Maintaining a Digital Music Collection

Plug in iPod. Click on iPod under "Devices" on the left side menu. Click "Manually manage music and videos".

That's it. When you click on the iPod, you will see what's on it. Remove what you want. Go back to your library and select various files and drag them to the iPod and they will move to the iPod. Or drag entire playlists to the iPod or get more advanced with smart playlists. I have 321 gigs of music, so syncing hasn't been something I'd consider for a long time. But I also have never felt the need to carry close to my entire collection with me. I bought the 8 gig Touch, and I have some stupid big apps on in. Even with all of that I've still got 6 or so gigs on there. But it's fast enough that I can sit down before leaving for work, empty the entire iPod and decide "oh, I want these 20 playlists". Currently I have 89 albums by 29 artists, all suited to my mood this week for commuting.

dan, thanks for this. i'm nervously about to try it now. i say "nervously" because things have worked fine with my iPod for a while now, and so i'm afraid to tinker with it (when i have, bad things have happened!). but i've got to solve this problem sooner or later, so i'm acting now.

my screen is a little different. when i plug in the iPod, i see "options," which includes an open box for "manually manage music and videos." i assume i need to click that box. but what then? will all my music on my x-drive automatically be stripped from my iPod, forcing me to opt-in anything i want?

so anyway i sold all my remaining vinyl and CDs last Monday :o

will all my music on my x-drive automatically be stripped from my iPod, forcing me to opt-in anything i want?

yes

wau at steve! living in the future already

it worked like a charm (so far). i feel like i've unburdened myself with all the stuff that i won't be carrying around on my ipod unless i want it.

now my other fear kicks-in, i.e., that something happens to my x-drive and i lose my music collection. so my next set of posts, for some time in the future, will be on the mechanics of saving the stuff on my x-drive to a second (backup) x-drive.

anyway, thanks everyone for the help.

I realized later this works differently at times. With my iPod Touch, under devices I click on my ipod, then click on the MUSIC tab and click off Sync Music.

It's really not a big deal. And if you lost your x-drive, which I guess means external? you'd still have a hassle getting the music off the ipod. It's not supposed to work that way but there are ways I think.

Still the easiest thing to do is just use time machine or super duper and back everything up. It's really easy and really cheap.

another good backup program is Syncback - the free version is good enough for most people. You can customize various backup routines between various devices. Works like a charm.

http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/3607/empty.jpg

I've just entered 2003: I'm 100% digital now.

respec knuckles

Congratulations. Welcome to the rest of your life.

i feel new

I pity anyone without an excuse to get excited about going to a record store on a Monday morning. Or a Tuesday in the States.

^^^YES

a Monday morning? wtf get a job

my stuff actually went to a guy i know who DJs but also hoards ridiculously. he said me brutally getting rid of it all (not a whim really, just had to move and will likely be moving again in a month or 2 so tired of lugging it around to each place when all they do is sit on shelves/in boxes) was actually inspiring him to start doing the same. it didn't really make any sense! but v relieved he took them.

My wife and I are ripping our entire CD collection as we move to a new apartment to try and make room for baby stuff. It's taking forever but we are making some extra $$$ as we gradually sell them which is nice. I'm holding on to our record player and records though. Next I get to figure out how to set up Time Machine to back up our music.

hey congrats re baby

Are you planning on selling all the CDs after you're done ripping 'em?

(Seconding blueski too: congrats!)

I want to sell all my records, but wow, what pain in the ass. I thought about ebay, but I don't want to have to create all those listings and then deal with it when someone says it isn't the quality or something they were expecting. Plus I have no idea what any of these would go for these days.

Yeah we took one batch to the record store already, and we've got another set about ready to go. We were hoping to not overwhelm them but dude who had to look through our stuff seemed kinda pissed when we brought in three grocery bags of CDs last week. We're going to a different location this time.

Jeff, just take them to Reckless or Laurie's. You probably won't get as much $$$ as if you sold them yourself but it's no hassle.

The guy at Laurie's was kind of a dick (in a "funny" way) when we brought him the CDs that Reckless rejected from our first batch.

I'm still on track to donate to KUCI though I admit I haven't heard back from them in a bit. I'd half-heard that their library is kind of a chaotic mess at this point in terms of sheer volume, which wouldn't surprise me at all.

So I'm new to Mac and also finally ripping all my CDs. I'd like to let iTunes do everything but I'm curious if the iTunes LAME encoder works transparently (i.e. pop the disc in and encodes LAME in the background, adds to iTunes library and ejects disc) or if I would have to click something for every disc (trying to avoid that). Otherwise, just going to encode everything using iTunes 320 CBR mp3.

