I am finding it hard to move in the living room because of all the accumulated junk and I am thinking of taking the radical step of boxing up all my CDs and putting them in the attic.   I realised the other day that I don’t actually play CDs very often now, although I now listen to as much, if not more, music as ever: I just don’t play it on CD.When I buy a CD I rip it to the computer straight away and if I want to listen to it later I will play it from the hard drive, or on the mp3 player.  I very rarely put a CD into the stereo and listen to it on the big speakers.  Not that I really have a stereo anyway – just an AV amp and a DVD player.

I can’t throw the CDs away, or sell them.  For a start it would not be legal to carry on listening to my copies after I sold them, but there is also the issue of backups.  My music is all stored on an external hard drive and that is periodically backed up to another external hard drive.  A lot of the tunes are also kept on my mp3 players, although they are not big enough to hold absolutely everything from the PC, but having the original source material is a sort of comfort blanket.

I do sometimes take a CD out to the car, but that happens a lot less now I don’t have a car of my own.  In any case, I am more likely to listen to CDs I burn myself in mp3 format – far better to take a disc with all of Metallica’s albums on than just one album, or to take a disc with a variety of tunes on.  Alternatively, I have been know to just plug the mp3 player into the car stereo.

So, no overwhelming reason to keep the CDs easily accessible.  Get them up in the attic and I can use the shelf space for DVDs instead – they are piling up everywhere now because I ran out of shelf space.   Even then I like the idea of a big hard drive I can load the DVDs onto, then I can put them in the attic too.   That will just leave me with far too many books, but I can’t see an easy way to get them all digitised, and not sure I would want to anyway.

I will have to be brutal though.  I was tempted to keep out just the classical CDs because I have never ripped them to the computer and they sound better on big speakers.  Then I thought the same about the jazz CDs.  And then I thought that maybe the more proggy CD should be kept out, or the reggae collection, or all the rap albums or world music.  I ended up with so many mental exclusions that I would still end up with hundreds of CDs downstairs.  Better to box them all up, and if necessary rip the few that I never got round to for whatever reason – although if they are available on Spotify I don’t even need to do that.

The only CDs I intend to keep are the SACDs or DVD-As.  They have to be played on the DVD player so I can listen to them in 5.1 surround.  Also a few CDs like the Green Day live album, Metallica’s  St Anger and the Rodrigo y Gabriela album that have a bonus DVD with them.

Of course, Spotify is also a factor in this decision.  I noticed this evening that I have now been using it for exactly 6 months.  Actually that is not entirely correct.  I have been scrobbling it to Last.FM for 6 months.  I was probably listenign to Spotify for a few days before I set that up.  Having reached the point of scrobbling for 6 months it is interesting to see what I have been listening to.

According to Last.FM I have listened to 7183 tracks, which is an average of 39 a day.  Those tracks are spread across 1801 different artists with no artists having more than 116 plays in that time.   My top ten artists account for about 10% of all plays so far and the top 50 represent about about a third of all plays.  There must be thousands of artists with just one or two plays – the long tail if you like.

In the past I would not have listened to such a variety.  I would have listened to entire CDs or sometimes played a shuffle on my whole library or part of it, but I would have expected the top 50 artists to have been 50% at least of my listening.  Really it is down to Spotify broadening my horizons.

For example, Be Bop Deluxe are in the top 50 artists with 28 plays.  I do not own anything by them, and had not even heard their stuff before, and used Spotify to hear their back catalogue.  Likewise, Gary Numan is at number 24 with 41 plays.  I don’t have a lot of his stuff – just the Tubeway Army albums on vinyl and some greatest hits things – and deliberately decided to listen to some of his albums.

The whole list is skewed because it is over a short timeframe.  Within that time Depeche Mode, Eminem, Green Day U2 and Sparks have released new albums which I played all the way through once or twice.   I was surpised to see Yes as only the 21st most listened to artist – but then in the time it takes to listen to one of their tracks you could have played half a dozen by most normal bands…   Another way the list is skewed is that certain artists that I previously listened to the most are not on Spotify – like Pink Floyd and Metallica.

Interesting also to see that about 25% of the top 50 artists are singing mostly in foreign languages, although I wouldn’t have been surprised if that had turned out to be higher because I have been doing a lot of browsing through French, Spanish, German & Swedish artists on Spotify.  Without Spotify I wouldn’t have listened to such a variety of Foreign acts, but I think I would have listened to a lot more Khaled, Rachid Taha and Angelique Kidjo.

If I had guessed 6 months ago, I might have predicted my top ten artists to be any ten from Pink Floyd, Metallica, Crowded House, Santana, Khaled, Angelique Kidjo, Mano Negra/Manu Chao, Yes, Primus, Gang of Four.  It turns out that what I have been listening to most is actually:

1. Doctor Feelgood
2. Primus
3. Depeche Mode
4. Gang of Four
5. Les Negresses Vertes
6. Kraftwerk
7. Mano Negra
8. Manu Chao
9. Talking Heads
10. Genesis

The real thrill has been the artists I discovered through Spotify: Tanzwut, Eloy, Telex, Kill Hannah, Rex the Dog, Love Sculpture, Slave, Coal Chamber and Kyuss.  Right now I am a satisfied customer.