Poll

What's the minimum you keep from an artist?

Single songs
12 (19.7%)
At least the full album
40 (65.6%)
Always the whole discography
9 (14.8%)

Total Members Voted: 59

Author Topic: Your musical quantum  (Read 7224 times)

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Online wolfking

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Re: Your musical quantum
« Reply #35 on: May 05, 2010, 05:17:47 AM »
No offence to anyone but I don't see how anyone can call themselves a fan of a band and not buy even one physical release.

I have to agree.  I HATE this conversation;

Me: "I like this band, ____________, I love this album, but their whole catalog is good."

Someone else: "Oh, yeah, I LOVE that band, their music is awesome"

Me: "Cool, what albums you got from them"

Someone else: "Oh, I don't know, just got a bunch of songs from limewire"

Me: *walking away*
Everyone else, except Wolfking is wrong.

Offline Dr. DTVT

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Re: Your musical quantum
« Reply #36 on: May 05, 2010, 12:37:31 PM »
I tend to lean toward complete discographies, but that said there are artists where I don't feel the need to own all their albums, and many artists complete discographies are not on my iPod because I have about 58 GB of music and only 32 GB on my iPod touch, which is effecticly 30 GB.
     

Offline Nihil-Morari

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Re: Your musical quantum
« Reply #37 on: May 05, 2010, 02:30:32 PM »
Though another thing is, I don't see the point of getting lots of new stuff... How can you possibly get into the music listening to like 5 different albums a day, and listening to an album once or twice?

Yeah I have a hard time with that too sometimes... right now I'm trying a lot of bands at once (Dredg, The Mars Volta, Oceansize, Beardfish, Riverside, the Flower Kings, Muse...) it's kind of impossible so I've decided to focus on Dredg and Riverside for now and get into the others later.

I can however download let's say 10 albums in one day, listen to each album one time, or even less, just to determine what kind of style it is. Example: I downloaded a post-rock album a couple of days ago (I can't even remember the band name), but I'm not really in the mood for post rock now, so I'll save it, and pick it up again when I am in the mood.
So I'll stack it up, not even trying to get into that particular album.
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Offline Darkes7

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Re: Your musical quantum
« Reply #38 on: May 05, 2010, 04:25:13 PM »
When I'm getting into a new artist, I'll usually listen to their most critical or fan-acclaimed album all the way through.
I've stopped going that way, after a bunch of disappointments with absolutely cult albums [*cough*i&w*cough*] and being incredibly pleasantly surprised with many "controversial" or simply totally hated albums, I just choose my first album of a band based on some songs I've heard and really liked, and it's proved to work very well. Even if it turns out I can find something better, I've found some absolutely amazing albums that way (e.g. Opeth "Ghost Reveries", based on hearing Ghost of Perdition earlier).

[this is part one, something is weird, I'm getting an error when I try entering the whole post]
« Last Edit: May 05, 2010, 04:39:59 PM by Darkes7 »

Offline Nihil-Morari

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Re: Your musical quantum
« Reply #39 on: May 06, 2010, 12:52:28 AM »
When I'm getting into a new artist, I'll usually listen to their most critical or fan-acclaimed album all the way through.
I've stopped going that way, after a bunch of disappointments with absolutely cult albums [*cough*i&w*cough*] and being incredibly pleasantly surprised with many "controversial" or simply totally hated albums,

We get it  ;)
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Offline contest_sanity

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Re: Your musical quantum
« Reply #40 on: May 06, 2010, 01:31:35 AM »
Scrolling through itunes right now and it looks like, for the most part, I keep a whole album in the hopes I might get into it one day.  However, because of my ipod capacity reaching its ceiling recently, I do find myself deleting more things out of itunes but keeping them on my hard drive so that my ipod will sync up with newer music I'm trying out.  Thus, the "deleted" stuff is still around should I want to pursue it again. 

As far as "singles" in the more traditional sense of mainstream radio or whatever, I unashamedly have lots of them on my computer.  That's a lot of the fun, to me, in getting an itunes card as a gift -- I'll go pick out 15 "singles" that I remember liking from various years that I don't have. 

Lastly:
Always at least a full album. I think the only exception to this rule is Theocracy.
And how exactly does this exception work?   

Offline Darkes7

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Re: Your musical quantum
« Reply #41 on: May 06, 2010, 05:19:46 AM »
When I'm getting into a new artist, I'll usually listen to their most critical or fan-acclaimed album all the way through.
I've stopped going that way, after a bunch of disappointments with absolutely cult albums [*cough*i&w*cough*] and being incredibly pleasantly surprised with many "controversial" or simply totally hated albums,

We get it  ;)
Didn't want any off-topic or anything bad here, it's just the most obvious example and the easiest to understand for people here I guess :P

[part two of yesterday's post...]

