(something I posted on my Facebook, figured I would post/share here. Does anyone agree with my findings that once you end up on the path of obsessively listening to new music, it's harder to go back and enjoy when you've already listened to?)

I'm one of those people that can't just download an album. I have to download an entire discography. I can't walk into a CD store and buy a single album, I have to buy at least 5 (used, of course). Call it OCD, call it whatever. At some point, I got in the really bad habit of simply hoarding music and not taking the time to listen to it. Even worse, when I did listen to something, I'd get a few songs into an album and flip to something else, usually something I already was familiar with.

Enter the Great Expansion

Sometime around Summer 2012, I ordered a ton of CD's from gohastings.com during one of their sales (around 200 or so, probably not paying more than $1 each) It's surprising how hard it is to find lossless versions of a lot of pop albums, so I took matters into my own hands and decided to just sit there and rip the hell out of this stack of CD's to FLAC. A lot of them I had read about on lists from wikipedia or on Amazon. About halfway through the ripping process, I realized it was going to take time to actually listen through all of these. So I decided I would listen to each one individually, delete the bad tracks (and sell off any album I didn't like) and form a giant playlist of what was left that I could just stick on random.

And then it began...Album after album, I would rate each track, delete the bad stuff, highlight my favorites and figure whether to mark the album itself as "Great", "Good" or "Gutted" (basically, gutted is when there are only a few tracks I like off the entire thing). So I figured, "Why not do this with EVERYTHING I own or have downloaded".

Two years later of near obsessive album rating, my listened to count stands at ABOUT 1699 albums. So figure about 720 days, that's an average of about 2.5 albums per day. Of course, I had days where I would knock out 10 albums and others I would be too busy to do even one, so 2.5 per day sounds about right. Also, there were days where I would spend time on one or two excessively long 70 minute albums or one four disc soundtrack (yes, Final Fantasy VII, I'm looking at you!) and would only result in one or two albums being counted, so that is definitely skewed. Also, some were deleted outright for pure suckage and I really don't have a trace of them, so the tally is probably closer to 1800 overall.

Once I got into the habit of regularly discovering new music or looking back and rating something I was familiar with, my original plan of forming a giant playlist fell by the wayside. So now my problem is backwards...All this great music I have discovered and I rarely want to stop and revisit it. There is stuff like Roxette, Laura Branigan, REO Speedwagon and Amy Grant, where I am kicking myself for not discovering them and enjoying them when I was younger. Now it just feels slightly empty that they merely stand out in this giant flood of music that has overtaken my brain for the past 2 years. At some point, I will likely run out of albums, but I have hit that point numerous times  over the past year and something always manages to pop up and catch my interest.

My unofficial tally so far:

550 Videogame Music Albums (including multi-disc sets, arranged albums and Redbook Audio rips from Turbografx games or Sega CD games)

70 Jpop/Seiyuu Albums (stuff from the 80's/90's, not the newer crap...hard to find online to download, but they literally give these albums away on the Japanese marketplaces!)

40 Classical Albums (tricky to tally, since many of them are in boxsets and some are duplicate performances of popular pieces...mostly it's popular Baroque stuff and Haydn/Mozart symphonies or Piano Sonatas)

427 Pop/Rock Music Albums that feature female vocals (included are film song compilations, stuff like Ghostbusters and Top Gun, also multi-vocalist stuff like Roxette (Marie <3 ) and also my country albums, since all my country albums feature female vocalists)

237 Pop/Rock Music Albums that feature male vocals (I haven't been over-aggressive in adding to this category, but it has a lot of Peter Cetera, Phil Collins, Huey Lewis, Asia, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, Toto, Bryan Adams...stuff like that)

125 Anime and Game Vocal Collections (separate from both the Game Music and Jpop folders)

250 Metal and Hard Rock albums (this is approximate for several reasons...One is that for about 3-4 years, hard rock and metal was basically all I listened to, so stuff like Iron Maiden, Priest, Slayer, Helloween, Stratovarius and oldschool Metallica didn't need to be rated since I knew them backwards and forwards. Also, stuff like Boston, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy, Queen and Rush -classic rock that is considered early heavy metal- are in here as well. Finally, a lot these were never properly rated and I used to be hesitant about deleting unwanted tracks, so a lot will need revisiting) Still trying to get this sorted out. There are really only about 20-30 Heavy Metal groups I regularly listen to and most of them are very well known. And yes, hair metal is in here and not in the male pop/rock folder.

So hopefully by the end of 2014, I'll be over that elusive 2000 mark.

I think the nature of this generation in general is hoarding and in part, instant gratification. I'm guilty of both because I but soundtracks pretty regularly that I barely even (if ever) listen to. I very rarely, however, "exploratory" shop. I'll only pickup something I've never heard of every once and a while and usually because I'm a fan of the series/artist/something.

I also have massive amount of digital western music, like I'm sure everyone does. It satisfies my car playing habits (I can't listen to vgm, anime or film scores while driving). I find myself following artists, genres and downloading thinks I think I'll like, purchasing or attending a concert when I know i like them. It's a lot easier to exploratory shop when you don't actually pay for it.

