[swoon]

For Mac users with the urge to catalog, delicious library/is tops. though i have the same problem with cataloging my music as i do about ripping it.

 

[wgb113]

My CD collection ripped to AIFF is 395.65 GB and consists of 841 albums and 10,021 songs.

At work I put it on shuffle and hit play.

At home I often start with something and then as those songs remind me of others I cue them up using the DJ feature in iTunes on my Touch with the Remote App.

The iPod's truly changed the way I enjoy music and for the better.

Bill

 

[vhbaske]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrarroyo /img/forum/go_quote.gif I use three methods concurrently. 1. While I sleep I place my music on random mode. 2. While I travel or at the office I choose as my mood dictates. 3. While at home on my main rig I start at the A and go through Z, then repeat. Very confusing if you ask me.

I see much order in your method.

 

[Pepsi]

I usually just leave it at shuffle and i usually like what ends up playing. If not, i'd just press skip on my keyboard and repeat.

 

[Rockford]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Young Spade /img/forum/go_quote.gif My current library consists of 1911 songs (some that haven't been listened to yet as well). I currently have two folders on my computer of ripped songs from various cds that I have not yet been through (just bought CDs, ripped, and stacked em up What I'm asking is, to you guys that have tons of music, do you just randomly listen to stuff (assuming I'm getting it down to the stuff I like) or do you have favorites that you always go to and just randomly visit the darker sections of the collection? Not like this is a problem or anything, just wondering what other people do. Thanks

I have certain albums that are favorites that i always go back to, but i like exploring music roots. Finding new bands and finding the bands that influenced other bands i like is the most fun thing about music for me. This is probably the main reason i have so much damn music and the reason that makes me continually obtain more.

As for the files themselves:
95% 192/V0/V2/256/320kbs,
5% FLAC
it's all organized by artist/album/

 

[Eagle Eye]

I tend to listen to just songs I like picked from my files on my external drive. Once I find an artist that suits my mood I play the whole album but skip to the songs I really like. Trying to add more music now instead of equipment.

 

[Kenny6007]

my current music library consists of ....

-1.2tb of Music (mostly FLAC, occasional V0/320kbps)
-1300 records
-500CDs

i rarely take the CDs out anymore since i've ripped them and i listen to my FLAC/MP3 by different playlists: rap/hiphop, alternative/rock/indie, pop, slowjams/r&b, classical sorted in subgenres, jazz, vocals.

the records i'll find them through my spreadsheet and pull out what i want to listen to. i have all my records sorted in 2 main categories; classical, everything else. within the 2 categories i then have it all sorted alphabetically by label and catalog number along with the location of the record. with the spreadsheet i'm able to sort everything whether by solo artist, composer, conductor, title .... and it makes finding things a breeze

 

[Landis]

Around 100GBs of digital music here, give or take a GB.

I'm not a fan of playlists exactly, because I know as soon as I start listening to one, I'll think of something else that isn't on there that I want to listen to. My genre tastes are too varied, and mostly based on mood, to have my entire digital collection going at once. I simply ask myself what I feel like listening to and POW slap that sucker in Foobar and I sit back and enjoy!

 

[grokit]

No set pattern here. I have about 30 days worth of continuous music in ALAC; it sometimes gets listened to by random song, with skips and pauses to play a whole album, sometimes the odd album gets picked out of the blue, sometimes my current "top dozen" or so albums get played regularly, and sometimes I will actively explore a particular genre.

 

[carfentanil]

I've got about 35GB on my iPod, would've been growing by possibly 3 albums per week were I still working (now that I'm out of the below-bargain-basement nonsense.) Before you skip ahead, though: I have a few playlists but find them confining. Good meta tags help, especially with iTunes smart lists, but iTunes seems quite inefficient. I've got a bunch of mix cds from individual tracks I used to have on a HDD I misplaced in probably '07. About 20GB of lossy material I can't recover.

So far I haven't copied the remainder in. Random works for me, but a new album gets higher "priority" for the first month or so, until I get familiar. I think there's a shift in approach directly intertwined with library size. My retail CDs probably don't get touched more that once per month.
 
update: iTunes gets more burdensome as the library grows! Growing much more slowly now at 78GB, duration between 1 and 2 weeks. I still divide my approach into recent vs. longterm - and if I "newly discover" something I already owned, that counts as recent.

I think everyone determines (often subconsciously) their own pattern of selectiveness, and from then on it changes slowly....

 

[NecroNeo]

I'm approaching 10k songs in my mp3 library; compared to OP I'll consider this a big library, although I've got friends who are closer to 100K. My listening follows this pattern:

1. Listen to everything on shuffle while I make a playlist that is mood-specific, painstakingly going through all of my 1200+ artists.
2. Completed playlist is too big; >300 songs
3. Delete most of completed playlist until it's only 30-60 songs.
4. By this time I've finished downloading an exciting new album, so I add it to my library, quit listening to the mood playlist and start one for the new album.
5. Once the new album is over, I use foobar and foo_softplaylists.dll to generate a playlist of my top-played music or of music related to the new album.
6. I delete the playlist I made starting at 1 because it's not as good as the playlist from 5.

When I can't spend all that time, I just pick an artist and stay there till I get bored.

 

[uraflit]

RANDOM

or

RANDOM ALBUM

or

Pre-Arranged Playlist that I periodically update with my favorite "single tracks"

also, i find that the newer foobar search function is all i need to find the music i need... i think it searches thru all the metadata+filename for your entire library

 

[leichnitz]

Title said "To You Guys With Big . . ." and I thought I was not sure I could participate in this forum. But then I clicked on it and it is for big libraries. So yes, I qualify.

Good question. I have struggled for years with this issue. I used to use the ranking system for each tune, but got rid of that as too complicated. Now I have settled on the following three methods of listening through my collection.
1. New music. As soon as I get new album (CD or download), I put it into a "20 new albums" playlist. I listed to this playlist fairly often so that I can burn the new Album into my brain, as others have noted above, but without having to find that one new CD I just bought in my huge library. But I limit to 20 CDs, so as I buy more, the old stuff rotates into regular library.
2. Favorite music list. When I really like a song, I put it into a special playlist, right now top 500-1000 tunes or so. Try not to listen to this too much because I don't want to get sick of these tunes, but can pop it on when I want to hear my faves. I also use this as the base of new playlists I create for dinner parties, etc.
3. Random or shuffle. Like others above, I sometimes play randomly through my library. If I discover a new song I really like while I am listening, I put it into my Favorite Music List on #2 above.

 

[Young Spade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leichnitz /img/forum/go_quote.gif Title said "To You Guys With Big . . ." and I thought I was not sure I could participate in this forum. But then I clicked on it and it is for big libraries. So yes, I qualify.

Haha yea I didn't think of the connotations you could get from this title. I saw a couple of posts in here poking a little fun at it though

But yea I think I might start that favorite songs playlist. Right now I'm only up to 2000 (I keep adding but I'm deleting a lot of stuff that I don't like (which is great)) so after a while when I weed out the crap the number is going to go up.

 

[gav007]

I listen randomly to all the songs I like, but songs that I don't listen to if they ever get played I give them a chance... in the end you might discover a gem