I can however download let's say 10 albums in one day, listen to each album one time, or even less, just to determine what kind of style it is. Example: I downloaded a post-rock album a couple of days ago (I can't even remember the band name), but I'm not really in the mood for post rock now, so I'll save it, and pick it up again when I am in the mood.
So I'll stack it up, not even trying to get into that particular album.
I'm totally the other way around. When I really like an album, I focus on it entirely, and I haven't found any band that I feel would "not fit" into any mood. There are times when I feel like listening to something fitting a certain mood, but then I go back to something I know and what I have on PC. When I'm getting into an album I listen to on CD/vinyl, I never have this kind of problem.

Offline Nihil-Morari

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Re: Your musical quantum
« Reply #42 on: May 06, 2010, 06:10:22 AM »
Strange, I often even buy albums that I know I won't be listening to for weeks.

For example, I bought Neal Morse's It's Not Too Late, I never saw that actual cd, and it was really cheap, but I wasn't really listening to prog at that time. I was exploring Zappa and other fusion type stuff, totally ignoring prog for a while. But over a month later I really became addicted to Neal Morse again, and I popped that cd in.

But I totally see where you're coming from too. I just have cd's from all sorts of styles, some especially to get in the mood for certain stuff, sports, sleep, melodramatism, happyness. I've got albums that I only listen to once in a year, but that are really have a prominent place in my collection.
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Offline robwebster

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Re: Your musical quantum
« Reply #43 on: May 06, 2010, 06:58:05 AM »
If I connect to an artist in a big way, of course I strive to get at least a few of their best albums - their entire discography if I really like them. But I'm not going to go and collect every album by a band I think are just "pretty cool."

That said, though, I only have a couple of songs by... Amorphis, Anthony, The Attery Squash, The Automatic, Between the Buried and Me, Big Big Train, The Butterfly Effect, Calvin Harris, Deep Purple, Department of Eagles, Dizzee Rascal (!), Dream Evil, Elbow, Eldritch, Electric Six, Engineers, Finntroll, Fozzy, The Gossip, Great Northern, Heed, The Human Experimente (although, admittedly, they've only released one song), The Jam, Jeff Buckley, John Petrucci, Jonsi, Katatonia, Katy Perry, Kevin Moore, the Killers, La Roux, the Libertines, Lily Allen, Lost Horizon, Massive Attack, Men Without Hats (!!), The Ocean, Pain, Pendulum, Phideaux, Prodigy, Pulp, Scissorfight, Screaming Trees, Shadow Gallery, Shaman, Sia...

[deep breath!]

...The Stranglers, The Strokes, Suede, Tarja, Theatre of Tragedy, Turtlehead, U2, Vampire Weekend, The White Stripes, The Who, Will Smith, The Wombats and Zero 7.

Jesus, I only thought I had a handful. Didn't realise how many bands I'd picked and chosen from. Yes, a song is definitely the smallest unit in my book.

Do I feel like I want to hear more music by some of these artists? Definitely. Do I feel bad about not having full albums? Not particularly. Heck, not at all, actually. I've got a few songs that I like, and I just see getting an album as a possible next step, should I decide I like the songs I have enough.

Offline reneranucci

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Re: Your musical quantum
« Reply #44 on: May 06, 2010, 08:51:49 AM »
I donīt own the whole discography of any band except 3 or 4 I really like and are current so I donīt have to buy lots of older albums. I often buy the more acclaimed albums of the artists I like, thatīs the way I start and usually works very well. I did that with Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Amorphis, Rush, Anathema, Spockīs Beard, etc. But having their complete discography itīs just impossible for me, I simply cannot afford it, for example, I would like to have more than 1 physical Flower Kings CD, but I usually have to content myself with the legal mp3 downloads. While in the US Iīve been buying albums like crazy because I can get them much cheaper than in my home country, but when I leave Iīll have to cut it off.

Another reason is that Iīm just not interested in the rest of their discography. For example, for Pink Floyd, I have all albums from Meddle to The Final Cut plus The Division Well. I think the marginal value of owing the other albums is just very low. With Dredg I wanted to complete their whole discography (only 4 albums) so I got Leitmotiff, and I didnīt like it and barely listen to it. And for other artists not in my top 10, I canīt see myself exploring their whole discography, doing that with Yes or Rush would be completely impossible and as I said, the marginal value of the other albums will probably be very low.

Offline hefdaddy42

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Re: Your musical quantum
« Reply #45 on: May 06, 2010, 09:45:24 AM »
No hard and fast rules.  For my faves (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, DT, Porcupine Tree, etc), I want everything.  For other groups/artists, if I only like a few songs by them, then I only need to have those few songs.  Whatever.
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Offline Plasmastrike

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Re: Your musical quantum
« Reply #46 on: May 07, 2010, 01:30:41 AM »
It's all about the albums, baby.