I have a large iTunes library. It doesn’t represent everything I have ever heard, nor everything I have ever loved, nor even everything I own. But that iTunes library is becoming a beast to manage.

There is SO much data about the music—that isn’t the music—but is integral.

Recently I have made it a personal project to make sure a single piece of information exists for each track: the release date, the day it became available for sale to the public.

I began this project because I was completely dismayed at the amount of music I have imported into my library without a date at all, and also frustrated by the number of albums imported with a re-release date instead of the original release date. The re-release date to me is like restoring a 1966 Ford Mustang and then saying it is a current-year Ford Mustang. No. Therefore, even when an album is remastered a second or third time, it is still a product of its era.

The release date is important to me. I remember where and when a piece of music was first a part of my life. I remember the order albums were released by favorite artists. So, when I sort my library by date, I want it to match that experience. For example, when I was a Freshman in high school, there was a radio show from midnight to 2 AM on Monday mornings where I first heard Mad World by Tears for Fears. This is opposed to the first time I heard Shout, also by Tears for Fears. I was a Junior in high school by then. I walked into Musicland in the Ridgedale mall in Minnetonka, Minnesota. It was playing in store and I bought the cassette on the spot. So my iTunes library had better get it right.

Aside: In the movie High Fidelity, the protagonist spends significant time sorting his collection of albums chronologically by relationship. This makes enormous sense to me.

Back to data: that raw list of data—disembodied though it is from the music—is becoming something I refer to much as I used to refer to liner notes, those tiny cassette j-cards, or the somewhat larger CD booklets. I don’t always remember the details, so I want iTunes to be true.

Another case where I find date information jarring is with “greatest hits” or other career-spanning collections of songs. The date associated with a song in this case is often the release date of the collection. Yet, that date might be decades removed from when a song in the collection was originally released. This is important to me because I have playlists built by decade. When I am hearing Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, which Kylie Minogue released in 2002 (in the US), I don’t necessarily want the next track I hear to be Mother’s Little Helper just because the Rolling Stones' “Forty Licks” compilation was also released in 2002.

Speaking of which, it took the “Forty Licks” compilation to make me realize I am a bigger ‘Stones fan than I thought, particularly with material released before 1970. I also now have a more profound respect for their career longevity. They are still making music.

So, in my iTunes library, the songs from “Forty Licks” all reflect the year they were released as singles, with the exception of the four tracks that appear nowhere else—those tracks stay in 2002, though I did for a long time consider dating them from the sessions in which they were recorded. I have reconsidered this position repeatedly.

There are still about 3,000 items in my library that are un-dated.

Don’t even get me started on missing or incorrect album art.

I will be researching music for a long time to come.

This post was brought to you by WikiPedia, Discogs.org, and Google Image Search.

I don’t claim any special privilege, knowledge, education or access. Like many friends, and friends I haven’t met, I simply love music.

I got my first portable FM radio somewhere around the Christmas of 1978, and I have been trying to carry music everywhere with me ever since. It means that much to me.

In 1990 I went to work at a record store. You see, I thought I knew about music. I had been actively listening to radio and watching MTV and going to other record stores. I must have had a few hundred cassettes and dozens of LPs and dozens of CDs by then.

I found out that I didn’t know much. The next four years blew my head open, again and again. The reality was, despite what I knew, the information flowed in reverse: I was learning from customers and coworkers. I was forced to confront my many biases because they got in the way.

I learned that the amount of beautiful music never played on radio, never on TV shows, never in movies, never in clubs, is astonishing. In fact, it is overwhelming.

It is impossible to keep up, to keep current, to be aware of all scenes, or to keep just one scene alive.

Music is a vast and deep ocean. Changing a perspective just slightly cracks open new ways to appreciate what you hear, to develop a feel for where it came from and for why it must be. Look at genealogies and chronologies of influences and genres. Consider political movements, cultural identity and social issues. Look at how technology has affected everything: production, performance, distribution, storage, spectacle, and ultimately what it means to be an artist.

What is harder to explain, and what makes music so deeply personal, is that something in a musical passage that sends chills up your spine, the lyric that always makes your voice break, or that sound that insists that you must move.

I hope to write about all of those things. But I warn you I probably won’t do it in any sort of ordered or organized fashion. I hope to impart a sense of wonder. And I hope that I keep learning.

Note: Because Billy Joel once lamented “…You can’t get the sound because it’s only in a magazine…” (It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me from Glass Houses), I hope to provide links to lyrics and videos where they exist and when appropriate.