Almost failed to notice that I’ve passed another imaginary milepost and have now listened to 118,000 unique iTunes ‘songs’,* which I did five days ago, just before noon. (That would be Thursday for those of you playing along at home.) The 118,000th track was the rip-roaring “Totem Pole” by the tragically fated Lee Morgan, off his terrific Sidewinder album, which was a bona fide best seller. It was recorded in 1964, that is, three years into the ‘Other’ division into which Ken Burns placed jazz made after 1961. The gentle opening—reminiscent of “Night In Tunisia” to this untutored listener—goes off into a bop fantasy that builds and rolls across the ears like blues being smuggled across the desert on a nighttime freight train.
The Stats
With 118,000 unique tracks heard, I have listened to 513 days, 3 hours, 16 minutes, and 52 seconds of total music and other audio (↑ 3 days and 3 hours), which occupy 779.84 GB of digital ‘space’ (↑ 6.58 GB). Remaining to be heard in my iTunes library are (or rather were, as I’ve been listening to music since last Thursday) 76,398 tracks, 848 less than last report—which means I’ve added 152 new files since then. Those unheard tunes take up 522.86 GB (↓ 5.07 GB) on one of my external hard drives, and will take 263 days, 20 hours, 51 minutes, and 59 seconds (↓ 10 hours) to listen to, assuming I listen to them straight through (I won’t).
To reach the 117,000th unique track, I listened to 1,131 songs since track #117,000. Those songs occupy 7.22 GB of data, and 3 days, 4 hours, and 38 minutes of time. Thus over by far the majority of the songs listened to were heard for the first time, as I’ve been focusing on the stuff I haven’t listened to or rated yet.
It took only 77 days to listen to the last thousand songs, much less time than the previous thousand, which shows how much time I spend listening and re-listening to songs for my cousins’ mix CDs. This means I heard almost 13 new songs each day.
12.99 New Tracks Heard per Day
If we include the previously heard songs, we find that I heard 14.7 tracks per day, a huge increase from the less than seven-and-a-half per day in the last set of one thousand songs, which was the nadir of my songs per day listening. This is primarily due to hearing shorter songs (I almost listen to music exclusively while driving to work, though I’m trying to change that) and the end of the CD making.
14.7 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, which itself was previously inserted in the last report.)
(Previous 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!
* Those who know me and my listening habits may object to the term ‘song’ in this context, but I intend by this all sorts of audio, not just those products dedicated to the Aodean muse. Thus radio dramas, sound clips from TV shows, band introductions, children’s stories, WWII news broadcasts, and any other sound files are included in the basket of ‘songs’ as I use this term.
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