not as much of a fortune as it would have even 4 or 5 years ago
6. How crap the genre allocation on iTunes is. That reallocation job is going to take me years.
7. How I have to remember to switch off all electronica and dance when I switch on shuffle, otherwise I get shouted at by Nic.
8. How easily I've come round to the idea of flogging my CD collection despite saying I'd never do it.
9. How good my best mate from school's band really is now I'm listening to their albums again. 'Grand Drive' check them out, just not zeitgeisty enough to make it big and such a crying shame, because the world should listen to their music.
10. How much it's costing me in extras. £140 on a new hard drive, as I quickly ran out of space. £129 back up hard drive, so that if my computer craps out on me I don't lose everything. £3 per day in 'oh yes I can get that on iTunes'. £100 on a USB turntable (yes that pain is yet to come) and stupidly £369 on this - oh yes I've definitely got back in to music.
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6 comments:
speaking of reggae today is Bob Marley Day!
I hear you re cost and how much you've spent over the years...clearly you and music will be streaks ahead of what I've spent but even I find it depressing. Also said i'd never get rid of my vinyl, camera collection fishing tackle (no I'm not joking!) the latter two of the above 'sets' was probably over 10 thousand quids' worth.
I like that scratch thing!...but I bet you one thing...the spending isn't over! ;-)
It's like a piece of string without an end. From the age of 12 up until I was 25 I bought Vinyl - thousands of the buggers. Then CD's came along and I bought thousands of the buggers. Then mp3.... oh you know how it goes.
Now I have two 500gb back-ups, thousands of mp3 files and a life expectancy of another 50 years. The only way I'm ever going to hear everything I own (the collection not the Bread/Ken Boothe track)is if no more music is released ever.
It's a boy/man thing isn't it, this obsessive collecting. At least with the mp3 player/computer I don't have to go through the palava of putting everything in alphabetical order - the machines do it for you!
As Paul says, I'll never hear everything I have on the pc music or radio programmes(I'll not be around long enough)even if in perfect heath. Yet I keep adding more and more. I'm almost at 10,000music tracks and probably not far off the same in radio programmes.
But it's what we do...
It's taken me years to get my MP3s, MP4s and .flac files in order Six and there were times when I wanted to give up. It's almost a hobby in itself these days, and I'm (not very) ashamed to say that I am a voracious beast on the torrent sites.
Apple are a little naughty you know. They sell you this wonderful shiny delight and tell you what it can do and omit to mention that unless you have all your music in some sort of order it's like tipping all the books in your local library in a big pile and trying to find one in particular.
As I write this my iTunes library contains 31893 tracks, including plays and comedy shows which would take 94 days, 18 hours, 40 minutes and 13 seconds and takes up 158.52GB.
Strangely though I still find myself listening to the same old stuff, maybe a couple of dozen albums and a few hundred tracks. Sometimes I put it on random and wander around. Last week in Regent Street I move effortlessly from Prince Buster to a whale song album I bought in a secondhand shop years ago. Surreal. Whales aren't usually heard off Piccadilly Circus to my knowledge. I'm surprised I didn't get followed by a pack of dogs.
The downside of all this effort and hideous amount of wasted time is that I'm terrified to lose the library contents and have them backed up again, and again and again, so that's over 600GB of disc space in all, but that is replacing fifteen feet of CD shelving so I shouldn't moan.
I love my iPod but its upkeep can be tiring, especially when those little grey "not found" icons come up for no apparent reason. It's a wonderful device, but I'm not surprised to see some companies setting up offering to rip CDs and fill up iPods for people.
Agree with your love of Gene too, but I've not listened to that album for ages despite carrying it around in my pocket all the time. Maybe tomorrow. Today was Cud and Neutral Milk Hotel's "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" interspersed with some 70s glam and some of the new Morrissey material gleaned from assorted TV shows here and in the states. Oh, and White Horses by Jacky!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR6z8GUywyc
Augustus.
Ah, Augustaus...that's where you've been! listening to all your music...94 days...
It's good to see Augustus is still around...somewhere...
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