Listening History/Ratings

[Caecius]

I tried to use the search function to find something on this topic but failed. I'm sure it has been asked already.

Do you track what you listen to? If so, what do you use?

I'd like to start tracking what I listen to so I can know if I want to go back and revisit.Also, for things like creating a personal favorites of each year or other category. Obviously, you have things like Spotify, RateYourMusic, Last.Fm.

I was curious of the other options or if people make their own databases. People on here always seem to have their top lists ready to go when called upon.

 

[Burkhard]

Pen and paper (you might also call it audioscribbler) - you don't get more old school than this. Started it in 1988 and still practise it now.

 

[Caecius]

Pen and paper (you might also call it audioscribbler) - you don't get more old school than this. Started it in 1988 and still practise it now.

I like it. Are you able to post an example of what you write?

 

[CiG]

RYM mostly, but I also have a notepad.

 

[Bloopy]

I have Last.fm and RYM, but for working out my favourites of each year I primarily use foobar2000 and Notepad++. Last.fm did motivate me to have my music organised better on my hard drive though.

For working out favourites by year it was kinda necessary to check multiple sources to try and make sure I had things tagged with the correct year. I corrected a bunch along the way. foobar2000 is great at handling huge playlists, eg. list your whole digital collection, sort by year and then copy everything from a given year over to a new playlist.

I prefer text files for managing/storing lists but I usually have a corresponding playlist in foobar while I'm working them out. The only 2 I've actually bothered saving as playlists are the rankings of my all-time fav songs & albums, as foobar remembers open playlists from last time you closed it. I keep my RYM lists to a minimum too but I have this one.

 

[no country for old wainds]

i have a wordpad document where ive put track ratings/reviews for every single album i’ve ever heard and i copy and paste them whenever anyone asks me for my opinion on anything and i vehemently defend them even if i only listened to the album once 15 years ago.

 

[Caecius]

Surprised by the number of folks using notepad (digital). I thought more people would utilize a database that was sortable.

My plans were to use Spotify/Bandcamp/YouTube/etc. to help discover new music and catalog my inventory/rate in Google Spreadsheets. Then use RYM to find new albums of a specific year.

 

[Caecius]

I have Last.fm and RYM, but for working out my favourites of each year I primarily use foobar2000 and Notepad++. Last.fm did motivate me to have my music organised better on my hard drive though.

For working out favourites by year it was kinda necessary to check multiple sources to try and make sure I had things tagged with the correct year. I corrected a bunch along the way. foobar2000 is great at handling huge playlists, eg. list your whole digital collection, sort by year and then copy everything from a given year over to a new playlist.

I prefer text files for managing/storing lists but I usually have a corresponding playlist in foobar while I'm working them out. The only 2 I've actually bothered saving as playlists are the rankings of my all-time fav songs & albums, as foobar remembers open playlists from last time you closed it. I keep my RYM lists to a minimum too but I have this one.

Do you transfer your vinyls to store them digitally? I've never really considered this. I mostly use Spotify to create playlists.

 

[CiG]

No I use a literal notepad, not the program.

 

[Burkhard]

I like it. Are you able to post an example of what you write?

Would you like an explanation how I proceed or what do you mean by posting an example? BTW, I should also add that even though I do a pen and paper version for each year, I transfer the total results into a spreadsheet at the end of each year, which makes it easier to tally the total number of spins each album got from me since I started this practice.

 

[Caecius]

Would you like an explanation how I proceed or what do you mean by posting an example? BTW, I should also add that even though I do a pen and paper version for each year, I transfer the total results into a spreadsheet at the end of each year, which makes it easier to tally the total number of spins each album got from me since I started this practice.

Either way. I was just curious what things you write down. Is it as simple as artist, album, and number of plays?

 

[Bloopy]

Do you transfer your vinyls to store them digitally? I've never really considered this. I mostly use Spotify to create playlists.

I'm not much of a record collector, but yes, only when there wasn't another way to get the record on digital (eg. a download code or someone else's rip). My policy was usually to only get vinyl if I absolutely couldn't find the music on digital download or CD at the time. I have about 25 records, but I got a really good quality USB turntable so hopefully it'll last a lifetime. Too much of the music I like simply isn't on Spotify, or if it is I don't trust it to stay there.

