I don’t know how long it has been that I’ve been collecting music on iTunes to play on my computer or various portable devices.
At least 15 years or so. I have what I guess was the biggest iPod, with a 160 gigabyte hard drive that seems to hold more than 20,000 songs and comedy routines. I know it doesn’t hold everything I’ve got, and that doesn’t even include audiobooks.
I think my iPhone will hold everything, although it’s hard to tell because a lot of the music is in the Cloud. But just for the heck of it, I went through my library to see what I had.
Not counting anthologies, of which I have many, I found that I have at least one complete album for 374 different artists or bands. Quite a bit is comedy, some are soundtracks. I have numerous albums in foreign languages, most of them French, but at least a couple in Spanish, German or Italian.
When I was younger and collected vinyl, I peaked at about 600 albums. I’m pretty sure my iTunes library has two or three times that many. I still have some vinyl and several hundred CDs. The only thing I don’t have are tapes, either reel to reel, 8-tracks or cassettes.
I actually have quite a few collections of artists whose heyday was before I was born — the Andrews Sisters, Betty Hutton, Edith Piaf, to name a few. I have numerous albums from artists I had never heard of until I heard one or two of their songs I liked and purchased more. Like Kirsty MacColl and the Pogues.
The strangest part of my collection is people from when I was younger who had one song I liked and that was it. Why I bought greatest hits collections by Brian Hyland, Dickey Lee, Gene Pitney and James Darren, I’ll never know.
Why do I have all of Meat Loaf’s albums?
And why has it only been the last few years before I discovered the Ramones?
Of course I’ve got plenty of stuff by the artists I really love — Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles, the Beach Boys. I’ve got more than 20 albums by Scots-Canadian singer John McDermott, who I didn’t discover till about 10 years ago but I’ve actually seen in concert twice. I’ll probably never get to see Scots-Australian single Eric Bogle, but I’ve got a lot of his stuff too.
ABBA was probably my greatest guilty pleasure of the disco era, and it was a very nice surprise to see them come out with a new album 40 years later.
I have a lot more country music than I would have admitted to 30 years ago, including at least one Australian country artist in Slim Dusty.
I don’t have all that many artists who started recording in this century, although I’m actually enjoying Taylor Swift more and more all the time.
I’ve been getting into roots stuff like Robert Johnson, and then there’s Tom Roush, who sings 19th century ballads, and the Four Sergeants, who sing songs from World Wars I and II.
I’ve got a lot of stuff from Frankie Valli, who I’ll see in concert in late February. That’s of course if he’s still alive. The man is 87 years old.
At any rate, I never find myself without music to listen to, no matter what the mood.
And that’s worth something.
I’m just not sure it’s worth the amount of money that must have gone into it.
The good thing about the way I collect now is that no matter how much I acquire, it doesn’t take any additional shelf space.