I pity anyone without an excuse to get excited about going to a record store on a Monday morning. Or a Tuesday in the States.

^ Real talk. I still buy CDs on release day, don't download in advance (or at all, honestly).

I've just entered 2003: I'm 100% digital now.

Better fill up those shelves with some BOOKS! :)

spencer the itunes LAME encoder is great--it just pops a little window where you do your encode settings but otherwise it's exactly like a regular rip to itunes.

spencer I think the program called Max may be what you want fir industrial strength ripping

I'll try both, thanks!

Max is great. Switch is another one, but Max is awesome. When I was djing weddings with my CDJ400s, which only read the file name and mp3 files, I'd make an iTunes playlist, then copy everything into a temp folder, then drag them into Max. Max would convert everything from AAC to 192 MP3, then re-name the file Artist-Song.mp3 by reading the ID3 info.

Nice, I'll definitely try it out.

I'm also wondering if there's a way to save CD images as files, which could then be read by iTunes as an actual audio CD?

I'm thinking that might be ideal for archiving, since WAV/AIFF don't have tags.

itunes ripper fucked up so many tracks for me. i could do with a program that does a quick scan of your mp3s and reports any bits within the tracks that are completely muted/silent (thus likely to be a ripping error).

I use CDex to rip CDs which tells you if there were any errors

And then some discs that error in the computer CD drive can still be ripped if they play OK in your hi-fi CD player via line-in like ripping vinyl.

if you're on windows, the *best* is EAC - exact audio copy - plus LAME. EAC can actually do 'data recovery' on scratched CDs.

on Mac, like mentioned above, Max is pretty good.

if you're set on using itunes, open up preferences and enable 'error correction' for importing, should help a little bit.

i <3 EAC

a Monday morning? wtf get a job

Yeah, alright - Monday lunchbreak...

anyone gone down the XBMC/HTPC route? looks nice
http://cache.lifehacker.com/assets/resources/2008/07/aeon.png

once you realise what kind of maintenance is required to keep your digital video collection in that kind of clover you will realise that the only people with such a nice "jukebox" setup are people who literally enjoy admin work

It's because I didn't get to the record shop first thing on a monday morning, that I didn't get "Stutter" Elastica on day of purchase. (1000 limited edition, numbered)

Still, irony, I now own copy numbered two.

ha tracer! well you know its worth all the work cos i will retrieve and watch stuff several times at least. maybe more than several times. fuck i might spend my whole life storing and retrieving stuff.

hahaha

i say this as someone who spent >1 hr last night getting the "in our time" episodes from 2008 in the correct order

Some of my albums have a track of two that is missing artwork. What causes this? Is there a specific way to import artwork? I've just been selecting the album, cmd-i, and dragging the art to the art box.

If you're using iTunes, select the track(s) you want to get artwork for, and either right-click (PC) or ctrl-click (Mac), then go down to "Get Album Artwork." Or, you can add it manually, which seems to be the way you've been going.

yeah... I do the steps I described (its a Mac), yet still one or two tracks within the album are sometimes missing art. Its driving me nuts because I don't notice them until the song comes up on my ipod. The albums all look good in coverflow.

Yeah, this is annoying; not sure what causes it beyond adding songs and retagging them at different times and not catching all the artwork. If the artwork is right on the first track, or the majority of tracks, it'll appear fine on coverflow.

Best way to solve it is to note each album that's missing it from even 1 track, highlight the whole tracklisting, and re-add the artwork to its details. Annoying, and time-consuming, but the only satisfactory way I've found around it.

You can also add art to a single song by just dragging the art into the lower left box while that song is playing.

iTunes is funny about art--even if a particular song lacks the art in its metadata, it might still display it if other songs from that same album do have the art. So if the songs came in at different times, a song or two might be lacking the art, but the art will still display if they're part of a larger album. But if that song ends up isolated on your iPod, the art won't be there.

I have that issue plus sometimes if I select all the tracks on an album and change the genre, 1 or 2 tracks won't be changed. God I hate computers.

^I've noticed this too, and need to reboot iTunes before it will resolve itself.

Has anyone tried any of these art-finding software tools for mac? I tried to use the built in iTunes tool once, but it badly mismatched a lot of songs so I've been doing it manually since. But doing this song by song ain't going to happen.

Generally, I use the built-in functionality, then manually add everything else. Or leave the stuff it can't find without art if I just don't feel like it.

I manually add all artwork on my Mac iTunes stuff.