Maintaining a Digital Music Collection

Plex is great in general but music is still suffering from some library bugs - it doesn't distinguish between 'artist' and 'album artist' and its handling of compilations is pretty shoddy.

good to know

A lot of my stuff is not really tagged but is organized by folder-- would that be a shitshow in plex?

Google Music (the free version) does what you are describing, in a way that the ease of use/accessibility outweighs some of the drawbacks or limitations (for me).
-You can upload 50k tracks from your local files. I think this is probably closer to 350Gb or so of files.
-The desktop client which does the uploading can just be pointed at a folder or at iTunes and will upload anything added to either, so super-easy to passively keep new stuff synced.
-Stored in GM by ID3 tags/metadata, not folder structures unfortunately.
-The app is great, on both Android and iOS, and the browser-based client on pcs/macs is great too. Easy to access the library from work, for daily commuting, on long road trips.
-You can easily locally cache songs/albums before trips on subway/airplane/anywhere out of range. Just as easy to remove specific locally cached stuff, or clear the local cache entirely.
-Google Music does try to match automatically when you upload, but in most cases I didn't notice or didn't care. If I did want to use the original files, I can just tell it that (per song) through the desktop app. The amount of times I've had to do that was limited but necessary (it synced a "clean" version of an album for some reason, or used a stereo master for mono tracks I'd uploaded). On the other hand, some of the tracks in my library are upwards of 15 years old and the quality of the original file suffers, but it gets matched to a higher-quality version in GM when uploaded!

I use and love Plex for home-based streaming (mostly video/FLAC to Chromecast/tablets) but can't imagine using it as my primary music app.

I have a home server and recently ran my whole collection through beets to get the meta-data right, and have been using Libresonic to stream from browsers, which I usually then stream to my Chromecast Audio. When I want to cast from my iPhone, I use Plex - but I am not a huge fan of the way Plex handles music. I'm pretty happy with the setup. I realized I wasn't listening to my own collection at all - just searching Youtube and Spotify for individual tracks. Doing that for years changed the way I listen to music, so it made sense to start managing the meta-data instead of doing everything by folder hierarchy. After organizing my own collection this way, I am listening to it a lot more - searching through a lot of stuff and clicking a lot of "related artists" links is making me appreciate a lot of crap in my collection that I'd forgotten about or have been on the fence about keeping.

I follow this thread out of curiosity and I gotta say I'm impressed with the effort put into maintaining a digital music collection in the streaming era

I had a very large digital collection once, then my external hd broke down, then I had years without a digital collection (without a computer, really) and now I have less than 50 gigs of mp3s and flacs and a Spotify account, and I'm much more interested in maintaining my Spotify collection and playlists than those mp3s

I'm still plugging away with iTunes mp3's and a separate folder of FLACs as backup (1.4 TB). iTunes library is 857 GB, updated as new songs are added with full tags and album art. I have playlists set up to populate two iPod Classics, one for singles and another for albums. The singles playlists are divided up into 25-30 genres and add up to 122 GB, so eventually I'll need to look into iPod replacements as those top out at 160 GB. I keep about 15-20 GB of my newest stuff on playlists for my phone. Once one of those hits 5 GB or so I start a new one and sync the most recent 2-4 of them to the phone.

Of course, all this has to be hosted on an external HD. In the future it would be great to have a solid state drive but 2 TB SSD's cost about $700.

A few weeks ago I bought a Dragonfly DAC and it substantially improved the sound quality from my headphone jack to the receiver/speakers. Highly recommended.

I'd love to switch to Spotify but it's like Netflix - yes there's a lot of stuff on it, more than I can ever listen to, but there's a hell of a lot more not on it.

Yeah I'm definitely a hoarder.

