33,000 Tracks

My music library has over 33,000 tracks. I don’t think that’s excessive. It’s more that I’ve been doing this a long time and never throw anything away.

Rock is the core — Led Zeppelin (237 tracks), The Beatles (235). But the biggest single artist by count is P.J. O’Rourke at 486 tracks, which tells you something. That number is all spoken word: audiobooks, essays, lectures, stand-up. I’ve blurred the line between music and intellectual content so completely that they live in the same library.

The most surprising thing I learned when I actually looked at my collection: 1200 Micrograms gets my highest ratings. Psychedelic electronic music. That also tells you something, probably about what I was doing at Burning Man in the early 2000s.

The Dead Kennedys and The Pogues are there with high ratings. Henry Rollins (119 tracks), Dropkick Murphys (118), The Pogues (110). Irish punk and spoken word, basically.

Hunter S. Thompson appears in the music library too. Of course he does.

I have about 2,400 spoken-word tracks. That’s where the audiobooks live when they don’t have anywhere else to go. My actual audiobook consumption has taken over in recent years — nearly everything I’ve read in the past year was audio. Commuting. Walking. Driving the Lexus.

I use the star rating system sparingly. I’ve explored more tracks than I’ve rated. Most things get one or two plays before I move on. If something earns a third play, it’s probably in the library permanently now.