There's been some talk about digital music collections in the past on threads like The Data Migration Thread , but I wanted to start a new thread! dedicated solely to those of us who are actively building up (legally acquired) digital music collections. I'm not talking about buying a CD or LP and then digitizing it, but buying music natively in mp3, FLAC, or some other format. The majority of posters on ILM seem to prefer their music on LPs and CDs, and I definitely see the appeal in doing that--up until very recently, I had to have everything in CD-- but I think there might be a few others who, like me, are starting to purchase most of their music digitally.
Recently, I've decided to go (mostly) digital. The first step in this process has been culling my CD collection. I sold off a chunk of the collection in two batches, and I'm getting ready to sell off a third. My goal is to eventually have as few physical CDs as possible, and I want all of my digital music to sit on two hard drives. Most of the new music I buy is from Amazon mp3, although I'm currently searching for some good online stores that sell everything in FLAC.
I'm doing this for several reasons:
(1) I'm 22, so I'm of the generation that sees CDs as nothing more than a storage medium. I buy a CD, rip it into iTunes, and place it on my CD shelves, where it sits forever.(2) I have a lot of books, and I'm not a fan of eBook readers, so I plan on acquiring many more books than I already own, and I don't want to maintain two physical media collections.(3) I need less shit in my life in general.(4) There's a lot of stuff that's difficult for me to easily acquire where I live, and I've been able to find some stuff that I've had a lot of difficulty tracking down in brick-and-mortar stores on Amazon mp3 and iTunes.(5) A lot of artists are starting to do the whole LP + mp3/FLAC thing, and I have no desire to start collecting LPs. I think that soon enough more and more artists will start going this route as CDs sales continue to tank.
Is anyone else actively maintaining a digital record collection or planning on doing so? Where are you buying from? How are you storing and organizing everything?
As I said, I'm sure that the audience for this thread on this board is relatively small, but I'm hoping there might be at least a few others out there who are going this route, and perhaps we can get a discussion going.
― Reading his posts is like watching The Ring (kshighway), Saturday, 22 August 2009 23:19 (3 years ago) Permalink
i can't even fathom doing what you're doing. seems no stretch of my imagination no matter how great will alow me to even consider the possibility paying for an mp3. sorry!
― samosa gibreel, Saturday, 22 August 2009 23:26 (3 years ago) Permalink
Keep all your favorite/best CDs, or yer gonna feel like a chump when that hard drive explodes
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Saturday, 22 August 2009 23:39 (3 years ago) Permalink
Much more convenient for housebreakers too, like being able to carry away a whole collection in a binder.
― I am using your worlds, Saturday, 22 August 2009 23:41 (3 years ago) Permalink
I'm more interested in how people are organizing large digital collections. Do you just chuck it all in one folder or do you take the time to set things up in an artist/album way? Do you keep multiple CDs as multiple folders or just combine it all? Do you get rid of duplicates or is that too much work? Etc.
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Sunday, 23 August 2009 00:03 (3 years ago) Permalink
I trust that when you say "two hard drives" you mean one to back up the other. Wouldn't be the dumbest thing to, from time to time, dump everything to a third that you send offsite--back to your parents' house, for example. I'd also make sure you were getting everything at the highest quality possible. What seems good now, won't. And storage will someday be irrelevant.
I just use iTunes, so that takes care of the folders and files. Two external drives (one good quality for constant use, the other, cheaper, to backup the first once a week). I do try to eliminate duplicates, but that can be a lot of work. And also to maintain consistency of names and genres. There are certainly times I feel more like a database manager than a music listener.
But I still can't see getting rid of the originals. Risky. Maybe putting them in deeper storage?
― Michael Train, Sunday, 23 August 2009 00:20 (3 years ago) Permalink
I'm more interested in how people are organizing large digital collections.
I don't have an enormous digital collection, only about 4000 songs. I organize it in a pretty standard way, I think. A folder for each artist, and then within that, folders for each album, using the format of:
year - album name
Adding the year onto the front can be a hassle if you didn't do it from the start, but once everything uses that format it's convenient because it arranges everything chronologically under each artist.
I also make sure that I have album art for each album, which has come in handy recently with my new iPhone acquisition, since you can flip through your collection by scrolling through album covers.
