One Hundred and Seventeen Songs (117,000)

More than two hundred days after my last thousand songs were heard, I have just listened to my 117,000th unique iTunes track, a somewhat mediocre though I suppose historically interesting rendition of the Wilson Pickett classic “In The Midnight Hour” by a group of rock legends jamming at a Taj Mahal concert in Hollywood in 1987. Although Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and John Fogerty are on stage, you hear mostly Taj Mahal singing in this cut. The mix is bad, but I’ve heard worse.

The Stats

117,000 unique tracks takes up 773.26 GB (↑ 6.65 GB), which would take 510 days, 6 hours, 25 minutes, and 31 seconds to listen to altogether (↑ 3 days and 4-1/4 hours). Remaining unplayed in my iTunes library of files are 77,246 tracks, 1,463 more than my last report (meaning almost 2,500 tracks have been added to my library since I hit 116,000 songs heard—which I suppose is what happens when you get a lot of CDs for Xmas). The unplayed files occupy 527.93 GB of data space (↑ 16.75 GB) and 264 days, 6 hours, 55 minutes and 14 seconds of time (↑ 3 days & 21 hours). This last thousand songs saw fall even further the decline in total time ‘consumed’ by my tracks heard, as the significant change in my consumptive habits continues; put simply, I now listen to my iTunes almost exclusively on the way to and from work, and only occasionally am listening to the radio shows which a year ago made up at least a plurality of the tracks I heard. (Part of the difference, however, is due as well to the fact that I made several mix CDs for some persons last year, which—in the backassward way in which I construct them—necessitates listening over and over to the same tracks in varying order.)

To reach the 117,000th unique track, I listened to 1,556 songs since track #116,000, starting this latest tranche with an unreleased Hank Williams song from his radio days, “Cherokee Boogie”. These 1,556 songs occupy 9.67 GB of data, and 4 days, 14 hours, and 37 minutes of time. Thus over a third of the songs listened to had been heard previously, due as I’ve alluded to before to the change in my listening habits caused by my new work situation starting in May of 2020.

It took 209 days to listen to the last thousand songs, meaning just under 4.8 new songs per day were heard.

4.8 New Tracks Heard per Day

If we include the previously heard songs, we find that I heard 7.4 tracks per day, a drastic drop of about six songs fewer per day than the last set of one thousand songs, which itself was an even greater drop from the previous thousand to that. This is due to the aforementioned change in my job situation, and the CD making, the latter of which means that I listened to some of those previously heard songs many, many times during this last nine months. I expect both these numbers to go up in the next report.

7.4 Tracks Heard per Day

I make no promise this time of further analysis of these songs, and may just attempt to wait until I have hit a nice even number, if I can do that before new technology renders this whole exercise pointless and irretrievable. (I append here my previous note on the same.)

 

(Previous note)

I am also beginning to wonder if my analysis of my listened-to songs will survive the transition to a new MacOS and its ‘updated’ Music software (or are we supposed to call it an ‘app’ now?). Usually I would go into an Apple store and poke around in it, but I guess I’ll just have to write a blog post about it, though I fear the inevitable responses about going to Windows (or Linux, from the weirdos)—which I suppose would be better than the actual response, which is to say, none at all. Besides, I have to write up my history of why it took me five days to set up my wife’s new iPhone, and before that I really do owe Bill an explanation of why I asked for a handful of Lego pieces for Christmas a few years back. *Sigh* Maybe next time I have to do taxes I’ll procrastinate in such a way. Until then …

… that’s all folks. See you next time!

Join the Conversation

1 Comment

Leave a comment