Maintaining a Digital Music Collection

I have to regularly remind myself I am a music fan, not the worlds designated archivist for music that i might be interested in..

Massive cosign.

Word. I wonder if it's an age thing - I went through years of angst after seeing things in a shop and not picking it up, only to have it takes years to find it again. That is simply not a factor anymore.

But my original question, which I suppose is broader than just maintaining a digital collection, is whether it's ultimately preferable for most artists to go with a smaller compilation rather than a large catalogue of albums. I suppose that depends on the relationship one has with each artist, but from a broad too-much-music-too-little-time perspective, I think it is a more practical approach.

I have to regularly remind myself I am a music fan, not the worlds designated archivist for music that i might be interested in..

OTMFM. This should be a motivational poster.

Perhaps related:

http://jonathanbogart.tumblr.com/post/29027261044/this-is-a-link-to-hundred-song-album-on-spotify

Interesting...

http://www.grammy365.com/news/recording-academy-launches-give-fans-credit

interesting and hilariously misguided. they should petition record companies, not digital music services, if that's what they really want. tell the labels to figure out a way to actually collect, catalog and deliver all that information, and i guarantee you the big digital services would be glad to sit down with them and figure out a way to disseminate it to the public. but first things first. first, you will have to explain to warner bros that neil young's first two albums did not come out in 2009, as their metadata currently claims, and that bruce springsteen's first two didn't come out in 1984. not you, ned. you, the recording academy. once they get that part right, maybe than can see about figuring out who did the backing vocals on each track of those albums along with every other album in their catalog.

recording academy prez/ceo neil portnow quoted in the press release:

"We can watch movies online with the credits included, and the same should be true for digitally released recordings."

maybe someone needs to explain to mr. portnow that movie credits are actually PART OF THE MOVIES.

or maybe just tell every recording artist to make the last verse of every song a recitation of all the names involved in writing/tracking/producing/mastering that song. problem solved.

I've been putting off having to dismantle hard drive cases and stick external hardrives into my main computer tower while I try to salvage data .
Do need to get more space to put things as in a 2TB external so I can extract hopefully surviving data. Kept getting hard drives failing a few months ago. I think it had to do with a kettle on the other side of the room sitting in liquid which triggered the fusebox to switch off an scuppered hard drives in the process.

I had been trying to put all of each artist together in one place on a harddrive over several hard-drives. hadn't backed everything up further.
Subsequently have lost my collections of several of my favourite artists, live stuff at least.

maybe just tell every recording artist to make the last verse of every song a recitation of all the names involved in writing/tracking/producing/mastering that song. problem solved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpM0shqoqZA

(one on the australian aphex singles collection too, 51:13, track 12, Respect List)

Bruce Willis is going to fight for the right to let your kids inherit your iTunes library.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/sep/03/bruce-willis-apple-itunes-library

(xp I like the one on "Prazision" by Labradford, which is the thanks list read through a vocoder. Well, I liked it the first time. By the third or fourth listen it's less amusing.)

I still like that, it just feels so understated and sweet.

"we shld maybe stop making music in the context that 75% of iTunes never been dwnldd once"

- matthew herbert

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/this-is-christian-dubstep/id554202109

My Squeezebox is still running, but what to do when it finally is kaput?

There's a crazy number of streaming options now, from TV's with DLNA access to Sonos (who's much more reasonably priced now) to AV receivers that offer streaming options.

Sonos rules.

I hope Logitech goes out of business quickly so somebody competent can buy the rights to the Squeezebox product line and codebase.

I've been eyeing up this as my squeezebox radio replacement

http://www.robertsradio.co.uk/Products/Internet_radios/STREAM83i/index.htm

specifically as a kitchen radio, where I want podcasts and internet radio in a small box that lives on the microwave.

I never use the music streaming of the squeezebox radio, but i do use the spotify app.

I'm gonna miss that.