The unfortunate side effect of this is that I end up listening to an album I like for a couple weeks and moving on to another new album once that catches my interest. There are a few staples artists in my catalogue I go back to when I haven't found anything new in a while but otherwise  constantly replacing stuff and listening to new albums.

I'm also pretty finicky about western albums in that if I can't listen to the whole album front to back without questioning the whole album I consider it not really worth playing or enjoying. 1 or 2 bad songs I might be able to bear but any more than that and I get annoyed at having to skip around a lot. I think it's part of the reason a lot of the artists I have enjoyed in the past have been partially or fully concept albums.

I have that same idea with both VGM and regular albums. I think for VGM, there are just a lot of tracks that really aren't meant to stand out from the game and I really don't have any issue cutting them out. For "regular" albums, I think it's just a matter that every track can't be really inspired and some tracks exist merely as album filler (even by the artists' own admission at times). Four or more "excellent" tracks from a regular release is more or less what I aim for, while for VGM, I expect 1/3 "great", 1/3 "just good" and 1/3 "either bad or filler tracks to be deleted". In both cases, I find removing the lesser tracks and concentrating on the meat of the albums makes the overall product more enjoyable.

Also, for me, I got a VERY late start on regular music, as I pretty much only listened to VGM and anime music up through about 2006. A lot of the music I grew up with in the 90's seemed to justify that position, but I've found some good stuff to offset the angst/rap/crap metal/Britney Spears stuff of the decade at least. Then again, I doubt I would have listened to Celine Dion or Ace of Base with an open mind back in high school. Admittedly, I did get a bit of an assist from my time spent with Guitar Hero/Rock Band...Coming into a lot of artists raw like that just begged for a lot of them to be discovered.

Really? Half of the music I listen to while driving is VGM... goes down real smooth for me. My one friend thought it was too cool that I had Mining Melancholy from DKC2 playing in my car.

Anyway, I've got my playlist down to the essentials at the moment. About 780 tracks survived out of about 8000. A lot of the music I discovered from 2002 is gone now and some of these bands I had 300 some tracks for. Those bands are now down to a handful of tracks. Some bands have been completely eliminated.

Feels good to finally get this streamlined.

However, the question I want to add to the thread is kind of VGM related and I don't want to start a separate thread. Does anyone sometimes edit VGM tracks when the double loop is too much? For example I don't really need five minutes of "Flight" from Xenogears when one time through is sufficient.

No, but if the playing time is bloated, I tend not to highlight a track. The ending for FFVI and the ending for Snatcher are good examples of tracks I don't have marked as a favorite due to the length, even though they are technically well done. If the samples within a song make it painful to listen through (a bad synth orchestra or a guitar tone I can't stand or a lazy, pointless techno beat), I'll probably have cut the song long before a loop ever occurs. As far as VGM goes, I find that track looping is not so different from a chorus that repeats itself several times in the course of a song.

I love blasting 19 minutes of "Penitus" from FFXIV out my car while driving along with "Ultima" and "Spiral".  And then I chill with 14 minutes of "Sultana Dreaming".

If you like REO Speedwagon, check out Off Course (オフコース).

I am currently going through The Great Shrinking. I topped out at around 2,200 vgm albums (not including gamerips) and became overwhelmed. I didn't know what to listen to, couldn't decide what to listen to, and never did listen to more than a few tracks from any album because I had access to so much. What I did was good because I did secure a lot of difficult to obtain music, but what I did was bad because I couldn't actually listen to everything.

I have less time left to live than I did when I started this collection and I want to spend that time listening to the best albums. I shy away from new releases because of how poor sound quality (mastering) is. The greatest sound quality I've yet heard is evident in the old Columbia releases and old KOEI albums (and especially in Jesus the Fearful Bio Monster). Try it for yourself. Take some new game music album, like one of those Falcom Zanmai albums and compare it with an old KOEI release, like Inindo: Way of the Ninja. You'll be astonished.

too much choice is no choice

That is why I tend to use random all on my library. Which is also why I find it necessary to choose only my favorite tracks from each album, because anything not to be marked as a "favorite" is likely to fall short within my song pool. It's the best way to marry variety with choice. And yes, going from something mastered superbly to something that sounds compressed and lifeless is a pretty damning experience. I can tolerate the Zanmai albums on their own, but I'm in no hurry to add them to my main playlist.

Anything new, sampling is absolutely required for that reason. Although credit where its due, they really got it right on Persona 4 and Persona Arena. Both of those stand out. Those albums should be a bible for how to master VGM rock.

My solution is random.org
I have a list of all my discs and use random.org to make a list of future listening, and listen to whatever basically in order (with months noted so I can spread things out at least somewhat).
It works very well for me as I don't consistently listen to some over the detriment of others and I'm never pressed to "argh I dunno what I want to listen to"

I actually did compile this about a month ago...It's a list of all the VGM I tend to always have on me. Consequently, if I need space, it's also all the VGM I sometimes leave off as a giant cluster, just because I know it all backwards and forwards.

