{"id":1448,"date":"2012-12-30T18:27:34","date_gmt":"2012-12-31T02:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/?p=1448"},"modified":"2012-12-30T22:41:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-31T06:41:00","slug":"play-em-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/play-em-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Play &#8217;em All"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas Eve was an especially historic day this year. \u00c2\u00a0It ended up being the conclusion of my yearlong project to listen to all 13,747 songs in my iTunes library at least once in 2012. \u00c2\u00a0Started with &#8220;A Commotion&#8221; by Feist and ended with &#8220;I Wrote A Book About Rock and Roll&#8221; by Dr. Frank (of MTX fame).<\/p>\n<p>The exact origins of &#8220;Play &#8216;Em All 2012&#8221; elude me since it&#8217;s been nearly a year, but I recall the motivations included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Based on our <a title=\"Last.fm Charts\" href=\"http:\/\/www.last.fm\/user\/lacivi\/charts\">Last.fm stats<\/a>, we listened to a lot of the same things over and over<\/li>\n<li>I often claim that I like all of the music I own, and wanted to see how true that really was<\/li>\n<li>I was starting to worry that at some point it may no longer be mathematically possible to take on this project, so why not now?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Rigged up a Smart Playlist in iTunes and just let it count down all year.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1449\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1449\" style=\"width: 427px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1449   \" alt=\"Last Played is Before 1\/1\/12; Media Kind is Music\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/2012-12-26-09.19.33-pm.png?resize=427%2C85\" width=\"427\" height=\"85\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/2012-12-26-09.19.33-pm.png?w=508&amp;ssl=1 508w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/2012-12-26-09.19.33-pm.png?resize=300%2C60&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 427px) 100vw, 427px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1449\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">That &#8220;Media Kind = Music&#8221; bit is important, or you&#8217;ll end up including Podcasts, videos, and voice memos.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The goal was to listen to what we felt like as always, but knowing the playlist was counting down would drive us to mix things up and dive into the archives more frequently.<\/p>\n<p>There were only a couple of ground rules:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Certain albums were off limits, ensuring some gems would be saved for later. \u00c2\u00a0(The whole Beatles catalog fell into this category, under the reasoning that the joy of being surprised by the Beatles on shuffle outweighed the joy of intentionally satisfying a periodic craving for <em>Rubber Soul<\/em>.)<\/li>\n<li>Myself or my wife had to be present and at least passively listening when something was on. \u00c2\u00a0No &#8220;cheating&#8221; by leaving something on while we went out, or leaving iTunes on all night while we slept.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At first it was pretty much business as usual. \u00c2\u00a0We blazed through those well worn albums like nothing was different. \u00c2\u00a0I&#8217;d alternate between Podcasts and throwing my iPod on shuffle while commuting, diligently synching each night to watch the countdown progress.<\/p>\n<p>I had signed up for iTunes Match in an effort to have remote access to the &#8220;Play &#8216;Em All&#8221; playlist from anywhere, letting me easily sneak some extra tunes when running errands, walking the dog, etc. \u00c2\u00a0Good idea in theory, but it was almost my undoing. \u00c2\u00a0Turns out iTunes Match does a rather <a title=\"iTunes Match vs. Play Counts\" href=\"https:\/\/discussions.apple.com\/thread\/3495653?start=0&amp;tstart=0\">poor job of keeping play counts and last played data in sync<\/a>, which led to a lot of &#8220;I swear I&#8217;ve already heard this song&#8230;&#8221; thoughts before I figured out what was going on. \u00c2\u00a0iTunes Match was turned off for good after about a month.<\/p>\n<p>Event based listening took on new extremes. \u00c2\u00a0I always try to work through the Nirvana catalog on April 8 or the 311 catalog on March 11, plus have a nice playlist on standby for whenever it rains. \u00c2\u00a0This year saw new custom playlists themed for an Eclipse, Judgment Day, 4th of July, and Thanksgiving. \u00c2\u00a0Any excuse to thematically (and creatively) group bunches of unplayed songs was a welcome challenge.<\/p>\n<p>Around early September I realized the math wasn&#8217;t working and we were in danger of not achieving the goal. \u00c2\u00a0This resulted in a ban on podcasts while commuting (at least in a car; the poor showing of iTunes Match opened the door to Podcasts when commuting by foot) and perpetual shuffle play most waking hours.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s interesting the fun facts you learn about your music library in an exercise like this. \u00c2\u00a0For example, your wife used to like the Grateful Dead way more than you imagined. \u00c2\u00a0#1 artist by song count in our library, though the bulk of the tracks had a play count of zero prior to the big Play &#8216;Em All experiment. \u00c2\u00a0Ripped from CD years ago and forgotten on the hard drive. \u00c2\u00a0To be fair, I did develop a new <del>appreciation<\/del> tolerance for the Dead after working through 500 tracks this year. \u00c2\u00a0(Sorry, Jerry Garcia!)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">500 Grateful Dead songs is neither an exaggeration nor a rounded off number. \u00c2\u00a0I&#8217;m surprised iTunes doesn&#8217;t natively handle this better, but exporting my library and manipulating it a bit in Excel yields this top 15 list by song count:<\/p>\n<table class=\" aligncenter\" width=\"370\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n<colgroup>\n<col width=\"305\" \/>\n<col width=\"65\" \/> <\/colgroup>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" width=\"305\" height=\"15\"><strong>Artist<\/strong><\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" width=\"65\"><strong>Song Count<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">Grateful Dead<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">500<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">Mike Doughty<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">291<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">Wilco<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">288<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">Pavement<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">233<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">228<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">Mason Jennings<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">200<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">Bright Eyes<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">197<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">Jack