There is one major downside to owning a lot of music. It’s not the worry of storage space, nor the concern of quality, instead it’s rather more trivial than that.

I can’t remember what I’ve got.

In any given month I’ll buy at least 2 or 3 albums (not CDs), and they’ll go into rotation at home and at work. Of course I don’t always pick up new albums, sometimes older ones grab my fancy, for example I went through a spate of purchasing old Rolling Stones albums a couple of years ago. Those months are pretty easy to handle, as the new stuff slots into rotation easily. The problems arise when I purchase multiple CDs, which I do tend to do, leaving newer albums to be bulk purchased at the one time.

With several new albums arriving in my playlist, I naturally gravitate to the ones that instantly appeal and stick to those for until I get bored, at which point I revert back to the tried and trusted (my last.fm account gives an accurate depiction of what those are). And there in lies the problem.

I don’t make a conscious effort to revisit music that falls in-between, the music that I last listened to a few months back lies dormant until I stumble across it randomly. I’ve been deliberately using iTunes Party Shuffle to try and revisit the depths of my music collection but I think I need to be smarter than that. Possibly knock up a Smart List that only lists tracks that either haven’t been played at all, or haven’t been played in the past six months. Yes, that might do it.. (the reverse of this, kinda..)

This post is brought to you by Aimee Mann (Bachelor No.2), The Divine Comedy (Fin de Siecle), Joanna Newsom (The Milk-Eyed Mender), and Chungking.

So, go on, delve deep into your music collection and drag out an old friend. And, if you feel like it, do let me know what you found.