― Colonel Poo

i'm paranoid, a hoarder, and a product of my generation. i started digital music with napster and have a mentality to match. i'm still prepping for the digital apocalypse... coming any day now, yep, any day now... they'll get my gianni safred mp3s when they pry them from my cold dead fingers.

the plus side is that man being a digital hoarder is so much easier and less damaging than being one of the people they put on tv who fill their house with yellowed old newspapers.

sent out my ipod classic to be refurbed with a 512 gb ssd. hopefully i get it back!

A few weeks ago I bought a Dragonfly DAC and it substantially improved the sound quality from my headphone jack to the receiver/speakers. Highly recommended.

― skip

i'm kind of looking for audio quality improvement if/when my ipod refurb finishes... since you use two of them, do you know if there's any dac stuff for them? the stuff on the dragonfly site looked to be usb...

the plus side is that man being a digital hoarder is so much easier and less damaging than being one of the people they put on tv who fill their house with yellowed old newspapers.

This, so much!

i'm kind of looking for audio quality improvement if/when my ipod refurb finishes... since you use two of them, do you know if there's any dac stuff for them? the stuff on the dragonfly site looked to be usb...

Sorry, I haven't used the Dragonfly for the iPod, just my computer.

Being a digital hoarder is a lovely thing, and I have no regrets.

otm

thank u MP3 blogs

sent out my ipod classic to be refurbed with a 512 gb ssd. hopefully i get it back!

Totally report back how this goes. I think about doing it constantly

(I want the 1TB option though lol)

Yes, let us know if it works out, where you got it, how much, etc.

I'm also hoarding a sealed, boxed 160 GB Classic. I could probably get $$ for that on eBay.

I just carry my 2nd (old) laptop and a backup 3 TB hard drive to all my radio shows and DJ gigs, so easy to go back and forth w/ a turntable and a few crates of records on a 2-channel mixer if I'm live, or queue in VLC if I'm on the radio where I don't usually bring vinyl

for mobile listening I use a Cowon that can play most audio files

btw, germane to this thread:

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/05/11/527829909/the-mp3-is-officially-dead-according-to-its-creators

I don't believe that "mp3 is dead" story. The company with the patent has said that it will stop issuing licences. But that's because the patent has expired and they no longer have a right to, rather than because the format is dead. Yeah, he pointed out that aac is technically better (and he may have a vested interest there) but lots of devices just won't play aac.

Mp3 won't go away for a long time.

sent out my ipod classic to be refurbed with a 512 gb ssd. hopefully i get it back!

Totally report back how this goes. I think about doing it constantly

(I want the 1TB option though lol)

― or at night (Jon not Jon), Saturday, June 10, 2017 7:17 PM (four hours ago)

I wasn't aware that this was even possible! How exciting! I feel like the iPod might have been the last useful product Apple made

AAC is better only at low bitrates so eh

here is where i point out once again that apple views music downloads as "legacy"

there is probably, though i don't know this, a set of benchmarks beyond which they will shutter the itunes store, and cannot wait to do it

koogs otm

"mp3 is dead" = patents expired this year so we can't force anyone to pay us for it any longer, try this other encumbered format instead, it's so much better, honest!

Vorbis and musepack have been around for over a decade and are also "better" than mp3 yet no one was in a rush to dump the latter for those.

at high bitrates all good lossy codecs are transparent, under 128kbps mp3 is still good but beaten by opus and aac.

what codec does spotify use?

https://support.spotify.com/uk/using_spotify/search_play/what-bitrate-does-spotify-use-for-streaming/

This (pleasantly) surprises me (ogg!)

(web player may be different, in 2013 anyway)

(BBC uses aac for radio. Sometimes flac for radio 3)

This thread convinces me to stick to CDs when they're available. All this shit sounds way too complicated.

It really isn't an either/or. I buy CDs when available and easily maintain a large digital library. I enjoy the curation aspect and putting something new into the library is a snap at this point. I'm prepared for the streaming apocalypse though there's too much money for it to really happen.

easily maintain a large digital library.