― ZS69 (Z S), Sunday, 23 August 2009 00:34 (3 years ago) Permalink
My concern with acquiring material digitally is bad rips - I'm paranoid about downloading something from Amazon and hearing digital noise. I've heard reports of this a number of times; I'd rather make my own rips and have the quality under my own control.
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Sunday, 23 August 2009 01:07 (3 years ago) Permalink
Z S, do you still buy many physical releases?
― Reading his posts is like watching The Ring (kshighway), Sunday, 23 August 2009 01:20 (3 years ago) Permalink
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Saturday, August 22, 2009 7:03 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark
For right now my shit's all over the place, but I'm starting to work out in my head how I'm going to manage this . . .
I'm considering starting off by organizing by the SOURCE of the mp3. So, if I download something from Amazon, it will go into an Amazon/[artist name] folder. Then I'll copy everything into iTunes and have it copy everything into its own directory structure and sort everything for me.
― Reading his posts is like watching The Ring (kshighway), Sunday, 23 August 2009 01:22 (3 years ago) Permalink
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Saturday, August 22, 2009 6:39 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark
^ This is the plan, Whiney.
Honestly, though, I usually listen to records I love 30-40 times and then I can barely, if ever, listen to them again. Wilco's a ghost is born is my favorite record of the decade, and I've barely listened to it since 2005. By then, my brain's had enough of the record for a lifetime.
― Reading his posts is like watching The Ring (kshighway), Sunday, 23 August 2009 01:23 (3 years ago) Permalink
I buy records with pretty much all of my spare money, which isn't much, admittedly. I download everything else.
― ZS69 (Z S), Sunday, 23 August 2009 01:43 (3 years ago) Permalink
I have about 45 DVDs on a spindle, each of which holds about 4.5 GB of MP3s (AACs, actually). I have a desktop iMac with a 250GB hard drive which has about 50GB or so of music on it, and I'm planning to burn all that to DVD pretty soon. I've also got a laptop (on which I'm typing this post) with a similar-sized hard drive, and that one's got about 25GB of music on it at present (because that's the one I import all my promo CDs to, and download digital promos to). I'm gonna burn that stuff to DVD soon as well. How many individual albums does all this add up to? Several thousand, easy.
― unperson, Sunday, 23 August 2009 02:08 (3 years ago) Permalink
my brain's had enough of the record for a lifetime.
Yeah, I feel the same about that Wilco album. Mind you, I've never heard it.
― Dom J. Palladino (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 23 August 2009 02:11 (3 years ago) Permalink
stop ripping. bind your cds its totally hot
― Man Is Nairf! (J0hn D.), Sunday, 23 August 2009 02:22 (3 years ago) Permalink
unperson: Do you still buy/collect any physical albums or are you mostly digital?
― kshighway, Sunday, 23 August 2009 02:24 (3 years ago) Permalink
Album art is always nice to have, in any form. To me, just collecting mp3s seems really sterile and doesn't have any connection to the process of collecting music. A lot of my best memories of music are of buying it at my favorite local store, or studying the lyrics. My thought process when I think about an album immediately begins with the album cover.
I guess there's nothing wrong with collecting music the way you are, and god knows, just about everyone your age was raised under the same circumstances. I personally never want to stop "collecting" music outside of the mp3 format, although I do realize there will come a day (in the not too distant future) that cars won't even come with CD players.
― slagterm, Sunday, 23 August 2009 02:27 (3 years ago) Permalink
and all your meals will come in tablet form.
― Someone left the cape out in the rain (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 23 August 2009 02:28 (3 years ago) Permalink
Do you still buy/collect any physical albums or are you mostly digital?
I don't keep many individual album CDs around anymore - one tower's worth, which is about 400 or so, plus another couple of hundred slimcase promos and things in weirdly shaped digipaks which I keep in a cabinet. Mostly what I keep is boxed sets, especially archival ones like the Anthony Braxton Mosaic box from last year, or the Miles Davis Complete Plugged Nickel Sessions set.
― unperson, Sunday, 23 August 2009 02:32 (3 years ago) Permalink
Yes, great idea. This works best if you put similar genres adjacent to each other (e.g., all your M0unt41n G04ts CDs next to your Bright Eyes, Dashboard Confessional and Taking Back Sunday). That way once J0hn D. gets you feeling all emo and sad, it's only a single binder page-flip to your Chris Carrabba stuff! Woo!
