Accompaniment

About eight months ago, I had to buy a new MP3 player, following the destruction of my previous one. (Accidental droppage. Fortunately, I had a warranty that basically covered the price of the new one.) The new MP3 player was better in almost every respect. Better interface, sleeker look, thinner, more options for sorting and playing music.

But it did have less storage space -- 30 GB compared to the 40 of my previous player. Which doesn't really sound like a big deal, but it turns out I was pushing 30 GB of music at the time I bought. So when I reloaded all my music into the new player, I made some not-so-tough decisions at the time of albums I could really live without, and managed to buy myself a couple gigs of space.

I would need to find a way to keep culling the herd if I was to have to room for the new music I'd inevitably pick up.

I soon discovered that my new player supported attaching "ratings" to all the songs in it, which the old one did not do. And the virtual "DJ" (as it's called) can quickly pull up a random 20 song mix of things you haven't rated. So I got this crazy idea. What if I just rated every song when I played it, and kept pulling up random selections until I'd gone through the entire player? Along the way, I could delete everything I came across that got a low rating, and free up more space.

I have to say, though the space considerations were the original cause of the idea, it sort of took on a life of its own after that. Listening to every piece of music I own once. (Well, except the few I'd summarily dismissed in the first place.) How long would that take?

Well, it's not like this was the only way I listened to music on my player. I never went out of my way to avoid listening to favorite albums I wanted to hear, or new ones I'd become obsessed with. But sooner or later, I'd come floating back to these "Not Yet Rated" random mixes.

I'm not one to just sit around and listen to my MP3 player; generally, I use it for background music while I'm at work. Which means, of course, there are a variety of things taking precedence over the music. If I'm working on a task that takes greater concentration, or I need to have a meeting or conversation, or what-have-you, no music. Sometimes the music would fade so far in the background of my thoughts that I'd forget I'm supposed to be assigning a rating to every song when I hear it, so the machine knows not to play it again in some future random shuffle.

Point is, this was a slow-going project. One I wasn't sure I'd ever see the end of.

Well, that end came today, mid-morning. I went to the DJ, dialed up the "Not Yet Rated" random 20 page, and was met with the message: "No tracks in this category." I've now listened to all my music at least once.

I'm not sure what weird project I might undertake now, but I will say this. Now I can dial up some "Highest Rated" random mixes with a whole lot of variety in them.