O RLY

I do buy mp3 albums but very rarely

This thread convinces me to stick to CDs when they're available. All this shit sounds way too complicated.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, June 11, 2017 5:46 AM (six hours ago)

For years I agreed with you. Now I'm looking at how much physical space they take up (and the records ... *sigh*) and digital is way more appealing.

I don't buy vinyl but I am considering those space saving sleeves someone highlighted on this or some other thread

I thought I was a hoarder but getting uneasy about approaching 60GB means I probably don't qualify

to be fair, 60 gb is by any reasonable standard is a lot for mp3s. it's just that some of us are just completely insane hoarders and it's only moore's law that lets us get away with it. (wait, do i really have 700 gb of videos i downloaded from youtube since last October to back up? including 7 gigs of nothing but tv station logos? i am insane.)

it's only moore's law that lets us get away with it.

And I am content.

I do buy mp3 albums but very rarely

I buy them all the time, but strictly speaking I am buying from Bandcamp, where I can get them in any digital format I choose. So I go for 320 kbps and forget about it.

I thought I was a hoarder but getting uneasy about approaching 60GB means I probably don't qualify

― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Sunday, June 11, 2017 12:48 PM (five hours ago)

I think an acquisition rate is also something important to consider as whether one "qualifies" -- I mean, is that 60GB over a 10 year period? Including ripped CDs acquired over a 20 year period? Including ripped CDs and digitized records acquired over a 30 year period?

My lifetime collection ripped to lossless is about 730GB for 35k tracks. Mind you I had about 3000 CDs before I started ripping. I'd estimate I have bought ... 30 albums? in digital form and about 20% of the collection is MP3 (live recordings etc).

I started this thread.

As of right now, I own one record -- the new Paramore one. On CD.

I am now on Apple Music. I own some stuff I’ve purchased via iTunes too.

Might be buying The Wilco Book sometime, which comes with a CD.

I anticipate the Paramore CD will not be the last CD I buy in any case, but I have no plans to return to buying a lot of physical music.

Also no plans to start up a big digital music collection. lol. Apple Music, baby.

All that being said, I understand that people have different desires for their music, and that’s fine. Luckily, we have options.

options are great. Love me some options.

$59 for a 1TB external drive that can hold all the music I've ever owned - can't see the need for cloud streaming. But for some, buy once own everywhere makes perfect sense.

Stuff on my wishlist that is only available or affordable on digital: some Art Zoyd/Zaboitzeff, some Foetus albums, some Jarboe albums, some Trance To The Sun albums, a Fauns album, most Silvania albums, most Jute Gyte and a bunch of dungeon synth (which is mostly on cassette as their only physical media).
There's probably going to be a lot more.

at least 10 years at this point, yeah

although the speed of growth is limited, in practice, by how many CDs I can afford to buy, and since I made the brilliant decision to be broke constantly, that speed is necessarily slow (I don't really like downloading something where I don't own a physical copy, unless it's the only option)

I've only got about 1,000 cds - not trivial, but certainly not ridiculous - and I'm looking at moving them across country in a couple of weeks and it really bums me out. It's been at least five or six years since I've actually listened to any of them, they're all digitized and backed up, but I can't really bring myself to throw them away and selling them seems daunting and not worth the effort.

I did finally get around to buying plastic sleeves to replace all the jewel cases; for a while this looked like it would run $500 to buy jewel sleeves, but I found a pack of 1,000 cheaper ones for $130. Now I just need to spend a couple of hours repackaging all of them. And I'll probably never unpack the boxes at the other end of the move.

feel kinda sad for those cds

Now I just need to spend a couple of hours repackaging all of them. And I'll probably never unpack the boxes

oh man, I'm doing this now too -- not moving, just "decluttering" -- but I never digitized most of them, so, I am doing that at the same time. I'm doing binders for the ones in jewel cases, and putting the ones with alternative packaging in storage boxes.

i long sinced binderized everything of mine except my operas (because of their libretto booklets) and film scores (because they're the only CDs I own with any resale value)