― I just wish he hadn't adopted the "ilxor" moniker (ilxor), Sunday, 23 August 2009 03:04 (3 years ago) Permalink
god the saddoes eager to show they've heard of me are out in force tonite eh
― Man Is Nairf! (J0hn D.), Sunday, 23 August 2009 03:09 (3 years ago) Permalink
lool
― you! me! posting! (electricsound), Sunday, 23 August 2009 03:10 (3 years ago) Permalink
:'(
― I just wish he hadn't adopted the "ilxor" moniker (ilxor), Sunday, 23 August 2009 03:42 (3 years ago) Permalink
eager to show they've heard of me
Seriously though -- considering I've been on ILM three years, that was hardly the point.
― I just wish he hadn't adopted the "ilxor" moniker (ilxor), Sunday, 23 August 2009 03:46 (3 years ago) Permalink
dude it's all love I was just rezingin please unsad that face
― Man Is Nairf! (J0hn D.), Sunday, 23 August 2009 03:59 (3 years ago) Permalink
How good a sound quality/how great a breadth would an on-demand music service have to be in order to consider doing away with having a digital collection at all?
― Philip Nunez, Sunday, 23 August 2009 04:28 (3 years ago) Permalink
I can't really hear the difference between a well encoded mp3 and a FLAC, even though I've had the opportunity to use some pretty heavy audiophile equipment in the past...tin ears, I guess. so as long as it's 200+ kbps I'm fine, which both Amazon and iTunes do now.
what are you gonna do when iTunes moves to this rumored 'Cocktail' format?
my biggest problem with a digital collection is all the metadata. do you add the lyrics? when do you feel the need to add a composer? what if you can't find a decent scan of the album art bigger than 150x150 pixels? etc.
― tony dayo (dyao), Sunday, 23 August 2009 06:25 (3 years ago) Permalink
We've got about 80gb of music on this iMac, which runs three iPods - an 80gb classic that sits on the Zeppelin, my 1gb shuffle, and Em's iPhone. It's not backed up anywhere at the moment, because we've only just migrated to this machine in the last week. We've got an external HD that'll take it all. The vast majority of it is backed up next door on a couple of thousand CDs though, and most of our listening is probably still off CDs. I've bought a few dozen songs from iTunes, mainly b-sides, odd old singles, and things that I'd not want a whole album or compilation of. I guess those are the only ones that really NEED backing up. Everything's just organised via iTunes; I'm pretty anal about covers & tags & things. I don't think we'd ever go totally digital; just yesterday I bought The XX album on CD. I love CDs too much. But then I'm 30.
― Sickamous (Scik Mouthy), Sunday, 23 August 2009 07:38 (3 years ago) Permalink
for all you guys backing up to CD/DVD, be careful: Up To 10% of CD-Rs Fail Within a Few Years
― tony dayo (dyao), Sunday, 23 August 2009 07:53 (3 years ago) Permalink
I've got pretty much my entire music collection in digital form on a 500gb hard drive (with another one as backup) for iPod purposes - however I only really buy singles digitally rather than whole albums. This is partly because I like the physical object and partly 'cos the CDs I do still buy are mostly very cheap secondhand/bargain bin ones so it's cheaper just to rip from the disc. That said, I've got rid of/have boxed up to get rid of 350+ CDs this year, basically things I've gone off. I moved earlier this year and I've got slightly less room in the new house which certainly spurred me on and I'll be honest, it feels really good paring things down (I still have loads left though!).The main reason for me buying CDs over vinyl was portability - I've always done a large portion of my listening on the move and I had a CD walkman up until a few years back. However I've started replacing some CDs with vinyl for home listening and I intend to buy more nof my new music in vinyl form (really grateful to those labels who include a download coupon with the record). I could never see myself only having a digital collection and nothing else - I'm sure I'll hang on to lots of my remaining CDs for as long as they can be played.
― Gavin in Leeds, Sunday, 23 August 2009 09:27 (3 years ago) Permalink
(really grateful to those labels who include a download coupon with the record)
Seconding this.
I think I'm at 8 or 9TB of digital files now split evenly between audio and video and I'm probably going to go to some sort of desktop RAID 5 set up once the next generation of 2+TB drives become common. I'm more concerned with having a decent file system that can handle all that and a metafile indexer/cataloger that won't collapse when I hit it with that size of data.
