Cleaning Music Saves Ears

I’ll tell you something- cleaning out your music, if you have a long years and several computers worth of mess to endure, is exciting. It also could be the most frustrating thing I’ve ever accomplished. Have you ever tried to go through and clean out your music folder?

Back when downloading music illegally was perfectly fine and barely mentioned in a legal manner at all (Yes. It was before Napster. Shut up), I had many a friend who were generous with their collections, and over the years I’ve acquired a good share of crap to filter out. Nearly 8gigabytes of heaven-only-knows without artist names, titles, or albums. One friend actually let me copy his entire music library. Take a moment to dwell on that, if you would. Unfortunately, most of it wasn’t my taste, so a lot of it was filtered out. I know that I could just use iTunes or WMP to organize my music for me, but that doesn’t feel quite as right as going into those folders, asking myself “wait, what are YOU?,” and clicking to see if it gets the Jilly seal of approval.

Which may or may not be an actual seal. Arf, arf! (SEAL PICTURE?) Frankly, though, when it’s not put in a good spot, it doesn’t get listened to. And people with 80gigabytes of music? Do they really listen to all of that? Am I just untrained in the art of music appreciation? I hope not! I’m working to be a music teacher!

I always feel bad removing music from my computer, though. People work hard to get their name out there, but when I listen to music for me, I want it to be music that is infectious and makes me shiver with joy. My favorite radio-esque website, Pandora, gives me plenty of music that isn’t mine for me to be content for now. I don’t want my hard drive or mp3 player cluttered with it. That makes me sound like an elitist, but let’s consider an example. The early bipolar 90’s pop rock wasn’t my flavor. Though it’s contributed to modern music I love, it would be like listening to a modern work by Crumb. I love him, but I would not listen to “Ancient Voices of Children” for kicks and giggles…. Alright. Maybe I would. I’d go give it a whirl, by the way, if I were you, because it’s something to listen to. Very technically challenging, and very weird.



It’s like cleaning out your closet. There are things you’ll hold on to even if you don’t wear them, but for the most part all that old stuff has to go to make space for the new and the brilliant. Making sure that my music folder is nice and empty lets me feel okay with getting more music of the things I really love, and I won’t feel bad buying a lot of music because it won’t get lost!

That was the best part of this cleaning process. I had a folder called “Have fun Sorting this,” in a folder called “To be Dealt with Later.” In it, I found a lot of music I really liked and forgot I had in almost every genre! I didn’t think it was possible to lose music that effectively.

So, for the New Year, I’m giving myself a “new leaf” for my music. What would you do to give yourself a new outlook on your library?