While poking through my (legal) MP3 collection just now, I realize that it’s very rare for me to have an entire album ripped from CD (or purchased online, if you prefer). Rather, when I get the urge to rip tracks, I only do so selectively, taking the stuff I want and leaving the rest on the disc itself.
What about you? Are you a completist who likes to rip every track on your CDs (or buy entire albums online)? Or are you a picky audiophile who prefers to just rip your favorites?
The more I get into music and the more I listen to, the more frequently I tend to focus on entire albums, either buying or ripping to the computer. Even if I don’t listen to every track and skip around, I like to think of albums as complete works (even if they really aren’t put together that way) and it annoys me to be missing parts of them.
I always rip the whole album. I haven’t purchased online yet but when I do it will be buying single songs and if I like a few songs I’ll buy the album and rip the whole thing. Instant high-quality backup of the album this way too and no DRM if I read the CD carefully.
I also agree with Ooner that albums can be complete works, when I previously listened to everything as a full CD often as I got sick of the single off the album another song would become my favourite.
If using a player that has song ratings such as iTunes I often hear people go through and rate individual songs. I rate entire albums at a time or even a whole artist at a time. This has really helped as I mess around with different software and have had to re-rate all my songs at least twice. I rate entire albums when I import it too. Eventually I may rate individual songs but that would take a long time.
I’m a completist… I’ll rip an entire album even if there’s only a song or two on it that I like. I’ll delete an entire album from my hard drive if I decide that its taking up too much space, without saving the tracks that I do like. I don’t know why, but having loose files around bothers me.
Albums, at least the older ones which were designed to be played and appreciated as a whole and not just as a vehicle for a couple of singles and a lot of filler - which are the only ones I care about anyway. Sure, Bowie’s Starman is a great song, but you need to listen to the whole of Ziggy Stardust to hear where it fits. Ditto The Who’s Pinnball Wizard, off Tommy. Hell, some great albums barely even spawned singles - the Stone’s Exile On Main Street has, what, Tumbling Dice? Mind you, I’m a die-hard traditionalist: I figure that with a few honourable exceptions, rock pretty much ended when Magazine split up, and that was '82. Pass me my ear trumpet, and turn up In Rock again.
Entire albums. It’s the best/easiest way to expand your horizons, in terms of gravitating towards material you wouldn’t have ordinarily heard. In many cases, the song I originally bought the album for eventually becomes my least favorite on the CD, as the better songs usually aren’t bad enough to get radio/tv airplay, if that makes sense.
Most of what I listen to is very album-oriented, so I go for whole albums.
Whole albums. Of my 6000 songs (exactly), 504 of them are not from a whole album.
Always the entire album. I often like only one or two songs initially, but as the favorite(s) grow old, I often find others that grow on me.
I rip the entire album at first and cull tracks I don’t like after a few listens. I buy a lot of “Greatest Hits” and soundtracks though, so the flow of these albums isn’t that important.
Depends on the album. If I’ve had the album for a long time, and I know that there are only a few songs I actually like, then ripping it is optimal, because I can leave off the songs I dislike. If I’ve just gotten an album, I always rip the whole thing because, like vetbridge says, my appreciation of different songs evolves over time.
Mostly when I listen to whole albums it’s in the car. Otherwise I listen to my whole library or a playlist on shuffle. I usually don’t feel like I have the time or attention span to devote to a whole album.
Depends on the CD. I skipped a few tracks from Hot Rods & Custom Classics because they were annoying (e.g.: Ronnie Dee’s “Action Packed”) or not songs at all (e.g.: “New Car Attitude” and the 1955 James Dean interview). I skipped Chip’s Intro on Christmas Live for the same reason, plus I like to shuffle my songs.
Other than those and a few individual songs downloaded from iTunes (I’ve also downloaded a couple of albums in their entirety), pretty much all of my tracks are from complete CDs. Sometimes I end up with duplicate tracks from similar compilation CDs, which get deleted.
Whole album. No exceptions.
I often times go back and listen to an album and find that songs I didn’t care for previously are now pulled into heavy rotation.
And I never delete stuff either. I currently have a (growing) library of 20GB+ of songs. A whole computer dedicated to nothing but MP3s.
Favorite tracks only. My stereo is a near my computer, so if I wanted to listen to an entire CD, I would.
Favorites only. I go to great lengths to ensure the proper tag information is in them, and try to normalize the levels and sample rate on all of them.
I used to have hundreds of tapes. Then I ended up buying scores of CDs. I have lost many, and some groups (The Who, in particular) never got purchased on CD, and the 30 or so Who tapes I had are long ago lost.
As far as having loose files running around, I’m the opposite. I can’t stand having countless folders. In general, new CDs go into the “Archives” folder of My Music, where they’ll get several listens, and then the best will be pulled into the actual “Music” folder. Here’s my current breakdown:
Music\Beastie Boys: 43 tracks
Music\Classic Rock: 34 tracks
Music\Contemporary: 64 tracks
Music\Frank Zappa: 131 tracks
Music\Grateful Dead: 43 tracks
Music\King Crimson: 22 tracks
Music\Phish: 43 tracks
Music\Pink Floyd: 47 tracks
Music\The Doors: 39 tracks
That gives me 468 tracks spanning over 36 hours of music, which is quite a bit of only my favorites. Only the KC folder is spartan, but even with that, I daresay my collection is about as neat and tidy as you can get. No loose tracks floating around, certainly. The complete archives would be well over 12 gigs, (My 40+ CD Zappa collection compresses down to 6 full Zappa archive mp3 CDs, for example), but I have it down to under 2 gigs. Which is nice.
I’ve been very bummed lately about my lost Who collection. There’s just so many favorites I have that I want to listen to. I could probably name 50 off the top of my head at least, not counting the ones I forget. I did recently find several of my old Who tapes, which I’ve been listening to on the oldest box ever. Odds and Sodds, Two’s Missing, and Who’s Next. The Doctor song kicks some serious ass. Not to mention Bucket T. (T T t t t t t t t t t bucketbucketbucketbucket Bucket T T Bucket T Bucket T) I was ecstatic that the only mp3 album I ripped has a live version of A Quick One While He’s Away, as I’d been singing that in the shower recently. Other shower favorites are Silas Tingy and Whiskey Man, but I doubt I’ll ever hear those two songs again.
sigh
I spent hundreds of dollars amassing the original tapes, and it would easily cost hundreds more to replace them. Simply not worth it. If only I had spent my Napster window (back when it was legal) on the Who instead of contemporary music. Oh well, that’s life. I do like my contemporary collection very much.
I rip the entire album then spend the next couple of weeks listening to it. When I hear a track I really like I move it into my permanent songs folder. Eventually if I haven’t moved a song I delete it.
Sometimes I do keep an entire album, but it’s rare.
I usually wind up ripping 3/4 of an album, I leave off the songs I really don’t care for but keep ones I’m only so-so about. There’s a lot of so-so songs I’ve wound up loving after the fifth time or so they’ve come up on my mp3 player, but normally if I really hate a song I can’t warm up to it. But I always listen to my songs on shuffle so I don’t care about appreciating the entire album as a complete unit or anything.
Whole albums.
My library is 3,911 files over 10.6 GB; of which 476 files of 1.39 GB are in unsorted folder, meaning not ripped as part of a whole album. It just seems wrong any other way.
Favorites only. If I want the whole album, I’ll just go to the store and buy it.
I buy music online to avoid having to pay $15 for an album that consists of one good song and a bunch of filler.