― Elvis Telecom, Sunday, 23 August 2009 22:56 (3 years ago) Permalink
Even if i was goin digital, I think I would throw all my CDs in storage or somethin
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Sunday, 23 August 2009 22:59 (3 years ago) Permalink
I mean, amassing a bunch of files isn't really "collecting" anything anymore is it? It;s like saying you collect pokemon
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Sunday, 23 August 2009 23:00 (3 years ago) Permalink
For those who are on PC, Mediamonkey is the only place to go.
― J4mi3 H4rl3y (Snowballing), Sunday, 23 August 2009 23:02 (3 years ago) Permalink
"I mean, amassing a bunch of files isn't really "collecting" anything anymore is it? It;s like saying you collect pokemon"
If you have a file that isn't readily replaceable/accessible (like say something dubbed off a rare public access TV performance that only you have a VHS copy of), then it takes on more of the properties of something tangible/loseable like pokemon cards, but my thinking is that music services will increasingly make obsolete any need to keep a file or file backup at all.
For example, netflix users wouldn't bother to "collect" movies they've seen on netflix, at least not with any great frequency. (though there's supposedly some pirate group that prides itself on having backed up the entire netflix catalog)
― Philip Nunez, Sunday, 23 August 2009 23:27 (3 years ago) Permalink
i don't really consider my digital music a "collection" per se, it's just me tunes
i could (and will) quite happily be all-digital in the future. i'll probably hang on to most of my cds, boxed up and stored away, more than anything else because it's not worth the time or effort trying to sell them.
― you! me! posting! (electricsound), Sunday, 23 August 2009 23:29 (3 years ago) Permalink
my digital vs hard copy purchase ratio is about 9 to 1 at the moment. i think i've bought less than 50 cds this year.
― you! me! posting! (electricsound), Sunday, 23 August 2009 23:30 (3 years ago) Permalink
well but this is what begs the really interesting generational divide question. what is your collection? a series of hard-evidence signifiers about experiences you've had & can have again at will, tangible evidence of those experiences - or is your real collection the experiences themselves, and the physical collection something of an old-fashioned proof that will no longer be necessary in the future/present? nb I am from the previous gen so for me I gotta have some physical token to feel like I "own" something. but I don't think that's the only way to conceive of "ownership," and I suspect that different conceptions - no less valid - will replace/have replaced "our" conception. it's like: I don't save ticket stubs or collect/trade shows, but I do have a collection of live music experiences - that collection is the experiences themselves. digital collections are considerably more tangible than those, right?
― Man Is Nairf! (J0hn D.), Sunday, 23 August 2009 23:31 (3 years ago) Permalink
xpost w/philip btw
"Honestly, though, I usually listen to records I love 30-40 times and then I can barely, if ever, listen to them again."
I cannot for the life of me fathom feeling this way about "records I love".
― Alex in SF, Sunday, 23 August 2009 23:48 (3 years ago) Permalink
At age 45, my big paradigm shift was when the artwork and liner notes shrank from 12" to 5", so I find myself strangely blasé (perfectly happy, actually) about the shift from 5" disc to digital file.
― Hugh Manatee (WmC), Sunday, 23 August 2009 23:53 (3 years ago) Permalink
Pardon my grammar. I'm 45, not my paradigm shift.
― Hugh Manatee (WmC), Sunday, 23 August 2009 23:54 (3 years ago) Permalink
w/r/t generational divide, I don't believe the next generation will be so alien as to maintain a digital collection against an endless buffet that makes that collection obsolete when making personal top-ten lists does all the signifying one needs (and is an activity well-enjoyed cross-generationally)
so maybe this kind of digital album collecting as if they were physical albums will be a weird hiccup peculiar to just this moment in time.
― Philip Nunez, Sunday, 23 August 2009 23:56 (3 years ago) Permalink
i can appreciate good artwork as much as the next dude but i've pretty much always listened to music the same way - compiled the best songs into whatever format i was working with at the time (tape, cdr, playlist) and listen to that, completely separate from the original artifacts. so artwork is really something i only ever looked at if i wanted to know who the producer was or something. frankly some records i appreciate more for not having the shitty artwork.
