What percent of your music do you actually listen to?

[ZeppelinDT]

So my music obsession really started some time in middle school when I discovered the Beatles, which was about 15 years ago.  I've been an avid purchaser/consumer/listener/enjoyer of music ever since, and, needless to say, I've amassed a fairly sizable amount of music over that period, mostly in the form of CDs, but more recently in digital format as well.  But for the most part during that time, my overall music library only went in one direction.  Always adding... never trimming.   But over the last few months or so, I've realized it's gotten a bit out of hand, and, coupled with the inevitable downfall of CDs, I figured I should start cutting back now so I can get rid of the stuff I never listen to before CDs are completely obsolete and nobody will be willing to pay anything for them.  (And, in turn, my CD purging has also inspired me to spend some time going through my digital music collection to eliminate the excess and free up some space).

The whole process has really made me realize just how much stuff I have that has literally done nothing more than sit on a shelf for years upon years.  Some of these CDs I'm fairly sure I haven't listened to in at least 10 years.  I've easily cleared out 100+ CDs so far, as well as several GBs of digital files, but it's by no means a finished project yet.

Just got me wondering about how other musically-obsessed people like myself handle these sorts of things.  Do you have a significant selection of music that you mostly ignore yet keep around due to nostalgia or laziness or some other reason?  How much of you music actually gets played on even a semi-regular basis?  Curious to see what others think...

[Ħ]

All of it...I buy stuff I like.

[PuffyPat]

I tend to listen to a small percentage of the music I have, but a few months from now the 10% of my music that I'm listening to might be completely different than it is right now. The way I listen to music is that I'll listen to a few artists, and just those artists really, then I'll get bored with them and move on to some different bands, and after a while it just kind of comes full circle.

[ZeppelinDT]

All of it...I buy stuff I like.

Well yeah... I buy stuff I like too.  Obviously.  But musical tastes can change.  I definitely don't still like everything I liked 15 years ago.  Also, before the days where you could pretty much find everything a band has ever done for free online, buying music was a lot more of a risk.  You'd buy an album based more on a recommendation or a review or a single track you'd heard, and then it would turn out maybe the album wasn't so great as you'd hoped.

I tend to listen to a small percentage of the music I have, but a few months from now the 10% of my music that I'm listening to might be completely different than it is right now. The way I listen to music is that I'll listen to a few artists, and just those artists really, then I'll get bored with them and move on to some different bands, and after a while it just kind of comes full circle.

So really you're listening to pretty much all of it.  I meant more just in the general sense rather than in the sense of "How much are you listening to at any exact given moment in time".

[PuffyPat]

Well in that case, I would say about 75-85%. There is a lot of stuff in my iTunes I don't really touch, but I'm a hoarder. If they made a show like Hoarders but for iTunes, I would be on that shit. I just can't bring myself to delete things.

[mizzl]

60% or so

[The Letter M]

On a regular basis? Probably somewhere between 1 and 5 percent. Over a course of a year? Probably closer to 50% or so.

I'm obsessive when it comes to music, and will buy some albums that I have a moderate interest in and only spin them a few times. I've learned to cut back on some just because I can try out some "new" artists online, like on youtube, and give them listens there before I commit to buying an album, but I only mainly buy albums by my core-set of favorite artists, and related off-shoots from them. (Un)Fortunately, many of them are very active and produce a lot of material on a yearly basis, so I'm constantly looking to see what's coming out in the next month or two and saving up to buy.

I try to listen to everything I buy at least once or twice after getting it, and if I'm not completely obsessed with it, it gets ripped, put onto my iTunes/iPod, and the CD gets shelved away for awhile, but I may revisit it on my iPod later on. I probably should start looking at selling some of my CDs, although they have some sort of "great investment" value to me, having spent earned-money on them makes me not want to get rid of them, but there are some albums/artists I could do without the physical discs for.

There's also the idea of Remasters - in the last decade, many of my favorite bands have gone through a new set of remasters, chief among them is Genesis, and while I spent the greater part of a year getting their entire catalog back in 2004-2005, I got the new remasters back in 07-09 when they all came out, so now I have two sets of the Genesis discography - the original CD Remasters, and the new ones from the Box Sets.
Now Queen is doing this, and Pink Floyd also recently re-released their entire catalog, and Rush is due to re-release their Mercury-era albums in 3 boxsets coming out later this month, which, being my FAVORITE band, is on the top of my list of purchases to make by year's-end, but I may wait til after Christmas (Money!) to get them.
I haven't gotten the Queen boxsets yet, nor the new PF re-issues, and I still haven't gotten the Beatles Remasters from two years ago (although I've been meaning to), so all these remasters/re-issues are kind of a drag on me, considering that most of the time, the packaging is lavish and the remastering is worth the cost, but at the same time, there is SO MUCH NEW MUSIC coming out, so I've been having to divide my music-budget in such a way that keeps my need for new music happy while being able to satisfy my urges to get all the latest-and-greatest products from my favorite bands, despite them being re-releases.

