How long do you keep songs in your library?

[Ginger Spice]

I'm going through a bit of a cleaning spree with my music library, and I'm realizing I'm a bit of a hoarder when it comes to music. I used to always hang on to tracks from albums that I would skip incase I would want to come back to them later, plus I'm a completest when it comes to artists I like. So here's my question: once you add something to your library, how often do you give it before you delete it, if it's something that doesn't click with you right away? Do you immediately delete/unadd songs that don't grip you at first, or do you give them a couple listens before you give up on them? 

Moving over to Spotify has made this a bit easier, as you can always readd things so long as it's still on the platform without having to re-download or hunting for it. But in terms of a personal library, sometimes it can be hard to let go of things you don't use. Let me know your thoughts!

[Choco]

I still have an iTunes library and I usually never delete anything. Sometimes I do add stuff from artists I like that I don't necessarily use, so eventually, once every year or so I do a clean up and I never even notice the songs are gone once I go through with it.

But the library thing is more because streaming services aren't legally available in my country. Otherwise I'd move to Spotify in a heartbeat. My library is something like 50GB and it's always a mess when I need to move it to another laptop or anything. And syncing my iPod is always a chore when I know streaming would make it nearly effortless to add new stuff.

[jodakyellow]

Forever and ever. Even if I don't keep the file downloaded to any device, it's all in the cloud. That "Play Count" metadata is just too important to lose lol

[ChicaCherry콜라]

I frequently delete things off Spotify as I'm a lot more like happy with that. iTunes - Never. If I purchased it, it's staying, even if it doesn't age well. I used to back everything up on discs back in the early years just to make sure I didn't lose anything. Oh how I love the cloud lol.

[XanderAnthony]

Forever. All the Cassettes I owned in the late 80s and 90s I bought on cd....Then I ripped or downloaded all the cds I had to my computer. I've been building my music library basically since i was 3 in 1988. And now I have 192,000 or so songs in my library. Liking recorded music from every time period (from the first wax cylinder recordings in the 1890s until now), every genre, and every language is both a blessing and a curse. I like 99.9% of all music I hear. All it takes it one component. If I hate the lyrics and vocals but love the melody...sold. If I hate the melody and vocals but love the baseline...sold, etc.

[Joe1240]

I organize my iTunes/Apple Music App Library by the artists that I like and yes I still use Spotify although because it is great to have both as not the fan-made concert albums etc. are not on Spotify and are a great listen for the tour throwbacks.

[pancakes]

Not sure why anyone would delete stuff. Data is cheap.

[🇯🇲 lucy88 🇯🇲]

Jan 5, 2021 19:46:34 GMT -5 Ginger Spice said:

I'm going through a bit of a cleaning spree with my music library, and I'm realizing I'm a bit of a hoarder when it comes to music. I used to always hang on to tracks from albums that I would skip incase I would want to come back to them later, plus I'm a completest when it comes to artists I like. So here's my question: once you add something to your library, how often do you give it before you delete it, if it's something that doesn't click with you right away? Do you immediately delete/unadd songs that don't grip you at first, or do you give them a couple listens before you give up on them? 

Moving over to Spotify has made this a bit easier, as you can always readd things so long as it's still on the platform without having to re-download or hunting for it. But in terms of a personal library, sometimes it can be hard to let go of things you don't use. Let me know your thoughts!

I'm like that too. There are a few tracks on my Itunes library that I would listen to on a rare occasion, but if I had to do it all over again, I probably wouldn't have bother purchasing them in the first place.

[JOJO SIWA DERANGEMENT SYNDROME]

I pretty much have kept everything. I occasionally delete stuff that I find I literally have never listened to or haven't in very long, like more than 10 years.

