I have a general idea of the kind of stuff I like, but it's spread across all kinds of genres. I used to have about 150 gigs of music, but because I tend to be really OCD about my music collection I ended up getting rid of it, and haven't bothered replacing it yet because I don't know where to start. One of my problems is that when I download music by an artists, I always want to have their entire discography in my collection, whether or not all of it is good. This just leads to me having a ton of music but not knowing which of it is worthwhile. I occasionally will use pandora or the like, but I always have the problem of not knowing what artists are worth looking into more. I guess my question is, how did you get into the specific artists you like? Also, out of curiosity, when do you guys listen to music? I don't have a car, which would be the easiest time to get some good listening in, and I spend the rest of my time either socializing, doing work, writing my own music, etc, and I just don't know how to fit in listening to music.
I like theprp(http://www.theprp.com)although it used to be much better then it is now. I will usually check there once a week for new good bands. I have found like half of my fav. bands this way. I listen to music all the time, when i am working, right now as i am typing this i am listening to portugal the man, i listen to it to help me sleep, i listen to it in the shower, music is part of my everyday life.
What are your collection/listening habits like? like in terms of size, how much music by each artist you have, how you choose what to listen to, etc. how much of each artist's discography are you familiar with, as in you know from the name of the song what it is? do you tend to stick with music you've already heard, or try to listen to unfamiliar stuff? i don't see how to not get completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of good music there is. like if i started listing just artists that i already know of that are good, i'd easily end up with a completely unmanageable amount of music, not to mention trying to discover artists i don't already know, which is a large amount because i haven't kept up with much new music at all. it's at the point where i'll try to navigate friends' ipods and be completely lost, because i only know the older stuff, or the more well known stuff at least. although i do have friends who like to go on pitchfork and the like, and therefore listen to some seriously obscure music.
i have done what you do in the past: downloading too much than i can chew. i realized that i dont take the time so i download one album at a time. for example, Pink Floyd i only have one album so far. i find my music while looking on itunes recommendations. and Beatport.com for my electro tongue. also youtube comes in handy sometimes. i do tend to listen to stuff i know, and thats mainly cuz when im previewing something idk yet, i just wont download it until i know i will listen to it. and if you only like one or two songs, then just get those songs. if u then have invested time and interest in the artist, download the rest of the album, and so on. also i find that making playlists helps me organize my interests better.
This is what i do... I find a new band that i like, listen to it till i don't want to anymore, then either find other stuff by them or find a new band.
I am like you in the sense i want my library very organized, and as big as possible. But since my last ipod broke, i dont have a lot of those "filler" albums that make your library look good but you never really listen to them. Ozric Tentacles is a band that comes to mind that is a good example of this, they have like ~20 albums since the 80s. Right now i only have like 5 or 6 of my favorites bc i could never listen to that much ozrics. i guess it depends on what music you are into. I listen to mostly electronic music nowadays, but still with many jazz and world music albums on my ipod. (if you are looking for jazz/world music, i would recommend cdbaby.com...) and live shows of jambands from archive.org (a whole nother story on archive)... but for electronic stuff, i use a few different sites. Addictech.com - Although, 80% of it (used to be way less) kinda sucks, the other 20% is very new, interesting and fresh. the 80 percent I am talking about is mostly dubstep tunes. Its a new genre that all the teenyboppers are eating up because it goes hand and hand with drugs in a nutshell. Its a very played out genre with no future, and all the releases are starting to sound exactly alike. so i try to stay away from those releases. obviously, they are not all bad, but most of them are. But some of the other releases that are labeled with "organic, idm, downtempo, midtempo, dope, ambient", etc. are usually my favorites because they are truly original sounding. you can use these filters to search for the genres in particular. for example, if you click the "organic" box, it will only show you releases with the organic tag. last.fm is another great place with a massive library of all genres. its similar to pandora, but without the limits of songs you can listen to per hour. Its a good way to find "similar" artists. Just type in an artist you like and they will play a station for your with similar artists. But in terms of finding new artists. Soundcloud is my current fave. Its where artists go to experiment with new tracks. Tons of amazing, unsigned and totally un heard of artists from all over the world. Like i said, i am mostly listening to electronic stuff these days so these are what work for me. I try to listen to my music as much as possible. I have a nice pair of IEM (in ear monitors) headphones for work, and a dope pair of regular headphones for at home listening. Audio quality is a big thing for me, as i spent quite a few years listening to live bootlegs from archive and they just dont do it for me unless they are SBD (soundboard) quality.. I mostly listen to albums now.