Here's an example of my file where I'm ranking my fav metal and non-metal albums together for each year. I didn't bother putting numbers, but they are ranked, ie. 1-10 and then 11, 12 etc. for each year. Since we polled metal and non-metal separately on UM, I have other files for those, and this file only covers back to about 2002 so far. It could get kinda unwieldy having every year in one file so separating 19XX & 20XX into two would help.

Spoiler

It does take a bit of work if I wanted to make those back into a playlist. Basically a few clicks to find each album, select the files and hit enter to add them to the current playlist tab in foobar2000 (gotta have the set 'enqueue' as the default action setting on).

 

[Burkhard]

Either way. I was just curious what things you write down. Is it as simple as artist, album, and number of plays?

Yes, in that order. I use squared paper, divide it into several columns, the first for artist and album title, then one for each month and one for the total at the end of the year. First, I make tally marks for each spin with a pencil, erase them at the end of each month and write down the monthly total with a pen instead. At the end of each year I telly the monthly totals for each album. I only write down albums I listen to, thus each yearly list starts with the first album I listened to in that year. Other albums are added to the list in chronological order.

 

[SonOfNun]

I use audioscrobbler to keep tracks of listens (https://www.last.fm/user/TheSonOfNun).

I started up some word documents awhile back (one for each sub-genre) listing the albums that I own so that I can do song by song/album ratings and create ranked lists.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I started a spreadsheet last year, and went bonkers with it. Now lists 2100 works by 500 artists, with a point score for each. I originally rated songs only, but started adding scores for albums that stood out as a whole without any specific songs in them standing out. I use the following rating system:

• 1 pt: good
• 2.4 pts: great
• 3.9 pts: amazing
• 6.3 pts: favorite

The scores were originally all whole numbers, but I found I had to tweak them for the rankings to make sense. At this point I'm pretty confident in the accuracy of the rankings, even across all sorts of genres. Here's my top 5 for example, based on the scoring system:

1. Iron Maiden (73.2 pts)
2. Therion (66.0)
3. Pink Floyd (61.6)
4. Black Sabbath (60.6)
5. Steely Dan (59.3)

I've got country data on most of the songs, so I can use the formulas to rank countries too:

1. USA (1151 pts)
2. England (969)
3. Sweden (242)
4. Germany (95)
5. France (83)

There's also formulas to rank shit by genre and year of release. Oldest song on the sheet is "Greensleeves" (1580). 93% of the points are for stuff that came out during 1967-2009. 2% are pre-20th century.

 

[Caecius]

I started a spreadsheet last year, and went bonkers with it. Now lists 2100 works by 500 artists, with a point score for each. I originally rated songs only, but started adding scores for albums that stood out as a whole without any specific songs in them standing out. I use the following rating system:

• 1 pt: good
• 2.4 pts: great
• 3.9 pts: amazing
• 6.3 pts: favorite

The scores were originally all whole numbers, but I found I had to tweak them for the rankings to make sense. At this point I'm pretty confident in the accuracy of the rankings, even across all sorts of genres. Here's my top 5 for example, based on the scoring system:

1. Iron Maiden (73.2 pts)
2. Therion (66.0)
3. Pink Floyd (61.6)
4. Black Sabbath (60.6)
5. Steely Dan (59.3)

I've got country data on most of the songs, so I can use the formulas to rank countries too:

1. USA (1151 pts)
2. England (969)
3. Sweden (242)
4. Germany (95)
5. France (83)

There's also formulas to rank shit by genre and year of release. Oldest song on the sheet is "Greensleeves" (1580). 93% of the points are for stuff that came out during 1967-2009. 2% are pre-20th century.

Do you calculate averages or only totals?

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Do you calculate averages or only totals?

Well the examples above are all totals, but I could hypothetically calculate an average, depending on what the denominator is. I mean, in the case of Iron Maiden, that 73.2 score comes from ratings for 41 songs (I don't rate every song in the discog), so out of the 41 songs with a rating, the average score among them is 73.2/41=1.79.