Let’s talk collections and listening habits!
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Let’s compare collection sizes and listening habits!
COLLECTION SIZE:
My current iTunes collection counts 2860 titles, out of which 2243 soundtracks, 202 rock/pop, 147 classical, 193 electronic, 65 jazz and 14 musical.
There are currently 654 composer/artist folders on my harddrive, totalling 350 GB (they’re all mp3s).
Moving on to physical, I haven’t counted in a while, but roughly 1000 CDs and 100 LPs. My film collection never grew to much, for various reasons, so guessing about 100 on DVD. A few other bits and bobs.
ACQUISITION HABITS:
I very, very rarely buy CDs and LPs, due to the “four threats” mentioned in this thread, which I thought would be more active.
For new digital acquisitions, I’m in the fortunate position that I get promos, at least for soundtracks. I very rarely buy an album.
LISTENING HABITS:
I mostly listen to music on my laptop (which is connected to my stereo system), via iTunes. Once in a while, I play LPs and CDs. I sample stuff using Spotify and YouTube. But just sample…I have the free, ad-filled version of Spotify, which makes it cumbersome to use.
Your turn!
I haven’t counted in a while as a large part of my collection is in a disarray (in boxes). A rough estimate says I have too much.
Collection Size/Acquisition Habits:
When I started to seriously buy music some decades ago, I hoped that one day I’d have a satisfying library of music that means something to me, a representative selection of great classical music from every epoch as well as all the interesting important film scores. Some years ago I looked at my collection and thought: wow, well done. You got there. Not sure how much larger this will grow, but it’s pretty sufficient should I ever be cut off from new music to still bring me enjoyment for the rest of my life I guess. 🙂My buying habits of course changed over the years: originally, I searched the record stores and sometimes mail ordered a few albums. One didn’t even know what was out there. As far as film music was concerned, it was best to pick up new film scores when they were released, because re-releases of classic film scores weren’t a thing back then. I mostly missed the first batch of Varèse Club titles, so for me the real turning point was when FSM released STAGECOACH and FANTASTIC VOYAGE… from that point on, I would order often new expanded and remastered/restored releases of film scores via the Internet.
Classical music is different, that was usually still available in the better selected record stores. In recent years I picked up a lot of great deals, because many labels released “boxed sets”, so that’s a lot of music. I still do buy CDs and digital downloads, though I have slowed down a bit nowadays. Not so much because of a lack of interest, but because I have a lot of music. I did pick up the Andris Nelson’s Shostakovich Cycle on Deutsche Grammophon, because Qobuz had a great deal really (around €11.- for ALL of Shostakovich’s symphonies and concertos in — as far as I can tell so far — excellent performances in high-res format).
All my CDs are ripped lossless, for legacy reasons to ALAC format. So all my digital high-res downloads are ALAC as well (except for a few multichannel albums, which are in FLAC format, and five albums in MP3 format that are just available only in that format (like the music for the first Monkey Island games… I guess “high-res” makes not sense for that music anyway. 🙂 ).
In any case, it’s by now around 120,000 lossless/high-res ALAC tracks, mostly classical music and film music, but also of course some pop/jazz/ambient/electronic/lounge music.
The music is on external hard drives and my NAS, I don’t have any music on my actual laptop. I currently use MinimServer for music.Listening Habits:
While I use iTunes to maintain and curate my collection, I don’t use it to play music. My laptop is in a docking station in my home office and is not directly hooked up to my music system. So it’s just build in speakers, not suitable for music listening.At home, I usually listen to music on my stereo system in the living room, where I access the music via tablet or smartphone; I listen to my own music or Qobuz. Since all my CDs are ripped lossless anyway, there isn’t really any point in putting in the actual CDs anymore, so I hardly ever do that. I do have a few playlists, mostly for “occasions” though (like sometimes, when we have guests over, play cards, or something like that), with music that is suited for that kind of thing (so it’s not necessarily “THE OMEN”, though I remember one evening where we had neighbors over who suddenly asked for “Le Sacre du Printemps”… I was happy to oblige and we heard the whole thing at rather decent volume.)
In my car, I have a USB stick with around 350 albums in 256/320 AAC format; these tend to be selected according to what I might enjoy while driving.
On the go or on vacation, I usually listen to music via my phone. I used to have music in AAC format on my phone, but nowadays I tend to use Qobuz with noise cancelling headphones if I listen to music, or I listen to podcasts. I tried Roon and Roon ARC for three months, which worked for me and was great, as my entire experience with Roon was quite satisfactory, but for my own use, Roon is just too expensive, so I did not continue my subscription nor bought a lifetime pass. Roon ARC was neat though, as it enabled me to listen to my entire music collection from anywhere in the world.
Interesting breakdown, Nick. Quite different from my situation. I feel very old-school, since there is no wireless music playing in my life, it’s all hooked up somewhere.
