No, I will never listen to them all, particularly when at 89 YO the time left to do that is pretty obviously limited.
But that is not the point. Variety is the spice of life and variety in music is an important facet of that.
But to justify having 60 renditions of e.g. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (not all are of the complete work) is admittedly over the top, but is it worth the time and effort to whittle it down to 2 or 3? Would not that time be more enjoyably spent spent on other music? Of course the valid question is why add yet another performance of the same work and there is no sensible answer to that!!
But having a variety of approaches to the work does avoid getting into a rut of only accepting one interpretation as acceptable. This is what has happened to a friend who rejects, and really cannot enjoy, any interpretation of a musical item performed by anyone outside his collection.
So how does one handle a music collection of so many thousands of titles?
Well Robotic Roon gives one good avenue by choosing “Shuffle” either allowing selection from anywhere or within a selected genre chosen by a tag system.
AI might not choose an item that fits the mood, no problem, just move to the next selection. This seeminly haphazard and undisciplined manner of listening might appear appalling to some but it can unearth gems of music interpretation that manual selection misses.
OK, all this is some sort of justification for an obsessive collecting bug, but the basic point of it all is enjoyment of music. And a big library is really not needed for that!
Interesting commernt. Yes I have been a bit concerned about how well Roon handled it but the only problem I had recently was with driver ene.sys - it was probably the cause of graphics fouling up and Roon hanging. But Roon does not need it nor does any other program I use so Google gave me the way to shut it and similar “Microsoft helping” drivers from working. The only other extraordinary thing happening is that unselected tags are sometimes added to albums and have to be edited out - all happens in the editing process That may have nothing to do with the library size and is inconsiustent in its occurrence so I’ve no idea what is going on.
I fully agree with you on principle. A large (local, on my NAS) music library (and mine is smaller, while I have several Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, it’s far from 60), plus a wide selection on Qobuz, for me, it’s about having choices. I may not listen to all recordings, but I can select from a variety of recordings whenever I want. It’s about having options.
I fully agree. A library is a place to pull from whenever you want. It is as large as we want them to be. As long as the person with the library has room for it. Digital storage makes it so much easier to manage the size. I am out of physical space for CDs, so those will further get reduced. But my digital library can double in size but the shape of its storage device would stay exactly the same size. I think that is pretty cool. I don’t think I have 60 versions of everything (and only need/want/have one version of The Four Seasons), but I have plenty of albums with two, three, five, seven, ten different masterings.
It is a completely legitimate way of seeing things but my personal take from that is things have changed with high-quality streaming services and their seamless integration in roon. Everything I might want to pull from wherever is out there. I need to neither have it stored locally nor as add it to my library.
I see a library rather as a curated selection, wantlist, favorite list or however you might call it which I have marked for listening to the albums later, overseeing everything and listening to many of them multiple times. If I cannot oversee it anymore or things get overwhelming when browsing, using album or composition view or whatever, I personally believe the library is too big and I would want to store albums which I rather keep for archiving reasons away from it. For me, 5,000 albums works perfectly, others might choose other sizes.
Have even intentionally reduced the number of duplicates, may it be different versions, remastering, different recordings of one and the same work. I do not want to end up comparing except for rare cases I am choosing my favorite version.
You have to have a strategy of finding what is beyond your own storage, though. So conscious search strategy and browsing are key to really integrating a streaming service.
I see my music library – to use some figurative language – as sort of a garden… there are millions and millions of albums out there, that’s the wild jungle… only some of these albums, classical recordings, jazz, film scores, rock/pop, have interest to me.
My library is practically a “pre-selected” and well curated “garden” compared to the jungle out there. I have not listened to every single recording in my library, it’s about options, but all the music there is already selected to criteria that appeal to me.
When I buy a new set of Bruckner symphonies, I don’t listen to every single one right away, but I know it’s there, I know I can listen to it any time.
There are still many places in my garden which I haven yet explored in depth, but I know they are there and I enjoy just knowing they are there.
Unfortunately, I found streaming also to be very unreliable. First of all, there are simply albums that are not available on streaming, I do have a lot of those. (Happens a lot with film score albums, where the rights issues are often complicated.) Secondly, it has happened in the past that albums that were there on streaming disappeared. It happened I think last year, when Pino Donaggio’s DOMINO was pulled from all streaming services everywhere for (to me) unknown reasons. Probably a rights/changing rights issue. Fortunately, I had it purchased already as a digital download (fro Qobuz), it was in my library.