Maintaining a Digital Music Collection

(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)

I had to put a couple hundred in the basement, still sticking with jewel cases for now. It's nice having a large house in a cheap market.

I should probably go through them in a cull, and try to get whatever meager store credit still applies, but I have the room so maybe I'll just wait for the mythical CD value/nostalgia spike that's sure to happen any decade now

maybe I'll just wait for the mythical CD value/nostalgia spike that's sure to happen any decade now

hahahah - i think the same thing!

The Death of the CD Binder

I would not store my CDs in binders if I had enough CDs to store in a binder.

agreed

http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/2010/05/ode-to-a-fallen-bro-of-a-product-the-cd-binder.html

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I moved overseas three years ago and we sold everything we'd had stateside, including all 3000 cds or so. We just went with an auction house and I have no idea how much we got and I never want to know. I'd ripped them all so the music never stops but it was a stark moment.

nothing more 2002 than a CD binder full of CD-Rs

Still got several of those. Backed up a lot of early mp3s I got that way and when I finally imported them into my HD, they all held up.

mp3 CD-Rs have had long lives for me, but mp3 DVD-Rs have definitely not. A lot of those became unreadable within 5-6 years.

I don't have any binders, but I do have several spindles of CD-Rs and DVD-Rs full of music. Long since imported to the external hard drive, so I should probably just get rid of them.

Still have my 2 giant CD binders with my old collection (need to rerip, last time I ripped them I went straight to 320kbps and I need lossless to truly make them obsolete)

BTW my burned CDs are now to a point where they're beyond their life cycle and degraded to the point where the first couple tracks are all glitched. Like all of them.

Still got several of those. Backed up a lot of early mp3s I got that way and when I finally imported them into my HD, they all held up.

That's how I stored my why ess I treasures from back in the day.

I'm at... four binders, five, something like that? the real answer is I'm at something like four binders and then a giant-ass box that never seems to get emptier no matter how much I rip

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.

― Robert Adam Gilmour

what art zoyd are you looking for

The Phase/Inquiets disc and maybe a few others.

ok, yeah, the only one i have is the 2cd of the first three.

Nativ Vita

This is a tablet designed specifically for audio library management/playback. Up to 4TB of storage, mutli-format (inc. 24-bit) playback and output, multi-room management, etc.

$1,600 and no on-board DAC ???

A swing and a miss, unless you're a rich bitch.

tablet/brick, rather

I don't have a smartphone and my 160 gb ipod classic only has about 10gb of space left. I was thinking of getting a 128gb ipod touch. I've spent years building up playlists in itunes so I'd rather just use a device that's compatible with that database.

My question is: how much of a pain in the ass is it to manage your music library across two devices? For anyone that already does it, how did you decide to split your library? Do you just split the music up alphabetically, A-M on one, N-Z on the other? I was thinking of putting podcasts and audiobooks on one and having one strictly music, but that'll probably only save me about 25gb.

Another thought I had was splitting up my library by year of release, but then I'd run the risk of splitting artists with vast catalogs across two devices.

I started using the HTC 10 as an mp3 player a while back (it doesn't need a sim to run, it works just like a very handy tablet) since it has a great sounding 24 bit dac.

Anyway, should you at some point want to exit the Apple eco system, the HTC 10 supports up to 2 TB (!) of external storage, and perhaps there'd be advantages in having your collection on micro sd cards instead of built-in iPod memory

plenty of decent music player apps, also it ofc supports Spotify or your streaming service of choice

after experimenting with having my ipod classic modded (bad idea) i got a cheap laptop i lug around for my music library. it's working out well for me so far.

yeah that's what I do these days for DJ stuff, along with a 3 TB external. I have a Cowon O2 for headphone/bike/jog, all I really need now is a car stereo that can play FLAC via USB

Rusho please expound on what went wrong with the modding? I was waiting to hear how it went as I'm contemplating the same.

Germane to this revive: I've read about an adaptor that lets iPhone/iPad read from micro sd cards via the lightning port. Does anyone know if it's possible to play audio files from a micro sd WITHOUT bringing them into the iPhone/iPad's actual storage? Or: can something like iOS VLC bring files over and play them and then delete them from device storage when done? Using my iPhone as a music player has been out of the question because of storage constraints but I'm wondering if micro sd access can work around that