― internetkonnektivität (electricsound), Sunday, 23 August 2009 23:56 (3 years ago) Permalink
i have a car and that is mostly why i buy cds
― winston, Monday, 24 August 2009 04:21 (3 years ago) Permalink
How old are you? I found that after about 10 years, I bought a lot of albums I previously weeded out by favorite groups. Now that I'm digitizing my collection, it's not as big a deal. I'm still keeping 60% of my CDs. I'm ripping in FLAC with dbpoweramp, correct some tagging and make playlists with Mediamonkey, and listen in three rooms with Squeezebox. I will be able to fit everything on my 6TB NAS server with room to spare, and have everything backed up twice, one on extra drives at home, another at work. It's nice to be able to have access to everything at work.
I think it's crucial to use lossless files. You can easily convert them to another format with a batch converter without losing anything. Buying CDs is still the cheapest option, because you can get deals on them new and used for under $10 each. $1 to $2 a song for FLAC is just not an option. The CDs you don't want to keep, you can sell, and end up spending only $2 to $5 on the music.
I'm listening to more of my music more often now that I can play it simultaneously in multiple rooms. Living with someone else the past couple years, I had stopped listening later at night because she goes to sleep earlier. Now I can put on some closed headphones and have access to the whole collection from bed on the Duet remote.
― Fastnbulbous, Monday, 24 August 2009 13:38 (3 years ago) Permalink
i mean, one of the biggest obstacles for me re: digital is that iTunes keeps changing how it organizes things.
Like for a while it was just artist/song/album and then with a recent update you can put files in one pile while labeling it another with "sort by." Also my iphone used to recognize "sort by" so I'd sort all my compilations by "#" so the errant comp tracks just show up at the end. The new iPhone update no longer recognizes "sort by" and my iphone tracks are now a shitty jumble again.
Who knows what iTunes will change to? Or even if we'll be using itunes in 10 years?
― patti lmaonnaise (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, 24 August 2009 13:44 (3 years ago) Permalink
where we're going, we don't need iTunes
― tony dayo (dyao), Monday, 24 August 2009 13:45 (3 years ago) Permalink
iTunes is just a ID3 tag editor isn't it (at least for mp3 files) and it's such an 800 pound gorilla that I'm sure whatever player we'll be using in the future, Mp3-O-Matic 5000 or whatever, will definitely be "iTunes compatible"
the Album Artist field is such a life saver w/r/t rap albums...and Sort By is great for those who catalog by last name, among others
― tony dayo (dyao), Monday, 24 August 2009 13:46 (3 years ago) Permalink
but completely useless for people that use iphones
― patti lmaonnaise (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, 24 August 2009 13:49 (3 years ago) Permalink
This thread is all the reminder I need that I love CDs.
― they all are afflicted with a sickness of existence (Scik Mouthy), Friday, 5 April 2013 19:01 (1 month ago) Permalink
but scik do you not see that you, too, are maintaining a digital music collection? aaaaaahhh... /lee&herring
― My Sunn0))), My Sunn0))), What Have Ye Drone? (wins), Friday, 5 April 2013 19:08 (1 month ago) Permalink
^^^^^ otm ...
earlier this evening, my external hd locked up playing an mp3.i reset the laptop and kicked off a check disc process.it will take hours and hours to scan the 500Gb disc.tis for this reason i will always prefer to have the cd over digital only.
― mark e, Friday, 5 April 2013 19:09 (1 month ago) Permalink
xpost.
I've finally hit the fuck it stage and am digitizing and/or otherwise divesting off all my physical media. It feels like chewing off my own arm.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 5 April 2013 19:13 (1 month ago) Permalink
warning: if you have various artists comps, the "organize music collection" option will put EACH SONG in its own folder. So annoying.
― brimstead, Friday, April 5, 2013 2:19 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Like, each song will get its own artist folder instead of one folder that says "tighten up vol 2" or whatever.
― brimstead, Friday, April 5, 2013 2:20 PM (54 minutes ago)
Mine are grouped together in a folder called Compilations with subfolders by the album title. I'm not sure exactly where the setting for this is, but itunes def did it for me.
― sofatruck, Friday, 5 April 2013 19:21 (1 month ago) Permalink
Correction -- i posted 2 HD sizes just above; should have been listed as TB and not GB.
― bodacious ignoramus, Friday, 5 April 2013 19:24 (1 month ago) Permalink
I was gonna say!
― Jopy's on a vacation far away (Jon Lewis), Friday, 5 April 2013 19:25 (1 month ago) Permalink
So why did it? What pushed you over the edge?
