Embrace your music

Eager collectors of music, of which Last Fm has many, have a tendency to consume far more than they can digest. Moving onto the next artist or album before necessarily becoming familiar with their previous obsession.

A habit of which I am more than familiar with, a quick glance through my iTunes library reveals that around a quarter of my 4,000 songs do not have a solitary play count. Not to mention the 1,000 on top of that, that have only been listened to once.

1,000 songs sitting on my computer taking up 5.5 gigabytes of valuable hard drive space that have never been played.

Taking that rough estimate a bit further into territory that might not necessarily be true that’s 150 albums and 125 artists that I’ve neglected to listen to.

It’s a wasteful habit that has and continues to deprive me of quality music. Of course the quantity of music I acquire introduces me to a lot of excellent albums and artists, only today I fell it love with Slayer’s unrelentingly thrashtastic Reign In Blood. But who’s to say there isn’t another dozen Reign In Blood’s, Ok Computer’s or Wish You Were Here’s amongst the 150 albums I’ve neglected to listen to?

Often the best music takes multiple listens to ‘click’, I hated Dark Side of the Moon and found Ok Computer tedious and dull at first, but nothing beats that eureka moment of not only discovering great new music, but discovering new music that you have persisted with despite discouraging initial listens.

We’re all on the search for that new favourite artist, album or even song. But sometimes it’s lying right beneath our noses.

So instead of buying that latest release, have a rummage through the more murky depths of your music collection and dust off that album you never gave a chance. You might just like it.