Mostly stuff I've marked as favorites ad nauseum over the years, but a few newer ones squeaked in there (Persona 4, Pokemon X and Y, PPPPPP, Blaz...and I picked up Alphabet Planet, Yu Yu Ensemble 2 and Guten Talk recently, so they're FLAC'ed up and ready to go!) My goal was 40 OST's and 20 Arranges, but I had to cut SOME corners...Thankfully, all my album trimming made the compilations much easier to compile.

OST:
Final Fantasy IV-VII
Seiken Densetsu 3 OSV
Super Mario RPG OSV
Chrono Trigger OSV
Guilty Gear Original Sound Collection
Guilty Gear XX #Reload Korean
Rockman 1-6 Boxset
Legend of Heroes III and IV (PC-98 versions)
Genso Suikoden I OST
Xenogears OST
King of Fighters 98 OST
King of Fighters 99 OST
Estpolis Biographies
Monster World Collection (Disc 1)
Phantasy Star Classic Collection (PS1, 2 and 4)
Marvel vs Capcom OST
Rockman 2 The Power Fighters (with the few arrangements from Power Battle thrown in the same folder)
Alphabet Planet (the spiritual successor to Kikuta's Mana soundtracks)
Ys III PC Engine Redbook
Grandia I (favorite tracks compiled from both volumes)
Star Ocean Second Story OST
Music from Sorcerian (chosen over the Sorcerian Forever albums)
Persona 4
Mystic Ark
Rockman Dash
PPPPPP
Famicom 20th Anniversary Vol. 1 (lots of classic Nintendo soundtracks in here)
Chrono Cross OST
Yu Yu Hakusho Game Sound Ensemble 2 (really nice 16-bit fighting game OST)
Rockman Battle and Chase (Disc 1)
Sonic Adventure 2 OST
Zuntata L'ab Normal Vol. 1 (too many classic Taito games represented, it's hard not to include this!)
Blazblue Chrono Phantasma OST
Lords of Thunder (Sega CD version)
Classic Castlevania Collection (handpicked tracks from all the Castlevania soundtracks/rips up until SOTN...My kingdom for a proper US Castlevania III release and/or a Japanese one without combined tracks!)
Pokemon X and Y

Arrange:
Dracula Battle Perfect Selection 1
Konami Shooting Battle Perfect Selection 1 (the rest of the Battle albums don't quite measure up to these two, IMO)
Tokimeki Memorial Sound Collection 1-4 (favorites only)
Phantasy Star Sound Collection (Disc 2 Arranges)
Ys Perfect Collection
Dragon Quest 4 Symphonic Suite (first print/NHK version)
Ys IV Perfect Collection 1-3 (favorites)
Megami Tensei I and II Arrange (the Yonemitsu bias is real!)
F-Zero X Guitar Arrange
Game Music Graffiti (the 9 Famicom tracks taken from Famicom Graffiti probably compile my favorite arranged album, period...the rest is kind of like a bonus)
Sorcerian Perfect Collection 1-3 (favorites only)
JDK Band (personal compilation, about 25 tracks from various albums)
Zuntata Guten Talk (this is how live VGM should be done!)
Garou Densetsu Special Image Album (Vol. 1 and 2 favorites...this should have been a single album!)
Sailor Moon S OST/Arrange
Final Fantasy Pray + Love Will Grow (favorites)
Ninja Gaiden II Arrange (nostalgia talking, this is probably the weakest album in the list)
Konami Perfect Selection (favorites only...When Nazo Nazo is good, they're amazing. When they're bad, they're awful. I do have the Bloody Tears rap in here, for old time's sake)
Mother 1 and 2 OST/Arrange album (shining example of how to do a synth upgrade of classic VGM. It's almost too easy to like!).

Nice to see some love for Rockman Dash. I think a lot of people overlook this one.

looks like i'm different with my listening habits. i listen to my favorite albums every week and carefully implement new music into my rotation. i think i'm feeling overwhelmed when too many newish impressions enter my daily routine. i fear that i may not be able to appreciate new music if i decide to listen to 3 new albums in a row. i usually end up listening to one album twice before moving on. i need time to digest.

I can't believe I didn't catch this earlier...

...am I the only one that isn't very big on arrange albums?

I mean I thought Wild Arms -rocking heart- was good (not good enough to keep in my case, unfortunately) and I do like listening to Rockman X every *once in while* (which is very re-arranged when it comes to some tracks) but I almost always come back to the in-game versions every time.

I have to admit I'm very stuck on how a given track works in its given game. However, going into a discussion on context is a whole other freakin' creature, am I right?

I found this the most interesting of everything you said, and I read the whole post with great attention and focus.

All four of those artists you named have special meaning to me in different ways. Even when it is really light poppy stuff, it has power to it. Roxette man ... crazy catchy.

Last thing I've heard from Ms. Grant, she lent her voice for the final track of Jars of Clay's 10th studio album, "The Shelter." Hearing her voice gave me shivers, hadn't heard it in ages.