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Friday, 5 April 2013 19:40 (1 month ago) Permalink
xp sofatruck I'll bet it's the "compilation" button being checked in the file info/tag dialogue. Did not occur to me.
― brimstead, Friday, 5 April 2013 20:40 (1 month ago) Permalink
Yeah this hit me too a few months ago, until then I have rarely sold off any CDs I've bought since I got my first CD player in 1991 unless I really hated them. What did it for me was the increasing number of CDs I've got that are starting to fail - some are visibly brown round the edges but others don't have a mark on them and still skip or fail to rip to WAV/MP3. I hate letting go of any of them, it's almost like a miniature version of hoarding.
As for how to maintain a digital collection I'm not really sure yet, I have everything burnt to DVD-R but I know that's probably not very reliable, I have a NAS with 2 mirrored drives in which is pretty good, I had one drive fail but put a new one fine without any problems, I should probably have something offsite though, one of my friends got burgled recently and one of the things they took was his external hard drive so he lost everything that wasn't on his PC (which he got back, the cops caught them burgling another house the same night - for some reason he never got the drive back).
― Just noise and screaming and no musical value at all. (Colonel Poo), Friday, 5 April 2013 20:53 (1 month ago) Permalink
I'll bet it's the "compilation" button being checked in the file info/tag dialogue.
yes it is this. also having the "album artist" set to something generic like "various artists" iirc
― four Marxes plus four Obamas plus four Bin Ladens (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 5 April 2013 20:54 (1 month ago) Permalink
I always unclick "part of a compilation album" and always blank out the "album artist" field
― Jopy's on a vacation far away (Jon Lewis), Friday, 5 April 2013 20:57 (1 month ago) Permalink
As for how to maintain a digital collection I'm not really sure yet,
Main storage drive + 2 backups... one kept in the same place, and another offsite, like at a friend's or your office. I update the local backup every time I add a couple dozen new albums, and the offsite backup every couple of months. Eventually cloud backups will be feasible even for large collections, but if you have 2-3TB of FLACs, it's not really an option at the moment.
Getting to the point now where the idea of jettisoning the physical CDs is very tempting. They take up a ton of space and my apartment is very small. Vinyl too.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Friday, 5 April 2013 21:40 (1 month ago) Permalink
wait so are you doing your backup policy now, because if so good for you (seriously)
― Woody Ellen (Matt P), Friday, 5 April 2013 21:43 (1 month ago) Permalink
xpost The fact that I can barely sell them for peanuts lends weight to their perceived worthlessness. It just clicked that eventually not only will they be antiquated and pointless - they're just a different form of digital, one that is heavy and takes up a lot of space - but in the very near future I literally won't have any place for them to go. If I can't sell them, where do they go? The trash?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 5 April 2013 21:51 (1 month ago) Permalink
deep thoughts about cds
― Woody Ellen (Matt P), Friday, 5 April 2013 21:52 (1 month ago) Permalink
Also, it occurred to me how many CDs I was holding onto just to one day read liner notes I knew I would never read.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 5 April 2013 21:53 (1 month ago) Permalink
On the Mac, the Organize Library feature will not put all Various Artist groups in their artist folder if you go in and set the metadata to 'Compilation'.
― brotherlovesdub, Friday, 5 April 2013 21:58 (1 month ago) Permalink
at this point the CDs I can't part with are the ones with great liner notes. all those Beach Boys twofers. Digital Underground comics. etc.
― four Marxes plus four Obamas plus four Bin Ladens (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 5 April 2013 22:01 (1 month ago) Permalink
yeah good liner notes are the bomb
― Woody Ellen (Matt P), Friday, 5 April 2013 22:48 (1 month ago) Permalink
Josh I hope that doesn't mean you're gonna be homeless! In Chicago, Reckless still offers pretty good money for used CDs if they're not shitty.
I use 1 & 2 TB Fantom Green Drives to keep a backup of my collection at work. At home I have a QNAP NAS with 5 x 1.5TB Seagate drives. And I am finishing up uploading all 4+TB to the cloud as backup via BitCasa.
― Fastnbulbous, Friday, 5 April 2013 22:55 (1 month ago) Permalink
I usually just keep it local with the store down the street, who are good peeps. How much does Reckless generally pay for CDs?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 5 April 2013 23:44 (1 month ago) Permalink
(Haven't sold there in years because it's no longer convenient for me to haul in 200 CDs.)
Few years ago I paid someone to haul all my records to reckless and sell them for me.
