Cleaning Out My Closet

I was inspired by this post from Adam Wood to go through my Roon library and remove albums that didn’t necessarily belong as part of my collection. These were albums that were taken in as a result of curiosity and didn’t sustain my interest past an initial listen or two. Streaming makes it all too easy to pick up (but not acquire outright) a lot of media. We’re all new to this kind of abundance but what I’m learning is that quantity may be at least somewhat at odds with appreciation and enjoyment.

Knowing my proclivity toward collecting and being a digital packrat, I need some sort of tool to help with discernment. It was with great appreciation that I learned of Roon’s “Listen Later” feature. The feature does just what you would expect from the name — you can save items for later evaluation. This alleviates the need to automatically add anything you want to check out to your main music library. It’s very handy for keeping your collection to a reasonable size and stocked only with albums you know you enjoy.

The downside to the “Listen Later” feature is that it adds another aspirational media consumption list. I don’t know about you, but I’ve already got queues on multiple video streaming services, as well items to read later in my Reeder app and Matter. I’ll never get to everything but I’m not one of those people who saves items to those spaces only to let them rot.

I switched to a combination of the Roon music management app and the streaming service Qobuz a couple of years ago when Apple Music was giving me headaches with hi-res audio and downloads. The advantage of combining Roon with Qobuz is maintaining a robust solution for music files you have purchased and are storing locally while also getting access to a universe of audio you haven’t (yet) purchased. I use the word “yet” parenthetically because streaming sometimes serves as a preview mechanism to music I want to purchase outright. One of the differentiators for Qobuz is the ability to purchase the music you are streaming. It’s not cheap (unless you are on a higher tier plan), but it’s available in hi-res formats.

Since Roon is the price of a respectable streaming service and I have to add Qobuz on top of that, I’m paying more than I would be for Apple Music or Spotify (yuck), but I’m happy with the additional benefits.