Johnson<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">185<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">Nirvana<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">183<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">Jeff Tweedy<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">179<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">The Felice Brothers<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">172<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">The Beatles<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">166<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">M. Ward<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">162<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">Beck<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">161<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" height=\"15\">Jim Bob<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\">142<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Even rolling solo Tweedy with Wilco and solo Jim Bob with Carter, the Grateful Dead still rule the roost!<\/p>\n<p>Grateful Dead jokes aside, it was pretty impressive how true the &#8220;I dig everything I own&#8221; theory proved to be. \u00c2\u00a0I wish I had a better way to track this accurately, but I&#8217;d venture that less than 25 total tracks got banished to the trash via mutual veto as a result of this ongoing review. \u00c2\u00a0Most were one off tracks picked up as part of free sampler downloads. \u00c2\u00a0Only one full album ended up being a casualty. \u00c2\u00a0(Sorry, John Mayer!)<\/p>\n<p>Now that it&#8217;s done, it&#8217;s both strange and refreshing to be back in &#8220;album mode&#8221; for the first time in what seems like ages. \u00c2\u00a0Plus having the freedom to listen to anything at any time again. \u00c2\u00a0Really curious to see how this impacts our Last.fm stats in 2013&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Only downside is that I&#8217;m way behind on my Podcast listening and have 20+ episodes of Coverville to catch up on. \u00c2\u00a0(Sorry, Brian Ibbott!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas Eve was an especially historic day this year. \u00c2\u00a0It ended up being the conclusion of my yearlong project to listen to all 13,747 songs in my iTunes library at least once in 2012. \u00c2\u00a0Started with &#8220;A Commotion&#8221; by Feist and ended with &#8220;I Wrote A Book About Rock and Roll&#8221; by Dr. Frank (of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfx3-nm","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":692,"url":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/f\/","url_meta":{"origin":1448,"position":0},"title":"F","author":"LBDG","date":"July 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Random observation I had the other day: \"F\" is one heck of a consistently good letter in my iTunes library when sorted by Artist: Faces Faith No More Fats Waller The Feelies Feist Felix McTeigue The Fiery Furnaces Fine Young Cannibals (covering \"Ever Fallen In Love\" by the Buzzcocks) Fiona\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Music&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Music","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15,"url":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/pretending-im-like-kurt-cobain\/","url_meta":{"origin":1448,"position":1},"title":"Pretending I&#8217;m Like Kurt Cobain","author":"LBDG","date":"April 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I can't believe Kurt Cobain has been dead for 14 years. Both he specifically and Nirvana in general were big influences on me growing up, and that influence clearly bled into the narrator and the book. And how about this for an illustration of time travel cause and effect in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Music&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Music","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1344,"url":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/fester-tp-on-itunes\/","url_meta":{"origin":1448,"position":2},"title":"Fester &#038; TP in the iBookstore","author":"LBDG","date":"September 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Do you like your rock and roll with a heaping helping of time travel on the side, or just a la carte? Just in time for the big iPhone 5 launch, both \"Fester\" and Timely Persuasion are back on iTunes. \"Fester\" is there for the first time and keeps the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;News&quot;","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2088,"url":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/lx-origin-story-part-i\/","url_meta":{"origin":1448,"position":3},"title":"LX Origin Story, Part I","author":"LBDG","date":"April 28, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Before I dive into chapter by chapter, song by song commentary for L Extreme I wanted to provide a little background on how this came to be. Let's start at the beginning... July 2009: I purchased the special music issue of The Believer magazine at Skylight Books in LA. It\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Behind the Scenes&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Behind the Scenes","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/category\/behind-the-scenes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The Believer Issue 64, July\/Aug 2009","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/200907.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":814,"url":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/ziggy-for-iphone\/","url_meta":{"origin":1448,"position":4},"title":"Ziggy for iPhone","author":"LBDG","date":"November 28, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I knew it was only a matter of time. Previously I've wished for an iPhone app that emulates the handlink from Quantum Leap. I even had Al using an iPhone-based Ziggy in my fanfic story for the Leap Back Convention, \"Just Like Starting Over.\" Ask and ye shall receive: Ziggy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Misc Debris&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Misc Debris","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/category\/misc-debris\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ziggy for iPhone & iPod Touch","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/IMG_0360.PNG?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":530,"url":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/20-albums\/","url_meta":{"origin":1448,"position":5},"title":"20 Albums","author":"LBDG","date":"March 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Cross-posting this from Facebook since it seemed to have some relevance here.\u00c2\u00a0 Props to Scott Schnaars for inviting me to participate. Think of 20 albums that had such a profound effect on you that they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Music&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Music","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1448"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1475,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1448\/revisions\/1475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}