― Jeff, Friday, 5 April 2013 23:51 (1 month ago) Permalink
Wow, Bitcasa has pretty reasonable pricing... I probably average more than $100/year in backup drives over time, and it would be much more convenient. Maybe the cloud is feasible now!
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Saturday, 6 April 2013 01:11 (1 month ago) Permalink
I think I average about $3 to 3.50 a CD these days. A few years ago I sold off 80% of my collection and I did it in a few trips over a couple months. I sold jazz and soul to Dusty Groove because I felt they gave a competitive price and they had stuff I wanted to get in trade. I found grocery bags hold a lot of CDs quite well, but double bag 'em!
― Fastnbulbous, Saturday, 6 April 2013 01:30 (1 month ago) Permalink
This is going back a ways upthread, but why the fear of external drives vs. internal? All drives can fail. If you've got the funds, go for a better external like a Glyph or a Caldigit. (I'm sure there are others.) I use a Caldigit VR2 RAID, with the two drives set to mirror each other for constant backup. A 3TB drive, but the way it's set up it acts as two 1.5TB drives. Cool thing is that you can swap out the drives and get larger ones, all the way up to 8 TB in two 4TB modules.
― Michael Train, Saturday, 6 April 2013 02:09 (1 month ago) Permalink
hahaha, I am! there's no way I'm re-ripping 2500 CDs. I've got utilities that make it easier... they compare the main drive to the backup and only update what changes on the backups. and the backup drives are 2.5" laptop-size in external enclosures... small, don't require power supplies, and USB3 makes the transfers pretty speedy. So it isn't that hard. I do my photos and other stuff as well.
I spent too many years in tech support listening to adults burst into tears when I told them their data was gone for good to not have a backup plan in place for my own.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Saturday, 6 April 2013 04:09 (1 month ago) Permalink
...why the fear of external drives vs. internal? ― Michael Train
― bodacious ignoramus, Saturday, 6 April 2013 05:41 (1 month ago) Permalink
Bodacious got it.
I do have a really good internal HDD docking station, but I kind of want my cake and eat it, too, as I want portability and reliability--two terms which apparently do not go together. E.g., that Caldigit VR2 RAID looks huge, Michael.
― c21m50nh3x460n, Saturday, 6 April 2013 05:59 (1 month ago) Permalink
I just buy internal HDDs and put them in external enclosures which cost $15-25 each... never had any problems and it's not expensive? We must be talking about disparate amounts of data here... I'm under 3TB.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Saturday, 6 April 2013 06:16 (1 month ago) Permalink
I've got utilities that make it easier... they compare the main drive to the backup and only update what changes on the backups.
Ah good. This is all that I want to do. I don't want to synch drives or add redundancies. I just want to change the files on my backup as they're modified on the principal. I've been searching for awhile for Windows freeware that can do this but haven't been successful. I tried Cobian but can seem to configure it this way. Any suggestions?
― doug watson, Saturday, 6 April 2013 12:03 (1 month ago) Permalink
if the external hd was an ipod itunes could do the job. that incremental update thing is bascally a syncing process in one direction. but i'd be interested in reliable incremental backup software too.
― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Saturday, 6 April 2013 13:44 (1 month ago) Permalink
i'd be interested in reliable incremental backup software too. ― (alex in mainhattan)
― bodacious ignoramus, Saturday, 6 April 2013 18:44 (1 month ago) Permalink
I use Windows freeware (Karen's Replicator) to do my backups. It's pretty basic, but does what I want.
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Saturday, 6 April 2013 21:23 (1 month ago) Permalink
re: external vs internal drives - I bought a cheap DLink 2-bay NAS for £50 and whacked a couple of 2TB drives in with one backing up the other via RAID. Secure, cheap, easy to set up, and the backups happen without me having to think about it.
re: iTunes compilations - make sure the album artist is identical for everything in a compilation. iTunes should then group the compilation correctly.
― give me back my 200 dollars (NotEnough), Monday, 8 April 2013 14:21 (1 month ago) Permalink
Album Artist can be "Various" or whatever obv.