While it would be possible for me do do a wireless setup, I actually don’t stream “wireless” either. My streamer is connected via Ethernet(LAN), so it’s not going over WiFi. Just the operation is via WiFi (Tablet or Smartphone).
(like the music for the first Monkey Island games… I guess “high-res” makes not sense for that music anyway. 🙂 ).
A real game score gourmet. I grew up with the Amiga versions. In case you didn’t know they updated the games as Special editions a few years ago and also updated the original scores.
I’ll try to write up something as well the next days but a lot is probably quite similar.
I think I have amassed around 1,000 film scores on CD. I don’t know how to back them up. When I want to listen to something, I put the CD in the CD player, sit down and listen. If I want to simply sample something, I’ll find it online somehow. But my CD collection has many hidden treasures within, and very often when I go back to a score I “thought I knew”, it turns out that I hardly “knew it” at all. I think I would be quite happy if no more music releases ever happened, no more films ever made, no more books ever written. The past is where I belong. It’s a foreign country. They do things differently there.
Your post reminds me of something, Graham — the relatively mundane issue of SPACE.
I’ve rented a tiny, 25 sqm one-room apartment for 18 years now (well, I once owned it, now I rent it, but that’s a long and complex story that I won’t go into here). Enormously expensive, but then again it’s the fanciest neighbourhood in Norway’s capital city. But that poses certain challenges. I have room for one big CD shelf (the Ivar shelf system from IKEA) that houses my CDs. That shelf is already pretty much maxed by now, so that’s one of the reasons for why I’ve limited new acquisitions to titles that I need for completist purposes (I guess about 30-40 titles in total). The space becomes a massive limit.
But then I’m guessing you guys have more room? Do you have special media rooms? Perhaps in the basement, if you own a house? A gentleman’s retreat that your spouse and family have allowed you? Or is it a constant negotiation to have your physical media out and about in the general area of the house/apartment?
I have enough room for all my stuff in our fairly modest flat, Thor. In fact we have more room than ever now that our son has moved out into his own place. No special media room as such. I have books in nearly all the rooms. My CDs are in another room which kind of acts as a spare room, but the music centre as such is in the bedroom. So no, nothing’s really “on show”.
Collection size:
My digital collection consists of 7900+ albums and 860 GB data. Of course backuped frequently. The majority MP3 or AAC for legacy reasons or priority. Otherwise I prefer lossless (ALAC being Mac user). Although I admit I neither have the ears nor the equipment to hear a difference to good encoded 320kbps MP3/AAC.The majority is – surprise – soundtracks from all ages. Although I tend to like older stuff most but have no general reservation against current scores or specific music styles. There is also pop/rock/electronic/jazz/classical and audio plays included.
My physical collection is perhaps around 1000+ CDs and a few LPs (not counted…). Except LPs and CD-Rs not all are ripped yet but that’s on the list to do occasionally.
Acquisition habits:
I still do buy CDs of release that have some priority to me and if they are not available for download. I prefer downloads lossless from Qobuz if the price is reasonable. We also have a quite good public library that has a soundtrack section that even has/had some FSM and such… Although physical media sections got thinner there as well last time I visited.Listening habits:
I still listen a lot via traditional CD player but also via Mac which is connected to the stereo system.I don’t have subscribed to any of the big streaming services. Our public library annual fee however includes access to a basic streaming service. It has quite some scores but of course has a rather limited catalogue for specialities. The library also includes access to the complete Naxos catalogue online but I have not used that so far.
I also use Youtube to sample things a lot.As many of us I have lots of stuff I didn’t even or didn’t properly listen to yet.. I probably could also just be cut of new releases without much problems 😉
Or is it a constant negotiation to have your physical media out and about in the general area of the house/apartment?
Sort of… I got my wife drunk one evening and had her sign this:
Malte, your habits sound more or less similar to mine, although your collection dwarfs mine. Almost 8000 albums? Enough for three lifetimes.
Malte, your habits sound more or less similar to mine, although your collection dwarfs mine. Almost 8000 albums? Enough for three lifetimes.
Yeah, a lot and surely too much… and not all music as mentioned. Probably also some orphaned entries as Apple Music/iTutnes makes it unnecessarily hard to find/cleanup these. And probably I should remove a few things I haven’t managed to listen to or will never again… But since digital space is cheap…
Not by “design”, but some things eventually become “complete”. By that I mean, I don’t systematically double check what is missing and what I would need to get in order for something to be “complete”. But some things may eventually be “completed” just out of natural interest. For example, when I started out, I became very interested in Jerry Goldsmith, and picked up LPs and later CDs when I found them and could afford them. Having a “complete” Jerry Goldsmith collection seemed way out of reach and not a realistic aim. But over the decades, I accumulated quite a bit. I have currently around 240 Jerry Goldsmith albums. When I look at that, that is most of his body of work, but probably not all it. I am actually not sure how “complete” it is… there are no major films missing, obviously, but experts might take a look at it and point to where it’s not “complete”. So some things just naturally “complete” themselves over time. Any new release of a previously unreleased Goldsmith score would probably end up in my collection… no need to stop now. 😀
I do have some classical composers and non film scores composer where I have a more or less “complete” collection… I do have all Peter Gabriel or Talk Talk albums, for example, or all of the works of Gustav Mahler and Pierre Boulez, but I’m not sure if I have film composers where I have everything (or close to everything).