*Sigh* Slightly off topic, but ya know, it's all about my obsession with music. I try to dive into my iPod every now and then and pick a band I haven't listened to in awhile, and pick a random album and go "Oh...hmmm...haven't listened to this one in awhile. Let's have a spin..." and I rediscover why I got that album in the first place, but it's hard to do when one has over 800 albums...

-Marc.

[ZeppelinDT]

*Sigh* Slightly off topic, but ya know, it's all about my obsession with music. I try to dive into my iPod every now and then and pick a band I haven't listened to in awhile, and pick a random album and go "Oh...hmmm...haven't listened to this one in awhile. Let's have a spin..." and I rediscover why I got that album in the first place, but it's hard to do when one has over 800 albums...

-Marc.

Tell me about it!  The first step in my musical trimming was going through and just eliminating the stuff I KNOW I'll never listen to again.  Most of that was stuff I bought years ago but for whatever reason ended up not liking it.  But there's another category of stuff that I've just sort of "forgotten" that I'm not really sure, so now I'm at the part where I'm trying to go through the hundreds (thousands?) of albums that made the first cut and sort of "re-listen" things I've forgotten/am on the fence about.  It's kinda cool, 'cause I've been re-discovering stuff I haven't played in ages, but I'm also finding some stuff that just makes me think "What in gods name was I thinking when I bought/DL'ed this".  There's also the category of stuff that was more like "I'll download this now and check it out later" but then never got around to.

For the record, if you're looking to sell CD's, Amazon marketplace is great for that.  I've made about $250 so far from selling on there.  (With the rest of the cheap/common stuff either being given away to friends or sold to used CD/Record shops for store credit).

[Ħ]

All of it...I buy stuff I like.

Well yeah... I buy stuff I like too.  Obviously.  But musical tastes can change.  I definitely don't still like everything I liked 15 years ago.  Also, before the days where you could pretty much find everything a band has ever done for free online, buying music was a lot more of a risk.  You'd buy an album based more on a recommendation or a review or a single track you'd heard, and then it would turn out maybe the album wasn't so great as you'd hoped.

Mine haven't really changed...I am way too picky when it comes to music, and, while I try new stuff out all the time (for free through Grooveshark, Spotify, etc), I only "like" about 5%, which I'll buy.  I don't have many albums (less than 50) but I love all of them.

[The Letter M]

*Sigh* Slightly off topic, but ya know, it's all about my obsession with music. I try to dive into my iPod every now and then and pick a band I haven't listened to in awhile, and pick a random album and go "Oh...hmmm...haven't listened to this one in awhile. Let's have a spin..." and I rediscover why I got that album in the first place, but it's hard to do when one has over 800 albums...

-Marc.

Tell me about it!  The first step in my musical trimming was going through and just eliminating the stuff I KNOW I'll never listen to again.  Most of that was stuff I bought years ago but for whatever reason ended up not liking it.  But there's another category of stuff that I've just sort of "forgotten" that I'm not really sure, so now I'm at the part where I'm trying to go through the hundreds (thousands?) of albums that made the first cut and sort of "re-listen" things I've forgotten/am on the fence about.  It's kinda cool, 'cause I've been re-discovering stuff I haven't played in ages, but I'm also finding some stuff that just makes me think "What in gods name was I thinking when I bought/DL'ed this".  There's also the category of stuff that was more like "I'll download this now and check it out later" but then never got around to.

For the record, if you're looking to sell CD's, Amazon marketplace is great for that.  I've made about $250 so far from selling on there.  (With the rest of the cheap/common stuff either being given away to friends or sold to used CD/Record shops for store credit).

I think I may have to go through my collection over Winter break (6 weeks between Dec 18th and Jan 30th) and start trimming things out. I know I have a few albums I won't ever listen to ever again, and if I do, I have them ripped into iTunes and/or on my portable HD. Then there are some albums I'm pretty sure I can live without, so I'll either sell all of those on Amazon (as you suggest), or go to FYE and get some store credit/cash there.

I recently moved all my CDs from 100-disc CaseLogic wallets back into their CD cases because I'm planning on buying a CD/DVD display tower that spins and can store a TON of cases in it's four sides, but many of them are expensive, so if I can sell off some CDs in the process to help fun such a purchase, that'd be great!

