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I'm curious about other people's experiences with how they choose what music to listen to. Many of my friends carefully curate playlists on Spotify, or listen

I'm curious about other people's experiences with how they choose what music to listen to. Many of my friends carefully curate playlists on Spotify, or listen to the playlists they make for you. Others listen to the radio and just enjoy whatever comes on. On the other hand, I have a large library of music (~13k songs) and just kind of decide what I'm in the mood for on a whim. No playlists, just a large collection of albums that I manually select or tell Siri to play for me. This method doesn't even work with Spotify for me due to their 9,999 song limit for libraries so I had to change to Apple Music when it surpassed that amount. I don't think I've ever met another person who manages their music collection the same way so I'm curious about how rare it is. Shockingly, I manage to not fall into habits of listening to the same thing over and over, but actually enjoy the majority of the music somewhat regularly. If my entire library were put on shuffle, I could likely name the artist with around 80% accuracy and the song / album with maybe 50% accuracy. There are definitely ones that I get wrong, but with a library of that size, I don't think it's particularly realistic to memorize everything.

sbf501 4y ago
I'm the rare gen-xer who owns zero music (even after going to college during the "10 CDs for a penny" deals). It is all rented from spotify. I could create a playlist like yours with over 100k songs, but I often feel a specific mood and need to narrow down to a composer or work. For me, a free-for-all would involve a lot of skipping. Hope this helps you deduce rarity!
nvllsvm 4y ago
Similar situation here: ~23k songs, meticulously tagged, no playlists. However, I'm a little different in that I end up listening to the same handful of artist/albums/songs for a period days or weeks, then move on to something else.
- FumblingBear 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing! I definitely get in moods where I listen to a particular album a lot in a short period of time too. I try to vary my listening but sometimes there's just an album that feels right for the moment.
spiffytech 4y ago
Back before I switched to streaming, I did the same thing. I had ~5k songs and zero playlists. I just dumped albums into the play queue (whatever I felt like in the moment) and shuffled them. I always knew what song was playing. It gave me a level of familiarity and appreciation for my collection that I miss with streaming. I eventually switched to streaming for a couple of reasons. One is that managing many tens of GB of FLAC files and syncing them between devices is a big pain. It was especially bad when I made the switch about 5 years ago, when 64GB storage was a lot for a phone. The other reason is my musical tastes shifted away from stuff that's readily available on CD or download. Most of the artists I listen to now only publish to streaming, and the streaming apps just aren't so good at the ad-hoc play queue workflow. One day I'd like to use the Spotify SDK and recreate the Amarok 1.4 interface with Spotify's library.
- FumblingBear 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing! I feel you on curating and self-managing FLAC files. At the end of the day, it just wasn't worth the effort I used to spend managing them all. I'm not sure what streaming app you use, but to accomplish your old method of listening on Apple Music at least, you could just go to each album you wanted to enjoy and add it to the Up Next queue a full album at a time. From there just set the queue to shuffle and it sounds like that would do what you're missing! Maybe you've already tried that and ran into issues that I can't think of, but I've done something similar in the past and it was pretty capable at handling an ad-hoc workflow. That Amarok 1.4 interface project sounds fun! Best of luck on it if you decide to tackle it!
joveian 4y ago
I do that with a currently similar size library, although a fair chunk of that is new so maybe more like 5-8k songs that I've usually been listening to, mostly in albums. Maybe more repetition than you, particularly when I first get an album (for me there is a "burn this album or song into my memory" aspect of repetition), but I often pick out an album or artist I'm in the mood for and haven't heard for a while. For me it is mostly FLAC files that I play with mpv, organized in directories by artist and album (often shortened to easily type, in the /a directory). I think many people don't like albums for some reason but for those of us that do it much easier to pick a few albums to play than to pick a bunch of random songs. Of course, more people used to do this out of necessecity when music was mostly distributed by CDs or records, so it may partly depend on age as well how often people do that and for the people who don't like albums it was a relief to be able to easily make playlists or pick randomly from all songs. I have a few playlists that I've made but not many, although I have been thinking that I should make a few more (partly because I have a bunch of songs that aren't in any album, although I also often listen to everything I have from a particular artist). I've been trying to do more of a mixtape thing, matching the music and getting the right amount of silence between tracks. The few playlists I have I think of as just another album. I do keep most game music separate since that tends to be short and have excessive repetition, although the few games with music that stands on its own I put in my general collection. I'm also working on creating an alternative tree with volume normalized opus files, but I still have a ways to go. I've always had a better memory for music than most things and can play a bunch of music in my head fairly well, never complete songs but maybe up to a minute or two with quite a bit of detail (and usually but not always accurately :/). From various threads, it sounds like a lot of people can't do that. Although it is also mostly as I happen to think of it, intentionally recalling particular music is harder and takes some time (and depends on how long it has been since I heard it). I have some challenges with memory in general due to health issues but can still pick out the albums I'd like to hear from memory fairly well.
- FumblingBear 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing some insight! I definitely have a similar experience with initial repetition for new albums and burning them into my memory. I used to manage all my FLAC files in a similar manner, but the benefits stopped outweighing the costs as my library grew larger. I think the generational aspect of age and preference for singles vs. full albums probably has some correlation, but I mostly grew up in the age when mp3 players picked up (I'm 27) and I'm definitely part of the latter. For a more intentional listening experience, I prefer enjoying a full album from front to back too. Many artists I listen to have songs that directly feed into each other or motifs that recur throughout so a front-to-back listening experience is the best way to fully appreciate the composition. Sometimes though, I just want to jam to a specific song to fit the vibe :)

