Audio Overload!

I was wondering when this would happen. Music and other audio content has reached a saturation point for me. I'm saturated with sound. It's a good thing, but I'm trying to figure out how to deal with it.

Let me explain. I have a 30 GB iPod, I have about 1,000 CDs ripped and stored on my hard drives ready for listening. The CDs are now in storage. I subscribe to about 25 to 30 podcasts. Including Dawn & Drew, Zoe, Barack Obama, The Ricky Gervais Show, TWIT, The Sound of Young America, Swedelife, and a bunch of others. I subscribe to Yahoo! Music Unlimited and can listen and download nearly any album that's been released. I have a Creative Zen for that. I subscribe to XM Radio to listen to baseball games, especially the Oakland A's. But I also listen to XMU and Air America Radio on XM as well. They have about 160 other stations too. I listen to NPR and sports talk on the car radio too.

I also just started using iFill by Griffin. iFill lets you record audio streams from SHOUTcast channels and saves it to your iPod. That means I can record KCRW and Indie 103 from LA and listen to it whenever I want.

This doesn't include the new music that I still purchase either as a CD or through iTunes. Do I dare mention audio books?

There is now not enough time in the day to absorb all of this. I'm not complaining, this is what I've been wanting. But there needs to be a better way to handle it all. Either I need to change my behavior and limit my choices, or someone needs to invent an intelligent system to allow me to absorb and manage this content more effectively. I feel the same with RSS feeds, in fact they are very similar.

Another problem is that I have to deal with several different services, mediums, devices, and systems in order to get the audio that I want. I have to pay for them all differently and manage them differently. Hell, if I really wanted to, I don't have to pay for any of it.  The fact that I do bother to pay should give me some way to manage it better.

The music like water concept becomes more appealing. Maybe it should be "sound like water."  Anyway it's more than a payment solution. It's a distribution system that flows like water as well. It's everywhere. You can get it when you want and where you want. It's portable. It's alive. And most important... you don't even have to think about it. It's just there for your enjoyment.

But for now, when am I going find time to listen to that new The Sword album?

Comments

[Andreas Pardeike]

Hi,

I'm the programmer behind iFill. Thanks for mentioning iFill. I wrote it for my own pleasure and Griffin took over the distribution.

Greetings from Sweden,
Andreas