I have a veeery big John Williams collection. Not as big as yours Thor. And I would never pay horrendous money for something like the 3 disc Goodbye Mr. Chips set. But at least, he is one composer where I would be interested in having everything. Apart from him there is no composer where I am interested in more than 50-60% of their work. That’s probably because my interest is (despite looking left and right) mainly narrowed to symphonic film music. And from the 50s on there is no film composer who did just that.
I may not even know if I have a composer “complete” because I’m lax in the checkbox department.
I’m pretty sure I have all (or close to all) compositions (by no means all recordings) by:
Gustav Mahler
György Ligeti
Pierre Boulez
Richard WagnerI do have so many Jerry Goldsmith scores, I might as well strive for completion now…
As a side note:
I also have all Duck comics by Carl Barks, the one collection I started and finished with the completionist’s mindset. 🙂I am not a completist by definition of anyone. I don’t need to have everything exactly. I have quite a lot by some composers like Goldsmith, Williams or Morricone though.
I did an FSM threads with a similar subject once, “Completionist Collections”, where I asked which part of your collections do you consider “complete” strive to complete. FSM: Completionist Collections
As I said, I’m a bit lax in the checkbox department myself, so I don’t even know how “complete” some of the collection is. I do have a natural inclination to get some composers… like when there is a new interesting album by Leonard Rosenman or Bernard Herrmann or Alex North, I’ll probably get it, though I have not compared my collection with Discogs or Soundtrack Collector to see how complete it is. Same with Beethoven, I got a lot, certainly all the concertos and symphonies and string quartets and sonatas, but how would I know if it’s “all”? I’d have to compare my collection with a “Werkeverzeichnis”, but I haven’t done that.
The classical composers I do have complete (I listed up there) are “easy” to have complete, because either the ouevre had a clear, limited focus (Wagner, Mahler), or there were supposedly complete editions that I have (Boulez, Ligeti when you combine Sony and Teldec). I also do have all (studio) albums by Peter Gabriel or Talk Talk, but there are not too many, so it’s “easy” to be complete there and know it.
Yes, it’s a topic that comes up a few times. I see I gave a long and elaborate reply in that FSM thread from 2022, all of which is still relevant. Except that the want list has changed a little bit. A few of the items acquired, several more added.
I think we discussed awhile back that it would be neat to get ALL of a composer’s work in one go. For example, isn’t there an enormous box out there that contains ALL of Mozart’s music? I suppose if you have the cash (which I don’t), that would be instant gratification if you’re a Mozart fan. But where’s the fun in that? 🙂
An aim for completness around a composer like Mozart is a difficult enterprise. The question what are all the best and relevant recordings of a particular piece cannot be easily answered. Even that definition of that complete collection is super complex with hundreds and hundreds of different recordings of each major piece.
There were and have been over the years several hefty boxes with ALL of Bach (Hänssler https://haensslerprofil.de/shop/werkausgaben-boxen/die-kompletten-werke , really good recordings, I do have some but by no means all or most of them) and all of Beethoven, and all of this or that.
“ALL” is of course debatable, as there may always be some odds and ends to include or not include, what is “ALL” anyway, all Bruckner Symphonies or all VERSIONS of ALL Bruckner Symphonies. (I have a set that is literally the latter:
).I can’t say that these box set’s take the fun out of it, quite the contrary, they really allow to have a good overview dive into a composer. I don’t have a lot of “composer complete” boxes, as they used to be expensive (not anymore, you can get the Hänssler Bach edition now for a fraction of what it originally cost), and seemed a bit “overwhelming”, I preferred to spread out my funds for music over various different music and couldn’t just dump it all on ONE composer (and therefore not buying a lot of other music, like film music).
I do have some “specific” box sets, like all of Mozart’s symphonies, or Piano concertos, or all of piano sonatas.
I’ve never been that hung up on various performances of a piece. I’m more about the composition itself. Even if I’m well aware of the fact that the different interpretations are worthwhile artistic accomplishments in and of themselves. In classical music, when there are so many different versions of a single piece, I’m more about having ONE version I’m pleased with (of course, I DO own some classical works in different recordings….you can’t really be a music lover and not). So if – at some point – I got a box with the complete composition works of a composer, and I thought they were well-performed, I would close that door for good, for as long as I live, probably.
I’m a (wannabe) completionist for John Williams, Goldsmith, Beethoven, Haydn and Wynton Marsalis. I’m also aiming for a, if not complete, very large collection of Telarc records. All the audiophile hipsters overpaying for vinyl, and I’m over here getting some of the best recorded music ever for $4 a pop.
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