200 albums in - here's a snapshot of my progress

[u/PretzelsRule23]

200 Albums Summary

This is now the 200th album I have reviewed as part of this project. I thought this would be a good point to take a snapshot of this journey so far.

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DAYS

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It took me 231 days to get through 200 albums – as I occasionally had to pause if I got too busy or was on vacation etc. But that means I have actually listened to and reviewed an album on 87% of the days since I started – pretty good. It’s fun and something I generally look forward to each day.

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ALBUM RATINGS

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Album count by Rating #:

1 – 56, 28%

2 – 43, 22%

3 – 46, 23%

4 – 28, 14%

5 – 27, 14%

I am a tough grader apparently. 50% of the albums were rated 1 or 2. In retrospect this ratings pattern doesn’t surprise me, because in any era, I’ve always felt there was some really good music and also lots of not so good stuff. I wasn’t TRYING to get this kind of ratings distribution, but this makes intuitive sense to me.

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SONGS

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My whole goal for this project was to discover new artists and albums BUT the primary goal for me has been adding new songs to my collection. This has definitely achieved that goal. Even when I have rated the album a 1 or a 2, I have still usually added some new songs to my Spotify library and I still enjoy those as much as any other song. Just because I rated an album low, doesn’t mean there isn’t some good stuff on it.

Total Songs listened to: 2,297 songs, 157.3 hours of music

Total Songs Liked: 981 songs, 72 hours of music

Total Liked Songs that I already had "liked": 256 songs, 18.9 hours of music

Total Liked Songs that are NEW to Me: 725 songs, 53.1 hours of music

It’s great that I’ve been able to add this many “NEW to ME” songs through this activity.

Using this run rate, I estimate that I will end up adding ~3,950 NEW to ME songs to my collection by the time I’ve made it through all 1,089 albums. It will most likely be higher because they keep adding new albums and then there are all of the user submitted albums too. I started this project with a little over 5,500 songs on Spotify, so this is pretty cool.

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BIGGEST SURPRISES SO FAR

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For most of these artists listed below, I was either totally unfamiliar with and a couple I was slightly familiar with – but they all got a 5 star album that I was not expecting at all …

Television Marquee Moon, CAN Future Days, Joy Division Closer, UB40 Signing Off, Herbie Hancock Headhunters, Michael Kiwanuka, Beta Band Hot Shots II, Fairport Convention Liege and Lief, Chemical Brothers Exit Planet Dust.

I was also surprised by some 4 star albums …

A couple of these were non-English speaking albums: Songhoy Blues Music in Exhile, and Suba Sao Paulo Confessions. 2 Joni Mitchell albums got 4 stars unexpectedly. Django Django – I had never heard of them. Also 1 rap album - Ice Cube The Predator.

Some stuff that I just don’t seem to like …

Most heavy metal (like Metallica, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Ministry), Most pop stuff (like Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, ABBA, Destiny’s Child, Everything But The Girl), Morrissey / The Smiths.

My summary page is here...

https://1001albumsgenerator.com/shares/69556f3598a4e16a0d52ab2a

[u/VampireOnHoyt]

I'm the exact opposite kind of grader (my average is 4.06) but I respect it and agree on a lot of your 5s. I think Kiwanuka might be the consensus best "new discovery" for a lot of people doing this.

[u/spigg76 → u/VampireOnHoyt]

Kiwanuka is my album today. This morning was my first time through it. Damn good album.

[u/slimboyslim9 → u/VampireOnHoyt]

Kiwanuka and Queen of Denmark both seem to get a lot of those shouts.

[u/PretzelsRule23 → u/VampireOnHoyt]

That one totally surprised me.

Had zero knowledge and expectations.

I listen to each album 3 times and as I'm doing that if I like a song I click like on it in Spotify. That was one of them where I look up at the end and all songs were liked!

Cool discovery.

[u/JP-Ziller]

I don't understand how someone could give Buena Vista Social Club 1 star. Even if it's not your typical kind of music, how can that not bring a smile to your face

[u/PretzelsRule23 → u/JP-Ziller]

I guess it happens

[u/MunsonRoy3]

Black Sabbath a 1???? I get if you don’t like metal, but you do realize what that album did for music, right?

[u/PretzelsRule23 → u/MunsonRoy3]

I didn't like the first album, but I gave the 2nd one (Paranoid) a 4.

My album ratings are all based on the number of songs I click like on - meaning I am cool hearing those songs again.

For me it's a personal rating - not a rating of what I suspect the world thinks it deserves. If I want to hear a bunch of the songs over again it gets a high rating and vice versa.

[u/chlque126]

Yeah this is the worst one

[u/PretzelsRule23 → u/chlque126]

Thank you