I decided to make some smart playlists in iTunes, grouping my collection by decade, just to see how many songs would be in each period.
Here's the breakdown:
pre-1920
149 songs, Beethoven sonatas and symphonies. I don't have much other classical music but Beethoven has been my favorite composer since high school. I used to have some Tchiakovsky and Bach but that's been a long time. At one point I had a set of Beethoven's complete string quartets, which was amazing, but that's long gone too.
1920s
12 songs, Mississippi John Hurt's classic 1928 album.
1930s
83 songs, mostly Billie Holliday and some Gershwin. I'd love to have loads more blues and jazz from this period.
1940s
112 songs, mostly John Lee Hooker. From this decade I'm missing mostly swing and jazz, I'd quite like to have some more of the popular music of the day--Bing Crosby, Andrews Sisters, Benny Goodman, etc.
1950s
184 songs, Miles Davis/John Coltrane, Chuck Berry and James Brown. Definitely could do with some more rock and roll: Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis. The 1950s isn't really a particular favorite period of mine, though. With the exceptions I listed, most of the true "rock and roll" of the period was vastly improved on by The Beatles in 1962 to 1964, so I don't need too much more, really.
1960s
1646 songs. I might have expected a bit more here. 1,257 of these songs are The Beatles, taking into account bootlegs and live albums, plus the albums. The rest is mostly Hendrix, Pink Floyd and the rest of the Miles Davis/John Coltrane stuff.
1970s
712 songs, mostly Zeppelin, Funkadelic, Paul McCartney, Neil Young. Great stuff in this period, especially the funk.
1980s
1030 songs, mostly The Cure, Prince, They Might Be Giants, and others. I came of age during the 80s, but once I started seeking out my own music rather than just what was on the radio I was listening to hip-hop, Suzanne Vega, Pet Shop Boys, as well as all the 60s music like Beatles and Dylan. I don't feel a real compulsion to actually own too much of the real "80s music" you might hear on the radio.
1990s
3215 songs, no real way of telling what the majority is without really going through the playlist. Plenty of Prince, Madonna, Pop Will Eat Itself, They Might Be Giants, Primal Scream, Public Enemy... these are all groups I collect and they put out a lot of material in the 90s. My musical journey in the 90s is a pretty involved subject that I'll probably write more about in the future. My tastes changed a lot, I got turned on to a million different types of music, and really branched out.
2000s
2939 songs, again, plenty of Prince, Madonna, Kool Keith, The Donnas, The Apples in Stereo, Fantastic Plastic Machine... far too much variety to declare an easy majority for any one group. I'm not sure how to filter out TV shows so technically this category includes a bunch of TV like Law & Order, The Office, Battlestar Galactica and Extras.
According to iTunes, my entire music collection consists of 9968 songs, 27.9 days worth of music, taking up 51 GB of space. Somehow I thought it would be more than that.
By the way, here's my Last.fm page, which shows what I've been listening to and has awesome charts showing the breakdown by group and so on:
http://www.last.fm/user/progressions/
Jeff
Here's the breakdown:
pre-1920
149 songs, Beethoven sonatas and symphonies. I don't have much other classical music but Beethoven has been my favorite composer since high school. I used to have some Tchiakovsky and Bach but that's been a long time. At one point I had a set of Beethoven's complete string quartets, which was amazing, but that's long gone too.
1920s
12 songs, Mississippi John Hurt's classic 1928 album.
1930s
83 songs, mostly Billie Holliday and some Gershwin. I'd love to have loads more blues and jazz from this period.
1940s
112 songs, mostly John Lee Hooker. From this decade I'm missing mostly swing and jazz, I'd quite like to have some more of the popular music of the day--Bing Crosby, Andrews Sisters, Benny Goodman, etc.
1950s
184 songs, Miles Davis/John Coltrane, Chuck Berry and James Brown. Definitely could do with some more rock and roll: Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis. The 1950s isn't really a particular favorite period of mine, though. With the exceptions I listed, most of the true "rock and roll" of the period was vastly improved on by The Beatles in 1962 to 1964, so I don't need too much more, really.
1960s
1646 songs. I might have expected a bit more here. 1,257 of these songs are The Beatles, taking into account bootlegs and live albums, plus the albums. The rest is mostly Hendrix, Pink Floyd and the rest of the Miles Davis/John Coltrane stuff.
1970s
712 songs, mostly Zeppelin, Funkadelic, Paul McCartney, Neil Young. Great stuff in this period, especially the funk.
1980s
1030 songs, mostly The Cure, Prince, They Might Be Giants, and others. I came of age during the 80s, but once I started seeking out my own music rather than just what was on the radio I was listening to hip-hop, Suzanne Vega, Pet Shop Boys, as well as all the 60s music like Beatles and Dylan. I don't feel a real compulsion to actually own too much of the real "80s music" you might hear on the radio.
1990s
3215 songs, no real way of telling what the majority is without really going through the playlist. Plenty of Prince, Madonna, Pop Will Eat Itself, They Might Be Giants, Primal Scream, Public Enemy... these are all groups I collect and they put out a lot of material in the 90s. My musical journey in the 90s is a pretty involved subject that I'll probably write more about in the future. My tastes changed a lot, I got turned on to a million different types of music, and really branched out.
2000s
2939 songs, again, plenty of Prince, Madonna, Kool Keith, The Donnas, The Apples in Stereo, Fantastic Plastic Machine... far too much variety to declare an easy majority for any one group. I'm not sure how to filter out TV shows so technically this category includes a bunch of TV like Law & Order, The Office, Battlestar Galactica and Extras.
According to iTunes, my entire music collection consists of 9968 songs, 27.9 days worth of music, taking up 51 GB of space. Somehow I thought it would be more than that.
By the way, here's my Last.fm page, which shows what I've been listening to and has awesome charts showing the breakdown by group and so on:
http://www.last.fm/user/progressions/
Jeff
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