~Adveser

This is a collection of pop singles I have. Of course, they are usually not the 45 RPM single version of the albums as my collection is 100% digital.

In order to be included in this collection it has to meet any of the below criteria, plus some other notes:

* Is included in a single folder collection of pop/rock singles that I have no desire to actually collect albums for those artists.

* Is mainstream music. I'm not including singles that were released by metal bands, obviously if it is mainstream enough it will be included. It's judged on a case-by-case basis at my sole discretion (obviously)

* Singles from pop/rock albums I have. I will only catalogue the song if I know it and have the album or I would end up cataloging every single from every band I have albums by. That makes no sense.

* Hard Rock singles follow the same as above. If the band is not mainstream, it's pointless to have them included.

* I used to keep every billboard year-end top 100 track from every year since it was started on my hard drive. I don't anymore. I've deleted a lot of it that I either don't want to hear again, or have no history of interacting with the songs through media. Anything older than 1970 just got less and less relevant and created a ton of bloat to wade through to find the stuff I liked to hear. You'll find this stuff in the "Used To Own" section.

* If you want some insight on how that was achieved. It's simple. There are torrents of all of it, or were. I went through all of it and deleted the bullshit I had no interest in. Then you slowly replace it with FLAC versions pulled from the albums or compilations. You'll end up with 10 copies of some songs and then you use your ears to determine which version sounds best. You'd be amazed at the fact that some singles are extremely hard to find in good quality because 95% of the versions floating around came from poor quality masters. You'd be surprised that certain compilations are the only way to hear certain tracks in good quality because the real label has never issued it any other way but with a crippled master.

* I catalog the parent issue, unless for some reason the B-Side has a secondary issue and isn't available as an A-Side. You can thank the fact that due to the way RYM works. Rating a secondary issue creates a visibility problem.

* No, I don't particularly care how well liked, legendary, iconic or important a song is. That doesn't affect me, really. It's just another song to me. I also don't care how much other people hate a track, find it to be tacky, tasteless or irrelevant.

* Unfortunately there are a ton of songs that got and still get a massive amount of radio play or other mainstream exposure that I have archived that were never released as singles. Until RYM finds a way to catalog individual tracks, there is no workaround.

* Songs I've heard enough to rate but it will be extremely unlikely I want to play the song are also included in "Used To Own." I thought about just rating them if they "suck" and have never had them anywhere near my music collection, except in a perfect world I would just have everything I have any memory of hearing in a different folder. The amount of time this would take for zero benefit makes that extremely unlikely to happen.

* I have no intention of cataloging stuff I've never heard, have never had access to and will not be acquiring in the future. In other words I'm not cataloging singles by bands I'm familiar with for the hell of it.

* Despite the above, the popularity or accessibility of the individual songs doesn't matter. It's got more to do with if someone would have reasonable access to knowing the music existed using nothing but popular media.

* In case you are wondering why this stipulation makes sense and why not just include the metal singles, et al. too, it just doesn't make sense and if you went through the collection you would see having a Hammerfall or Edguy single in there makes no sense.

* I'm a real fan of some this stuff, so you'll notice damn near every single is cataloged. I'm not a fan of a lot of it too, so you won't see a lot of it.

* You'll ask yourself why I have it in my collection if I hate it and it's rated poorly. There's no good reason other than I don't wanna delete it.

* You'll ask yourself why I deleted a song that is great. Because I don't like it.

*You'll wonder how I've never heard certain songs, because I just didn't, was too young (born in 1985), lost all interest in mainstream music (around 1997) was listening to the wrong radio stations, etc. You'll wonder how I do know a lot these songs based on the year I was born too. :-)

* Most of this music was a private matter between me and my radios. Very very little of it has any cultural or social context at all to my surroundings at the time. I can honestly say that my taste in mainstream music was strictly how I perceived the music. No I don't remember the music videos and no one really influenced me except for my mother listening to Disco/Funk compilations in the car or something.