sbf501 4y ago

I'm the rare gen-xer who owns zero music (even after going to college during the "10 CDs for a penny" deals). It is all rented from spotify. I could create a playlist like yours with over 100k songs, but I often feel a specific mood and need to narrow down to a composer or work. For me, a free-for-all would involve a lot of skipping. Hope this helps you deduce rarity!

nvllsvm 4y ago

Similar situation here: ~23k songs, meticulously tagged, no playlists. However, I'm a little different in that I end up listening to the same handful of artist/albums/songs for a period days or weeks, then move on to something else.

FumblingBear 4y ago
Thanks for sharing! I definitely get in moods where I listen to a particular album a lot in a short period of time too. I try to vary my listening but sometimes there's just an album that feels right for the moment.

spiffytech 4y ago

Back before I switched to streaming, I did the same thing. I had ~5k songs and zero playlists. I just dumped albums into the play queue (whatever I felt like in the moment) and shuffled them. I always knew what song was playing. It gave me a level of familiarity and appreciation for my collection that I miss with streaming. I eventually switched to streaming for a couple of reasons. One is that managing many tens of GB of FLAC files and syncing them between devices is a big pain. It was especially bad when I made the switch about 5 years ago, when 64GB storage was a lot for a phone. The other reason is my musical tastes shifted away from stuff that's readily available on CD or download. Most of the artists I listen to now only publish to streaming, and the streaming apps just aren't so good at the ad-hoc play queue workflow. One day I'd like to use the Spotify SDK and recreate the Amarok 1.4 interface with Spotify's library.

FumblingBear 4y ago
Thanks for sharing! I feel you on curating and self-managing FLAC files. At the end of the day, it just wasn't worth the effort I used to spend managing them all. I'm not sure what streaming app you use, but to accomplish your old method of listening on Apple Music at least, you could just go to each album you wanted to enjoy and add it to the Up Next queue a full album at a time. From there just set the queue to shuffle and it sounds like that would do what you're missing! Maybe you've already tried that and ran into issues that I can't think of, but I've done something similar in the past and it was pretty capable at handling an ad-hoc workflow. That Amarok 1.4 interface project sounds fun! Best of luck on it if you decide to tackle it!

joveian 4y ago

I do that with a currently similar size library, although a fair chunk of that is new so maybe more like 5-8k songs that I've usually been listening to, mostly in albums. Maybe more repetition than you, particularly when I first get an album (for me there is a "burn this album or song into my memory" aspect of repetition), but I often pick out an album or artist I'm in the mood for and haven't heard for a while. For me it is mostly FLAC files that I play with mpv, organized in directories by artist and album (often shortened to easily type, in the /a directory). I think many people don't like albums for some reason but for those of us that do it much easier to pick a few albums to play than to pick a bunch of random songs. Of course, more people used to do this out of necessecity when music was mostly distributed by CDs or records, so it may partly depend on age as well how often people do that and for the people who don't like albums it was a relief to be able to easily make playlists or pick randomly from all songs. I have a few playlists that I've made but not many, although I have been thinking that I should make a few more (partly because I have a bunch of songs that aren't in any album, although I also often listen to everything I have from a particular artist). I've been trying to do more of a mixtape thing, matching the music and getting the right amount of silence between tracks. The few playlists I have I think of as just another album. I do keep most game music separate since that tends to be short and have excessive repetition, although the few games with music that stands on its own I put in my general collection. I'm also working on creating an alternative tree with volume normalized opus files, but I still have a ways to go. I've always had a better memory for music than most things and can play a bunch of music in my head fairly well, never complete songs but maybe up to a minute or two with quite a bit of detail (and usually but not always accurately :/). From various threads, it sounds like a lot of people can't do that. Although it is also mostly as I happen to think of it, intentionally recalling particular music is harder and takes some time (and depends on how long it has been since I heard it). I have some challenges with memory in general due to health issues but can still pick out the albums I'd like to hear from memory fairly well.

FumblingBear 4y ago
Thanks for sharing some insight! I definitely have a similar experience with initial repetition for new albums and burning them into my memory. I used to manage all my FLAC files in a similar manner, but the benefits stopped outweighing the costs as my library grew larger. I think the generational aspect of age and preference for singles vs. full albums probably has some correlation, but I mostly grew up in the age when mp3 players picked up (I'm 27) and I'm definitely part of the latter. For a more intentional listening experience, I prefer enjoying a full album from front to back too. Many artists I listen to have songs that directly feed into each other or motifs that recur throughout so a front-to-back listening experience is the best way to fully appreciate the composition. Sometimes though, I just want to jam to a specific song to fit the vibe :)