How do you 'manage' Raaja playlists

Now this is exclusive to Raaja only. Owner's pride.   

OK, Raaja has done close to 1000 albums. And no matter what kind of a fan you are, yes there are several kinds:

1. Fans who exclusively listen to his 80s work and take an occasional peek at other decade albums. I know some people in the forum who do not like the 70s or the lean period between the mid-90s to mid-00s.
2. Fans who listen to 80s and the major part of 90s and popular albums in the next millennium (The hey raam, naan kadavul, NEPV kinds)
3. Fans who listen to everything which were popular among Raaja fans
4. Fans who listen only to the hits.
5. Fans who step out of thamizh and listen to his Telugu, Mal, kannada, Marathi, Hindi works
6. Finally the ones who do all 5 and go the extra mile to dig gems, not to forget the non-filmi and background scores.

Yes, no matter what kind you are we just have too many songs to choose from. I mean imagine if you are a #1, he did close to what 500 films? Or imagine you are a #4, at least 1 out of 3 songs he has composed on an average or hits. So you are easily looking at 1500 songs on those categories.

I am sure many of us will have a huge collection of his songs in CDs, cassettes, LPs, mp3s both legal and illegal. And we only get limited time to listen to him. Not to forget, going through the collection and picking songs to play is an extremely time consuming exercise.

Given all that, how do you manage it? Do you like pick a theme and choose songs (like mother songs this week or post 2005 songs this week or 80s mal hits or TiS only) or pick up any random CD and play it or just look around (twitter, forum, Youtube channels etc.)

Please pour in your thoughts. I am genuinely interested in learning about it. I will post my strategy later  

I don't listen on the go anymore, so mine is probably not a good answer.  I only play music at home.  And what I play at home is decided purely on a spur of the moment whim.  If I feel like listening to a particular Raja song, I will do it. And if that in turn reminds me of another, then that and so on and so forth.  In between, the need to check out new releases intrudes.

Good topic Nerd. This is something that need discussion as no two Raja fans are the same. Let me speak for myself and some of my methods may be good and other may require improvement.

Firstly, I include anything that Raja does that appeals to me. However, I collect everything first.

1) Everything I collect goes into a folder structure called Raja Discography. This has 6 sub-folders (some of which can be easily blamed on legacy). Mostly the categorization is by a set of alphabets. For instance all films starting from A to D may go into Discography A-D, and so on. There is also a sub-folder reserved for background scores. That is the super set. I may not like to hear everything in that, but will need it when somebody unearths a gem. There is also a folder dedicated for remastered Raja.

2) All the songs from all languages that appeal me the most go into a separate folder called 'Raja gems'. This has about 1,600 tracks now. (About 6 Gb). Maintaining this is one helua job. This not only gets constantly refreshed as I uncover new songs, but also gets refreshed with remastered ones as I get a chance to replace the crappy ones in the gems folder. I must mention that I hate iTunes. With 5 iPODs, synchronizing them is a job by itself   

3) The best background scores go into a separate folder. I remaster background scores as the initial rips are not very satisfactory. I have a naming convention for improved BGM scores.

4) I have a huge set of folders for only interludes. Interludes are classified by the dominating instrument - guitar, violin, synthesizer, flute, shehnai, sax, trumpet, percussion, chorus. Each of these interludes that I create from the main song is also cleansed using software. I have other sub folders such as Mixes, where I take the individual interludes and stitch them together

5) To promote easy listening, I create my own subsets from the main 'Gems' folder. 'Raja Peace' has songs that are for soft listening and has no loud instruments. 'Raja Classical' has his ICM hits. 'Recent Raja' has songs from 2009 onwards only. 'Modern Raja' has songs where Raja appeals to younger generation with his orchestration. 'Raja Balu hits', 'Raja- KJY hits' are other collections.

All my sub-collections have to stay within the 700 Mb limit as they have to be part of my CD juke box in my car.

This is by no means the best method. All this organization goes through a sea change when a new album of Raja arrives. It goes into the discography first. The liked ones into Raja gems. Damn thing has to be synchronized to 5 ipods/phones.  By the time, it takes to get to my car, it takes about 3 months!  The sub folders that get created out of 'Raja Gems' go out of date immediately  

One of the greatest difficulty for a Raja collector is the way a song is spelled. This applies to all languages from most internet sites.

If the song starts with பூந்தென்றலே, it is spelled as Ponthendrale, Poonthendrale, PoonthenraLe depending on the whim of the moment.

அழகு ஆயிரம் is spelled as Alagu Ayiram, Alagu Aayiram, Azhagu Ayiram, Azhagu Aayiram. Azhagu AAyiram and so on...

The worst part of a collector's job is eliminating duplicates. I have resigned to the fact that duplicates can never be eliminated in the Raja world.

Since I started as a "rain water" guy, most of the times I continue that way (i.e. not so much in favor of "bucket thaNNi") - albeit location & technology had changed that phenomenon quite a bit.

Earlier days, the radio / bus / teakkadai / recording-center-reco / cassette-shop-arrival kinds were the ones that shaped up the "current play-list"....but not any more, nowadays, it's the internet forums / youtubes / twitter posts / saka forumer's recommendations and such that form the main part of the "rain water" phenomena.

In other words, my rAsA-listening is "controlled" by others most of the times!


(I hear some calling me "நீயெல்லாம் என்ன மாதிரி விசிறி?" but Nerd's opening post allows for my kind of lazy fellows too)

app_engine wrote:

In other words, my rAsA-listening is "controlled" by others most of the times!

+1 app........ Other's view for Raja songs......... adhuvum oru azhagu dhan................

enakaga ... Rasa.... just feelings...... tats all....... sometime..... enga oor nyabagam varum.... ennoda manushanga....

Especially my Sankar and my Bro CSR...... ivanga ethana vishayam pesi irukanga. apo ellam onum thalaiku puriyalai. ipo dhan adhula
konjam purinju iruku...   .. idhula ivangaluku en melae periya kobam. Nanga sonnadhu puriyalai. ipo indha net la matum puriji iruku endru......