― give me back my 200 dollars (NotEnough), Monday, 8 April 2013 14:22 (1 month ago) Permalink
Relevant:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2013/04/18/177756358/we-get-mail-do-cd-hoarders-need-an-intervention
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 18 April 2013 18:42 (1 month ago) Permalink
Also relevant (try this with a CD collection!)Taking iTunes Smart Playlists To The Next Level of Music Nerdery
― ArchCarrier, Wednesday, 24 April 2013 08:36 (3 weeks ago) Permalink
I miss smart playlists so much. Spotify needs them.
― Jeff, Wednesday, 24 April 2013 10:55 (3 weeks ago) Permalink
i bought double vinyl record store day release. went to put in download code only to find there's a cd version available that nobody's mentioned before. it's £6 cheaper and lossless and would take up less space. 8(
― koogs, Wednesday, 24 April 2013 11:16 (3 weeks ago) Permalink
Yeah, there's something wrong with offering up a lossy download code to someone who's purchased a format presumably out of preference for higher fidelity. Seems it'd be far more appreciated if flacs in 24bit/96kHz were made available.
― doug watson, Wednesday, 24 April 2013 23:58 (3 weeks ago) Permalink
Really wish vinyl editions of albums would be a 7" of their two best songs on pretty colored wax and a CD or FLAC download of the entire album. Who has room for all these 12" records?
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Thursday, 25 April 2013 00:11 (3 weeks ago) Permalink
(i only bought the vinyl because i didn't know the cd existed until redeeming the download. i don't generally buy vinyl, just seems too mechanical, scraping a needle down a groove, it's 2013! still, the cover's nice)
is this, btwhttp://boomkat.com/vinyl/706887-isan-beautronics-limited-vinyl-edition
― koogs, Thursday, 25 April 2013 08:14 (3 weeks ago) Permalink
I've been trying to get my collection under control lately, and ready to digitize all of my CDs before selling them. I'm curious about what utilities you are all using. That Karen's Backup program looks interesting. Is it Windows 7 compatible? I've been using some freeware thing called SyncBackFree that does scheduled backups to my external, but the UI is complicated and I keep missing the backups because I forget and put my computer to sleep before bed. I think I will like this better once I know both main and backup versions of my mp3 collection are perfectly in order.
Right now one of the most annoying things about managing my collection is duplicates. I tried a backup to external a few months ago and now I have these two immense out-of-sync folders that are almost the same. I've found tons of sub-folders containing albums that have their own dedicated folders, as well as differing ID3 info, where I'd fixed one version and not the other. I've been messing around with a tool called WinMerge to weed out duplicates. This is a program that I've noticed a dev team at work using from time to time and is worth checking out if you have the same issue as me. The interface does take a little getting used to.
I also like Treesize (I just use free at home, but we use the pro version at work) for looking at directory structure and folder sizes.
― poopdeck pappy (beard papa), Saturday, 4 May 2013 16:29 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
FreeFileSync does about the same thing as SyncBack, but the UI is better imo.
― Dan I., Tuesday, 7 May 2013 16:53 (1 week ago) Permalink
Thanks I'll check that out.
― poopdeck pappy (beard papa), Wednesday, 8 May 2013 03:07 (1 week ago) Permalink
i bought double vinyl record store day release. went to put in download code only to find there's a cd version available that nobody's mentioned before. it's £6 cheaper and lossless and would take up less space. 8(Really wish vinyl editions of albums would be a 7" of their two best songs on pretty colored wax and a CD or FLAC download of the entire album. Who has room for all these 12" records?
does a CD really take up less space than a record? I don't know, cds seem to take up a lot of space to me. most record jacket spines are only 1/8th of an inch thick while CD jewel cases are about 3/8ths. That means the total surface area of the spine of a CD is 1.875" compared to 1.5" for a record. The depth doesn't really matter to me because it's still taking up wall space either way. The record shelf just eats into your floor space an extra 7" but that seems negligible to me. Wall space is more critical imo.
then if you factor in shelving it gets even worse for CDs. Say your shelves are at least 1/2" thick. You can fit 300 records in the same horizontal space that you can fit 100 CDs so the records plus shelving would be 12.5" while the three rows of CDs plus shelving would take up 16.5"!
If you have a 5x5 foot space on a wall and you have shelving that's 1/2" thick you can either fit 1760 CDs (11 rows of 160 CDs) or 2400 records (5 rows of 480 records).
― wk, Wednesday, 8 May 2013 05:50 (1 week ago) Permalink
and the wall of records looks 1000x better
― wk, Wednesday, 8 May 2013 05:51 (1 week ago) Permalink