It'll be an arduous task, but it's weird because even among my favorite bands, there are just some albums that don't get played too often, particularly live albums (like DT's YtseJamRecords live series... I can't remember the last time I listened to the LA '98 show...), but for the sake of having everything I can get by my favorite bands, I won't get rid of such albums.

-Marc.

[Gorille85]

I have a lot of stuff. There's no way I can listen to everything I have regularly but heh yeah that's about it i guess lol

[Dark Castle]

I go through cycles with my cd's and new music, and try to round out my listening of them all.

[zxlkho]

Honestly, everything I've downloaded in my entire library I've listened to quite a bit at some point. All ~11,000 songs.

[kirksnosehair]

That's a really good question.  I own about 1000 CDs and at any given point in time I carry about 20 of those in my car, but I have my entire CD collection ripped to my iPod so I always have access to all of it, but I rarely actively listen to more than about 1% or 2%

[TAC]

That's a really good question.  I own about 1000 CDs and at any given point in time I carry about 20 of those in my car, but I have my entire CD collection ripped to my iPod so I always have access to all of it, but I rarely actively listen to more than about 1% or 2%

I'm probably in the same boat.
My listening time is so short. I have an 8-10 minute ride to work, barely enough time for ONE DT song, and I spend 20-25 minutes a night on the treadmill. There's stuff I listen to very rarely, but I'm not at the point where I want to get rid of anything.

[Phoenix87x]

Ideally I would like to listen to a 100% of it, but at the end of the day, it all depends on what mood I'm in at the time. Like yesterday, I was really in the mood for classical piano music, which I hadn't listened to in over 8 months and then today I really wanted to hear Slayer, something else which I haven't listened to in months. So it really all comes down to current mood.

In a given year, out of 664 albums, I probably listen to 75% of them.

[Fluffy Lothario]

Aside from the stuff I'm really into at the present at any given time, my favourite 25 or so bands get at least a fair bit of rotation regardless. An example is the Dave Matthews Band, I've hugely cut back on them in the last few years, but according to last.fm, they're still around my 25th most listened artist in the past year. On top of that, a certain select group of my favourite albums would also get a lot more plays.

Other than that, I would say most of my music gets played at least once or twice every two or three years. 

[Zantera]

Tough question.

For me, my music-listening comes very much in periods.
I do tend to listen to a lot of music each week, but what artists/bands I listen to, that is something that changes quite a lot, from week to week. Even some of my favorite bands are bands I can "ignore" for several months, then listen to them a lot for a few weeks, and then put them to rest a bit more.
Some artists are also very season-based, bands like Agalloch and Opeth are bands I never really listen to during the summer, but more during the fall/winter, and then there are albums which just have a certain "time" written all over them.

I also have some music that is under the "need to check out"-list, it's pretty much things I want to check out, so I get it, but it's not always I have time to do so right away.

[Super Dude]

Probably less than 50%.

[skydivingninja]

Out of all the music I listen to, throughout the year I'll probably listen to about 75/80% regularly, maybe? 

[YtseBitsySpider]

Less than 10%

[LieLowTheWantedMan]

I'd say about 80%.

[ClairvoyantCat]

I kind of grab anything obsessively that I might even have a remote interest in. 

I've at least listened to close to all of the artists that I have in my library at some point in my life, but probably well over half of my library is collecting digital dust.  Lots of unheard songs/albums/etc.  Maybe I'll get around to all of it someday. 

[ytserush]

As much as I possibly can. 

I'm always trying to reduce the size of my collection so it's more managable. I have a rule that before I get rid of any CDs, I have to listen to them one last time and 90 percent of that time I end of keeping the CD.

There are times when I go on ELP,  Marillion, (insert random favorite band here) binges but I try to minimize those over time because I want to try and listen to as much different music as I can.

I've been debating if I should completely ditch my Ozric Tentacles CDs (about 5 or 6 of them) because I just don't listen to them much anymore and I could use the room in that section, but the day I do that is probably the day I want to hear something by them.

As it is now I've got to blow up the Dream Theater/Spock's Beard  related side of my CD tower because the I don't have room for the new Transatlantic/Neal Morse live sets.  I might temporarily solve this problem by moving The Flower Kings/Kaipa CDs to the regular section, but that's only delaying the inevitable.  I need extra storage space and somewhere to put the extra storage space.


I've been avoiding buying a Jazz CD for months because that section is stuffed to the gills and I'll need to solve that problem too.

Then there's the bootlegs....I always try to listen to each one once, but from then I tend to gravitate more to one's I like for obvious reasons.

Shall I go on?

[MetalManiac666]

Over the course of a year, I probably listen to pretty close to 100% of my library.  ~2500 songs in all, and I only dump new stuff in when I'm ready to actually give it a listen.