Had one of those Stream 83i's for a couple of years. Love it. Sounds great. Only complaint is it doesn't cope with displaying times when streaming FLAC's from our PC, but that could be a software issue (currently using Serviio). Recently got hold of some free software that allowed me to stream Spotify to it, need to check if that's been broken by recent Spotify changes I just read about here.

so. I had a hard drive with my MP3 library on it die. I bought a new drive, and successfully copied all of the files from my iPod onto it. However, a huge chunk of the files apparently have no artist/songtitle/albumtitle info associated with them if I view the files in Windows Explorer (some did, and I spent a good chunk of yesterday organizing them into folders etc.) Sure, if I open any of these files up in iTunes they come up with titles etc. there, but for purposes of archiving and sharing files with others, it would be ideal if I could actually see this info in fucking Windows Explorer. I was super-diligent about keeping all this info straight before I put anything on my iPod, so I know this info is in there somewhere... but if I have to open every file individually, figure out what it is, and re-enter that info I am going to go insane.

any suggestions?

basically all these files have four letter names (XXXR.mp3, etc.) and the "Artist", "Title", and "Album Title" are blank in Windows Explorer.

What did you extract them from the iPod with? I used SharePod which did a rly good job of getting out all the folder structures etc.

Also-- are you seeing the non-info'd tracks with their ipod file names (like ERVQ or CIHD or NKSO or whatever) or with their song title file names?

oh xpost ok

try SharePod, it has a 'back up iPod' command that backs up the whole thing incl playlists to whatever directory you spec

I just went in to "view hidden files" in Windows Explorer and copied everything over (I think I got instructions on how to do this from Wired.com awhile ago...?)

I guess I could try this Sharepod thing and start over

well that didn't work

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at SharePodLib.IPod..ctor(DeviceFileSystem A_0, IPodLoadAction A_1)
at SharePodLib.IPod.GetConnectedIPod(IPodLoadAction action)
at o.a()

that's exactly the trajectory I had. Did the view hidden files thing, got too many inscrutable four-letter filenames, looked up other options. There might be several that do a good job, but I can personally attest to SharePod.

xpost now that's above my head :(

http://spotify.com

fuck spotify

I don't like their economic model, I don't like the limits of their library, I don't like not actually owning copies of things if/when their service tanks etc

My apologies if this already has been covered (I've not read the entire thread), but what external HDD do you guys recommend?

I have three internal hard drives, ~3TB of data (music and film). I am really scared to move to external HDDs, but the problem is I honestly do not have any more space and I need space very badly. My limited space has now forced me to move on to streaming music, so I signed up for Spotify, but I don't see this as a long-term solution.

Basically, I want something that is reliable and won't die on me or is that not possible? Ideally, a 2TB HDD, but I will most likely need to buy two of them. Also, it'd be nice if it was fast, as sin 7200 RPM. Obviously, not solid state, because I don't want to spend an arm and a leg.

Any suggestions? It seems like all external HDDs have problems.

xp. i don't quite understand the problem. if the files are in itunes you can always have itunes organize the directory structure and file names (in settings - advanced or something like that). maybe the itunes library files can be of use as well: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1660

I'm perfectly happy with my 3 TB Seagate external, it's been going strong for over a year. Of course, I have on-site and off-site backups as well.

http://bit.ly/XXKfdW

i remember when makers had something to say but that was a long time ago...

― Bee OK, Wednesday, April 3, 2013 7:34 PM (2 days ago)

if the files are in itunes you can always have itunes organize the directory structure and file names (in settings - advanced or something like that).

hmmm yeah I haven't tried this because the library is too big to fit on my hard drive, so I've got it sitting in a folder on the external drive labelled "iTunes" and I've been a little hesitant to trust what it's going to do...

That was going to be my other suggestion, just drag the whole mass into itunes and let it folderize them.

But hmmm i wonder why SharePod did not work...

yeah the iTunes "organize library" function organizes the iTunes folder that's on your hard drive. which is empty at the moment. because I can't fit my entire library on my laptop's hard drive. we're talking 130GB of stuff here and I have a 5yo laptop.

warning: if you have various artists comps, the "organize music collection" option will put EACH SONG in its own folder. So annoying.

Like, each song will get its own artist folder instead of one folder that says "tighten up vol 2" or whatever.

i've pretty much given up on any intelligible organization of my digital music collection. it all pretty much goes into one folder and then i back that up every week onto a 2TB external HD.

xpost Shakey, I believe you can set itunes prefs to create that folderized library in any directory you specify? Even an external HD?

I'm okay with it being disorganized as long as I can tell what the fucking files are by looking at their file attributes. I like to share stuff.

xp

ah yes thx Jon, I see I have to change the default iTunes Media Folder location...

and away we go

let's see how long this takes...

hmm that... sort of worked

what external HDD do you guys recommend? .....it'd be nice if it was fast, as sin 7200 RPM..... ― c21m50nh3x460n