Jonathan's blog

I have a large music collection, and today I wondered how physically large it might be in various obsolete formats (not including the playback equipment).

SD card	MiniDisc	CD
Cassette	LP	1/4" tape

In its current form, it is stored on a hard disk as 59GB of MP3 and other digital compressed formats. It has a total playing time of 718 hours – just a touch under a month.

OK, so EP was a slightly facetious choice of format for storing an entire music library, but if we compare the SD card to a stack of LPs, the LPs weighs 86,000 times more, and is 248,566 times larger. In fact, the LPs would be about the same size as a wheelie bin, and weigh as much as two people.

While the reel-to-reel tapes are a bit smaller, they also weigh almost half a ton!

If you’re curious about the definitions I’ve used in these back-of-the-envelope calculations, see the following section.

Definitions

• Audio CD – Playing time 80 minutes, in hard jewel case with paper inlay
• MiniDisc – Playing time 74 minutes, in hard case
• Cassette – C60 cassette, playing time 60 minutes, in standard hard plastic case
• Reel-to-reel – ¼” 1800′ tape on 7″ reel, 7½ips playback speed, playing time 48 minutes, in card box
• LP – 33¹/₃rpm 12″ vinyl, playing time 50 minutes, in thin card sleeve
• EP – 45rpm 12″ vinyl, playing time 25 minutes, in thin card sleeve

Everyone on Facebook seems to be taking part in the 30 Day Song Challenge recently. I can’t be bothered to publish one item a day on Facebook, so I’ve just compiled the list here instead. Enjoy!

1. Your favourite song – Awaken by Yes
2. Your least favourite song – Friday by Rebecca Black
3. A song that makes you happy – Paris by Apathy Point
4. A song that makes you sad – Nimrod by Edward Elgar
5. A song that reminds you of someone – Think of Me from Phantom of the Opera
6. A song that reminds you of somewhere – Millennium by Robbie Williams
7. A song that reminds you of a certain event – The Zookeeper’s Boy by Mew
8. A song that you know all the words to – Shake Your Tailfeather by Ray Charles & The Blues Brothers
9. A song that you can dance to – In The Mood by Glenn Miller
10. A song that makes you fall asleep – Awaken by Yes
11. A song from your favourite band – Comforting Sounds by Mew
12. A song from a band you hate – Psychosocial by Slipknot
13. A song that is a guilty pleasure – Someone Like You by Adele
14. A song that no one would expect you to love – Summer Nights from Grease
15. A song that describes you – Silence by Delerium
16. A song that you used to love but now hate – The Hamster Dance by the Cuban Boys
17. A song that you hear often on the radio – Born This Way by Lady GaGa
18. A song that you wish you heard on the radio – Judas Iscariot by Rick Wakeman
19. A song from your favourite album – Going For The One by Yes
20. A song that you listen to when you’re angry – Sandstorm by Darude
21. A song that you listen to when you’re happy – Hillbilly Music by Kitty, Daisy & Lewis
22. A song that you listen to when you’re sad – Adagio for Organ & Strings in G Minor by Tomaso Albinoni
23. A song that you want to play at your wedding – Prelude and Fugue in C Major by Johann Sebastian Bach
24. A song that you want to play at your funeral – Vevey (Revisited) by Yes
25. A song that makes you laugh – London Underground by Amateur Transplants
26. A song that you can play on an instrument – What’d I Say by Ray Charles
27. A song that you wish you could play – Toccata from 5^th Organ Symphony by Charles-Marie Widor
28. A song that makes you feel guilty – Do They Know It’s Christmas by Band Aid II
29. A song from your childhood – Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio
30. Your favourite song at this time last year – O Verão em Amsterdam by Sensuàl

For a while now I’ve been using a service called last.fm. Basically it (a program called a scrobbler) monitors what music I listen to and compiles statistics. I only do it because I find statistics interesting, and often I surprise myself that I’ve listened to lots of an artist that I never really considered one of my favourites, for example.

last.fm can also recommend other music you might like, based on your taste which it works out from what you’ve listened to recently. I don’t bother with this because I don’t like being told what to do

last.fm is free to join and the scrobbler will run on many platforms. I currently scrobble on:

• Rhythmbox running on Fedora at home
• Windows Media Center running on Vista at home
• iTunes on Mac OS X at work

Of course, as with every similar site, there is a widget you can embed into your website, Facebook page, etc, etc. So here’s mine.

If you’re really interested in seeing more of my musical history, my Music Profile has many more views. You can even compare your musical tastes to mine!

No, really. I’m not interested in comparing tastes or building a network of friends, and I don’t expect you to find my history interesting. I just scrobble because I find my personal results interesting. Give it a go; you might too.

I realised I was getting old earlier when I was listening to an internet radio station and a trance tune came on. My first thought was that my ALSA server had gone wrong, what with the jittering and odd noises.

Back in my day, trance was tuneful, I’m sure of it…