stop downloading. you're warping the space time continuum.
This is kind of lame admission, but one of my goals in life is to have one of the largest bootleg music collections on the Internet. The fact that the last 6-8 months have been insane have kept me from accumulating new material from fileshare friends was a major setback for breaking the 20,000 song mark by the end of 2006. And the fact that I ripped almost none of my CDs before they were stolen a couple weeks ago means I'm even further in the hole. We'll I managed to still pass the 20,000 songs mark in the past week, but a freaky new phenomenon makes it seem like nothing. It used to be pretty rare to see people with collections over 30,000 songs. There were a handful of people with 35-50K, but only a handful. And this one crazy Austrian guy with 70K songs. However, lately I've seen people breaking into the 80K and 90K range right and left.
Then I saw something today that blew my mind -- someone who had the same amount of songs as I did about a year ago now has 120,000 songs! It's the most I've ever seen anywhere.
Let me put this into perspective. With 20K songs I have enough music that I could listen to my collection for around 55 days straight and never hear the same song twice. This is going by the rule that the average length of a song is about four minutes long. (Though with all the progressive, experimental, and post-rock bands out there like Mogwai, the Mars Volta, Goodspeed You Black Emperor, etc. making songs in the 10-20 minute range, the average is probably closer to 5 or 6 minutes now. I.e. my estimates are conservative.) By that same standard, this guy with 120K songs -- and he really does, I not only checked his shares stole a bunch of it too -- has enough music to play it back-to-back-to-back for ELEVEN MONTHS. And if my song length estimates are indeed conservative as I believe they are, it's quite possible that this guy could listen to music all the way up until the next presidential election and not hear any repeats.
One last bit of info. I built the vast majority of my collection from 2001 to 2006 during which I was almost always sick and almost never had a job. Researching and collecting music was my job. And I've come up with 20K songs in that five year plus period. Granted, I'm aggressive when it comes to deleting stuff I get a bad first impression from, but even if I did keep the iffy stuff I'd still only have maybe 35K songs. The point being, how does these people find the time to accumulate this much music?!?!?!
I detect shenanigans in some form here (i.e. downloading and keeping crap one has never heard of nor cares about), but nonetheless I bow to their level of determination. Damn do I. If I had that same sort of drive, the RIAA would have my ass on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List.
Then I saw something today that blew my mind -- someone who had the same amount of songs as I did about a year ago now has 120,000 songs! It's the most I've ever seen anywhere.
Let me put this into perspective. With 20K songs I have enough music that I could listen to my collection for around 55 days straight and never hear the same song twice. This is going by the rule that the average length of a song is about four minutes long. (Though with all the progressive, experimental, and post-rock bands out there like Mogwai, the Mars Volta, Goodspeed You Black Emperor, etc. making songs in the 10-20 minute range, the average is probably closer to 5 or 6 minutes now. I.e. my estimates are conservative.) By that same standard, this guy with 120K songs -- and he really does, I not only checked his shares stole a bunch of it too -- has enough music to play it back-to-back-to-back for ELEVEN MONTHS. And if my song length estimates are indeed conservative as I believe they are, it's quite possible that this guy could listen to music all the way up until the next presidential election and not hear any repeats.
One last bit of info. I built the vast majority of my collection from 2001 to 2006 during which I was almost always sick and almost never had a job. Researching and collecting music was my job. And I've come up with 20K songs in that five year plus period. Granted, I'm aggressive when it comes to deleting stuff I get a bad first impression from, but even if I did keep the iffy stuff I'd still only have maybe 35K songs. The point being, how does these people find the time to accumulate this much music?!?!?!
I detect shenanigans in some form here (i.e. downloading and keeping crap one has never heard of nor cares about), but nonetheless I bow to their level of determination. Damn do I. If I had that same sort of drive, the RIAA would have my ass on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List.