[Deleted]

I never delete anything. I use Spotify and Youtube almost exclusively now, but I still have a an external HD with all the music I digitally acquired over the years and there's still a good deal free space on it if I want to add something - rare these days, but just knowing I have the option is comforting. My only regret is that I never got around to ripping all of my CDs when I still had a computer with a CD ROM. I can't be bothered to spend money on an external drive but I have a few things that I haven't found online in HQ, so that music is essentially trapped in physical form.

[Choco]

Jan 8, 2021 5:26:36 GMT -5 Codex said:

Jan 7, 2021 13:11:59 GMT -5 Choco said:

I still have an iTunes library and I usually never delete anything. Sometimes I do add stuff from artists I like that I don't necessarily use, so eventually, once every year or so I do a clean up and I never even notice the songs are gone once I go through with it.

But the library thing is more because streaming services aren't legally available in my country. Otherwise I'd move to Spotify in a heartbeat. My library is something like 50GB and it's always a mess when I need to move it to another laptop or anything. And syncing my iPod is always a chore when I know streaming would make it nearly effortless to add new stuff.

Is there no Apple Music in Venezuela? It's the best streaming service for people who have prior iTunes libraries. You can add new songs into your iTunes collection with the push of a button and it treats it just like a purchase. It also synchronises your entire library across all devices through a cloud, even things like Youtube rips that you manually imported years ago.

support.apple.com/en-us/HT204411

According to this it should be available.

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I personally like to have entire albums, so I won't delete a certain album track if I don't like it. However, I do delete standalone singles occasionally if I never ended up listening to it. Usually this is for songs that I just downloaded from a playlist because I like other singles from the artist. Although if I end up retroactively liking it then it can stay of course.

Apparently AM is available here... must be a recent development. I'll check the process to see if I can migrate to that.

[bat1990]

LOL, i haven't kept a true library in nearly a decade.

Once I jumped ship from iTunes to streaming, I basically kept no library and just search for what I want to hear when the mood strikes me.
I *am* starting a vinyl collection though.

[dremolus - solarpunk]

When it comes to Spotify, I'll take out albums I saved that I didn't get around to listening to but otherwise, I don't really clean out

[Devil Marlena Nylund]

Digitally, I've never deleted.

Up until a year ago, I was still downloading music. Occasionally buying albums through iTunes but singles I was downloading mp3s... I maintained my iTunes library pretty meticulously with the tags and labels and such. I was also growing close to running out of space on my computer too because there was over 300GB of music on there.
Then I switched over to Apple Music, uploaded my library and more or less cleaned my computer of every song that has less than 2 plays - which ended up being nearly half my library. So that cleared a lot of space without losing anything.
The downside of switching to Apple Music was how it messed up the tags and labels. It doesn't bother me as much as I thought it did as now I don't have to spend as much time updating and fixing things and keeping everything consistent, although I used to make use of the "grouping" label in the mp3 tag and that has f**ked up how the songs show on my iPhone and there's no way for me to fix it. Also, it does kind of annoy me when I add a single to my library only for it to be added to an album later on so I have to redownload it again, or whatever - and that messes up the play counts. I still try to avoid duplication if I can.

[Choco]

I used to be obsessed with play counts and LastFM. Last year my iPod (don't judge) stopped sending plays correctly to LastFM and I decided to break up with it.

It's been liberating to say the least. By the last few years trying to keep everything accurate and up to date felt like homework. I do miss geeking out on statistics and play counts but oh well.

[crazyb]

Well I have a system on spotify. When I add a song to my playlist, I add it to 2 different playlists, 1 playlist is my current playlist where songs come and leave, the other is for every song I ever added on Spotify with no songs ever being removed from it. 

So for my "main" playlist I will usually remove a song about 6-12 months after being added. 

[jimijoop]

Forever. I don't delete anything. I currently have 500000+ songs in my hard drives.

[tekkenguy]

I don’t remove songs from Spotify, this way I can go back to them whenever I want to.

[Deleted]

Songs stay until they annoy me when they come on. I’m constantly purging my liked songs, playlists, artists, albums, etc

[leonagwen]

Forever.