Music gets me through the day. It helps me focus, reduces distractions, allows me to plough through boring tasks and lets me head-bang whilst I code.

Over the years I have amassed a fair collection which is now stored completely digitally and continues to grow as I discover new records.

I'm showing it off over there in the right hand column, isn't it pretty? You should probably ogle over it at full size.

Vital Statistics

Currently clocking in at 8.7 days worth of audio. Spread over 296 albums and taking up 14.52GB of hard drive space. It's backed up via Time Machine and online to BackBlaze¹.

Play List

My collection is built using a Smart Playlist in iTunes. Although it already has a music section it's far too broad and can include all manner of media. Instead I had to put together a rather hotchpotch set of rules to filter out all the noise. You can see it on Flickr if you're interested in how it works.

Album Art

You might be able to tell from the screenshot, I am a little nutty when it comes to album artwork. I systematically went through and ensured every single album has artwork. iTunes already does a good job with this, but where the album wasn't in the database I had to trawl the internet for suitable artwork, when I couldn't find any I made it myself.

Stolen Sounds

I purchased the majority of music in my collection, since 2007 I have spent almost £1000 in the iTunes store. Before then all the music I owned was on CD. Some of the music you see here was borrowed from friends and family, ripped and returned.

There are also roughly five albums that were acquired illegally via Bit Torrent. This is always a last resort, for when I can't purchase the record online or on the high street, and when that has been the case for a long while. Others were already completely out of print. This is not justification for breaking the law, but it is the truth.

Recommend a Record

I'm always on the look out for new music, and I always like to broaden my horizons. Although not everything is to my tastes I like to think I am open to pretty much anything.

With this in mind, if you have the time take a quick glance at my collection, see what I'm missing and suggest something fresh for me to check out in the comments. Go ahead and post up your own collection somewhere and I will do the same.

Hopefully with your help I can expand my collection even further and take my musical tastes in new and interesting directions.