A post from Ryan Singer of 37signals about how to take control of a massive iTunes library got me thinking about my own music collection. Obviously I’m not using iTunes, but according to Rhythmbox my music collection isn’t small. Right now it claims I have 2,884 songs taking up 14.3GB of space which would provide me with 7 days, 19 hours and 14 minutes of non-stop, non-repetitive (barring duplicates) music. I’m sure there are lots of people who can (and will) boast of larger music collections, but as far as I’m concerned that’s a lot of music. This, coupled with the fact that my Top Rated and Recently Played automatic playlists encompass only a fraction of my collection inspires me to do something about it.
Initially I was going to follow Ryan’s approach – archive off all the music and only add it back into my collection when I had a real desire to listen to it – but after mulling the idea over for a few days I’ve decided to take an additional step: instead of simply rebuilding my collection from, er, my collection, I’m going to actively seek out new music.
My collection is wide and varied, but I do tend to listen to the same stuff over and over again. Now I’m going to enlist the likes of , Last.fm, Jamendo, and Magnatune to discover something new. I’m also going to try and tune into a few more musical podcasts like Podrunner and Groovelectric to add some variety.
Any suggestions of artists/bands or podcasts for me?