Box Set Go

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is a question for those of you who buy (or yes ACQUIRE) large amounts of music at once - maybe in the form of a box set, or some kind of big "torrent", or something. I'm especially thinking of things like 4CD sets of country songs, or 8CD Disky box sets - anything with a huge number of not-known-to-you tracks.

My question is - how do you deal with them? Do you have a method for working out what the good stuff is? Do you just listen to them as you would single-artist albums? Do you find that the first five tracks get listened to more than the last five? etc etc.

Comments

boom boom!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i lesve them unopened till i ipod shuffle off this mortal coil

Re: boom boom!

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

That's my approach as well.

[hoshuteki.livejournal.com]

I have no method. In point of fact, the music that is on boxsets (and to a lesser extent, compilations) in my collection is generally far more underappreciated as a result of not really properly being able to get to grips with so. much. music. I generally now just put small chunks of it on my iPod in the hope that something will stick, but I am still a fan of the pop single and (is this a rockist statement) the temporal/thematic unity of an album as a way into music.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I ask this because since digitising most of my collection in the last few weeks I have happened upon several GREBT tracks languishing on the third discs of compilation box sets etc.

(My method being - rip everything and hit shuffle).

But are there any better science methods for identifying these good records? Especially in single-genre comps where with the best will in the world things start to get a bit samey one disc in let alone four - I am too much of a style magpie I think.

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

(My method being - rip everything and hit shuffle).

A somewhat more cumbersome variant of this I've played with for eg Disky 8cd boxes: rip everything, tag every track with correct year (this is the cumbersome part), line up everything from eg 1973 and hit shuffle.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Listen to everything once through. Make mental note of awesome tracks I didn't already know (if any). Go back and listen to awesome tracks. Forget rest of boxset until approx 3 years later when scrounging round for obscurities, realise a) that inital judgement was sound and remainder of tracks are indeed un-awesome b) I now know another 50% of these non-awesome tracks through Life Experience but had no idea they were on said boxset c) it is time to BUY ANOTHER BOXSET.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is pretty much exactly what I do! Every time I try to shuffle a huge box set on an iPod or playlist I end up getting sick of the whole damn compilation because the "shuffle" feature is loaded (I try to keep a reasonably low amount of music in circulation and then change it up -- if there's a high concentration I'll never hear anything I want to hear anyway).

One sit-through is usually almost foolproof, and if I dig the whole comp, then I'll just pretend it's an album, so you get interesting favorites.

answer to "is there any better method" question: no

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

iTunes is handy because it helps you quickly identify what you have and haven't listened to. i have an smart "unplayed" playlist that i conscientious turn to when i want some music but don't particularly care what it is.

also, for big comps like the one you describe, i will actually consciously play ONLY those things i don't know/remember. the better stuff seems to jump out more quickly that way.

in principle, though, i try to listen one disk at a time (usually that's about my attention span) rather than go through the whole collection at once (i remember very deliberately doing this when i got the james brown box set a few years ago).

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

in the last few years i've been 'learning' 'beg, scream, and shout', 'american pop', and the chess blues box on my ipod. mainly by deliberately selecting some songs to throw onto a playlist until i got to the point where i had a feel for each box set and naturally felt like i wanted to hear them and could pick songs at will.

but i don't have that much room on my ipod (history of bebop set), or that much dedication (punk-into-postpunk set), so not every box set gets this treatment.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I have around 150 box sets - about a dozen of them with 10 or more CDs (2 with 15!). On larger sets I will listen to one CD at a time, generally, and intersperse with different kinds of music. I try to pay enough attention to identify particular favourites and rip same. On smaller sets, some 3CD ones, like the Trojan ones for instance, I often listen to them straight through.

I have found the larger ones tend not to get played again very often. I am thinking I should stop buying them unless I am absolutely convinced I will want to listen lots of times.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

But aren't you buying those big ones to "have" them (a la completism) rather than to listen to them? That was why I bought the Stax sets - I knew there'd be a lot of stuff I might only listen to once (or if I did it would be totally accidentaly, a la shuffle).

Commitment

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

Box sets are rubbish. Or I'm rubbish at listening to them all the way through. Okay, it's me, not you.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

In the last christmas sales, I got a 3CD Tom Waits and a 4CD Jake Thackray box of stuff I didn't know. I generally listened to each disc like I would an album, but making sure to leave gaps of other stuff in between to prevent surfeit and 'it all sounds the same'. I will now generally get the urge to hear a particular track, and then chuck the relevant disc on - but I know I am far more of a by-album listener than most on poptimists.

[mackromackro.livejournal.com]

I convert the entire thing to Mp3s, put them in a big playlist, and just soak it all in, sequentially at first.. while reading the box set liner notes.

If it's more of a collection than an aggregate of complete albums, I'll play 'em all in shuffle thereon.