iTunes Weeding

I think I've hit something of a wall with iTunes and my music collection. I currently have 8,744 songs on my iTunes which means I can go for 24 days and 13 hours without hearing a single song repeated. I mostly set my player to shuffle the songs and just listen to whatever comes up. While I absolutely love having that much variety, the truth is that I'm starting to miss the songs I really love. Take this evening, for instance. It shuffled to a song called "Extraordinary" by Annetenna - a song I easily rated 5 out of 5 stars. Sadly, it has only been played twice.

So, my mission over the next few weeks is to trim down the library. One of the reasons I keep so many is songs is because sometimes a random song will come on and it will just grab me and become an instant favorite. A perfect example of this is the song "Home in the Woods" by Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons. I never know when some random song will catch me and speak to me. One time, my fianceé asked if I thought I had enough songs on my computer and I said, "Yes - but there's still good music I haven't found yet."

*sigh*

As it stands right now, I have -

- 44 items not rated (new albums and such).

- 73 items rated 1-star out of 5. I've weeded out a lot of-1 star items, but I rate most of the free TV shows and podcasts as 1-star since it doesn't really matter.

- 318 songs rated 2-stars.

- 2,283 songs rated 3-stars.

- 4,665 songs rated 4-stars.

- 1,413 songs rated 5-stars.

I already see some cutbacks coming to artists I am kind of in the middle on. I probably have their entire albums (either purchased, borrowed or "found") but only need 75% of their catalog. So those filler songs by 311, Queens of the Stone Age, White Stripes, Rubyhorse, etc. will probably get chucked first. That's my guess. I'll report back on my weeding as it progresses.