It's become financially impossible for me to keep up with new soundtrack releases (new releases now have OOP prices), so I've adapted. I'm in the process of reorganizing my entire collection in a way that will put more focus on what I already have and reduce the desire to acquire more. The reorganization has the added benefit of making my music more listener friendly, without fiddling with replay gain, due to the fact I have chosen a chronological organization. It's truly pleasant. As an example, I loaded some songs from many different albums in the "1989" folder into Winamp and the volume level was consistent. I no longer have to "think" and make sure I am loading songs close to each other in age.

I'm not really concerned about video game music made after 2000 and I've deleted every "new" album from my wishlist on vgmdb. This is more appropriate when my gaming habits are taken into consideration, since my greatest gaming years occurred before 2000. So it's no longer necessary for me to continue my habit of trying to keep up with everything. I already have what's important (to me).

I haven't yet deleted new music from my collection, since there are some gems buried in recent years, especially Cave and doujin releases. It's going to be hard to decide how to organize post 2000 albums.

I don't think you've understood at all what RG does...

from Wikipedia:  "It allows players to normalize loudness for individual tracks or albums. This avoids the common problem of having to manually adjust volume levels between tracks when playing audio files from albums that have been mastered at different Loudnesses."

Meaning, I don't think you read my post.

I read your post. And there you say "fiddling with replay gain". Obviously you haven't understood RG then, because the point of RG is that you don't "fiddle" with it. You just let it do its job and be done with the "fiddling" once and for all.

Furthermore you say: "I no longer have to "think" and make sure I am loading songs close to each other in age."
Another example that you haven't understood what RG does and/or are using it incorrectly.

You obviously have serious problems understanding the English language, so I will help you. I have chosen to organize my collection chronologically, so I do not have to use replay gain. I have never attempted to use it, but I have read about it. I decided, rather than fiddling with replay gain, that I would organize my collection in a different manner. This does not in any way imply that I do not understand replay gain, but that I do understand it. My goal is to save time and reduce my desire to acquire new music, so a chronological organization allows me to sidestep replay gain as well as focus on what I already have.

That's assuming that all music from a given time period is mastered at the same loudness. I'm fairly confident that isn't the case. Organizing music chronologically really has little to do with loudness and thus replay gain. Loudness is more about producer, genre, equipment, budget, methodology, etc.

Just from experience, a lot of VGM from the past is pretty much done around the same loudness. Nowadays, it's all over the place (for a classic release, you don't know if you're going to get it soft or highly-compressed and super-loud). I'd say it's pretty safe to do this maybe throughout the 90's with releases, although there's albums like Chocobo Racing that are exceptions. Even the Konami Battle albums are pretty safe to blast...They would probably suck if they were mastered nowadays. The lower volume encourages you to turn them up higher.

Me personally, I prefer to replaygain/wavgain everything and get every uniform. It actually helps expose compressed/clipped recordings pretty good by making them listenable and easier to see how stripped of their dynamics they are. Most are so loud, you can't really blast them without fixing the volume. If I'm not crazy about something and I see off the charts loudness (tracks ringing in at 98 db or louder), I don't even bother to listen and just delete (obviously I'm not going to buy it).

So very true. I have a disc from like 1993 that's hidiously loud. I have many in the past few years that are quite quiet.

I mostly listen to older Konami and Falcom albums, which are almost all King Records releases, so that might have something to do with the consistent volume levels. As Goldfish pointed out, Chocobo Racing is an exception, and so is Soul Calibur. Even today, there are exceptions, such as DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu Black Label. And there are exceptions in the other extreme, where the volume is incredibly low. I've discovered 3 so far and they are Sound Fantasy Romancia, This is Namco! and Tokyo Dungeon. Also, many of the older Koei albums are very quiet. Some of Motoi Sakuraba's albums are purposely mastered at low volumes, and he stated it was done so that people would turn them up.

When I listen to Sakuraba, I play it through industrial-grade speakers that go to 11.

Sakuraba did that specifically for Star Ocean Blue Sphere. Valkyrie Profile arrange album was quite loud in comparison. It's a good philosophy to follow, lowering the recording volume and letting people crank the volume on their own.

Terraepon, just wondering, is your 1993 example a vgm release or a mainstream release? Mainstream pop/rock inched up in loudness a lot during 1993 especially, VGM generally not so much. Granted, a 1993 VGM album is probably louder than a 1990 VGM album, but a 1993 VGM album is probably only going to be as loud as a 1989-1990 mainstream release. Loudness-wise, 1990 VGM albums are probably equivalent to CD's pressed in the early-mid 80's.

Generalizations to be sure, but after wavgaining my entire collection, it's a pretty safe observation.

Jazz. Well, big band to be specific. What's especially weird is that it's on the MusicMasters label which had most releases on the quiet side.

Statistics:

I'm counting 2064 of the albums I have and ignoring doujins, anime and DVD/VHS.

1986 = 0.63%
1987 = 1.02%
1988 = 2.03%
1989 = 3.29%
1990 = 4.55%
1991 = 4.60%
1992 = 4.55%
1993 = 5.14%
1994 = 5.14%
1995 = 5.38%
1996 = 5.14%
1997 = 4.89%
1998 = 5.14%
1999 = 4.75%
2000 = 3.59%
2001 = 3.25%
2002 = 3.49%
2003 = 3.29%
2004 = 4.46%
2005 = 3.10%
2006 = 3.54%
2007 = 3.44%
2008 = 3.29%
2009 = 3.39%
2010 = 3.49%
2011 = 3.63%
2012 = 1.79%

The percentages indicate how heavy each year is with respect to the number 2064. The years 1986-1988 are lower than 3% due to the fact that not much was released those years and 2012 is low because I haven't been very aggressive this year. The 1990s are clearly the biggest years for me and I spend most of my game music time in that era. I find it interesting that the percentages are relatively close.

Next, I'm going to make a "favorites" folder for each year and see how those statistics look.

So, what's with the sudden jump in 2004?

The jump is real and not some error I made counting, so I checked the statistics for albums released per year. I should have a smaller percentage for the year 2004, since more albums were released per year afterwards. Throughout all of my years collecting I was never concerned about the release dates. It is just a random fluctuation that I somehow have a large number of albums from 2004.

I was more interested in why the year 2004 was that much better for you than the other years in the 00s. What came out in 2004?

I have no idea, so that's why I'm calling it a random fluctuation. It's news to me. This is the first time I've ever counted what I have from each year.

Ugh! That's not how you present data... graph it. It will be much easier to understand.