Maintaining a Digital Music Collection

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"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 (fifteen years ago) link

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 (fifteen years ago) link

Pardon my grammar. I'm 45, not my paradigm shift.

Hugh Manatee (WmC), Sunday, 23 August 2009 23:54 (fifteen years ago) link

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 (fifteen years ago) link

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 (fifteen years ago) link

i have a car and that is mostly why i buy cds

winston, Monday, 24 August 2009 04:21 (fifteen years ago) link

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.

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 (fifteen years ago) link

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 (fifteen years ago) link

where we're going, we don't need iTunes

tony dayo (dyao), Monday, 24 August 2009 13:45 (fifteen years ago) link

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 (fifteen years ago) link

but completely useless for people that use iphones

patti lmaonnaise (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, 24 August 2009 13:49 (fifteen years ago) link

Co-sign on Squeezeboxes. I set some up recently and love being able to listen anywhere in the house.

The ease of maintaining off-site back-ups is one of the biggest advantages of going digital.

Brad C., Monday, 24 August 2009 14:01 (fifteen years ago) link

Wow, a lot of good stuff here!

Fastnbulbous, I'm 22.

I'm actually reconsidering going all-digital after reading through some of the stuff you all have said here. The comments where people said stuff like "Someone can just steal your hard drive or your hard drive could die, and then you'll lose all your music!" struck me as all too true.

I will also admit that I feel affectively different towards .mp3s than I do CDs. My relationship with the music does change. And probably not for the better.

kshighway, Monday, 24 August 2009 22:13 (fifteen years ago) link

met a guy who owns this company today, seems like an interesting idea in terms of having your collection on hand whereever you are.

http://www.psonar.com/

Crackle Box, Monday, 24 August 2009 22:20 (fifteen years ago) link

-i'm at the point storage-wise where i hate having cds, just more shit i don't have room for.

-i mostly listen to music on my ipod, but that's all almost full and it's also old and acting like it might conk out. my digital music is all over the place storage-wise and organization-wise, it's a mess.

-love listening to vinyl, but i don't spend that much time listening to music at home.

so basically no media choices are super appealing at the moment. if i was really serious i would get a new ipod and another hard drive and back up/organize all my stuff, but spending the time and money on that is lower than a lot of other things on my list.

Ømår Littel (Jordan), Monday, 24 August 2009 22:24 (fifteen years ago) link

Who knows what iTunes will change to? Or even if we'll be using itunes in 10 years?

gonna go out on a limb here & say we still will be. while one of the governing tropes of thinking about the digital age is "everything moves at a very accelerated pace," I don't think the speed is nearly as dizzying as it was until about five years ago. things have slowed down; most of the "new" developments in digital communication aren't so much new developments as they are tweaks on already extant concepts. the iTunes we're using in 10 years may have gone through a bunch of reconfiguring, but it'll still be what we're using, I'd guess. I could be wrong! but I believe pretty strongly that the speed-of-technology's-growth paradigm is itself one we've outgrown; that a settling-in has taken place.

Man Is Nairf! (J0hn D.), Monday, 24 August 2009 22:27 (fifteen years ago) link

I think that's a pretty big limb considering how hard to imagine iPods it was ten years ago (the fact that Apple "came back" at all is kind of amazing in its own right.) These kind of leaps can happen totally unexpectedly and can leave everything else in the dust pretty quickly.

Alex in SF, Monday, 24 August 2009 22:33 (fifteen years ago) link

ha, I think you're both right, which is why I now use iTunes exclusively and why I buy as much as I can on CD and then rip it to MP3 when adding it to my library

nate dogg is a feeling (HI DERE), Monday, 24 August 2009 22:35 (fifteen years ago) link

do digital people keep upgrading the albums they like from mp3 to flac to whatever comes next? seems tiresome. or maybe most people don't care that much about how things sound. i mean, a lot of people listen to horrible internet mp3 sound and don't seem to care.

scott seward, Monday, 24 August 2009 22:35 (fifteen years ago) link

That said even if we aren't using iTunes, I think that something will exist to allow you to transfer your mp3s to whatever is replacing them. One of the main reasons people are so unattached to CDs is it's easy to convert them to mp3s. Don't think people would be quite as keen to give up mp3s if they couldn't be similarly carried over to whatever new format will exist.

Alex in SF, Monday, 24 August 2009 22:36 (fifteen years ago) link

xp I don't think so. But most of the people I know who maintain huge digital collections have ripped their collections @ 320s + where the differences are subtle to non-existent.

Alex in SF, Monday, 24 August 2009 22:37 (fifteen years ago) link

this seems like a waste of time tbh, everything will be streaming in less than 10 years, probably more like 5. i heard someone in the movie industry saying that blu-ray is already archaic.

(*゚ー゚)θ L(。・_・)   °~ヾ(・ε・ *) (Steve Shasta), Monday, 24 August 2009 22:44 (fifteen years ago) link

I'll hang to my archaic CDs thankyouverymuch. I somehow doubt everything that has ever been or ever will be recorded will be available streaming, but I could be wrong.

Alex in SF, Monday, 24 August 2009 22:48 (fifteen years ago) link

yeah you can't stream OOP stuff on blogs now rite...

(*゚ー゚)θ L(。・_・)   °~ヾ(・ε・ *) (Steve Shasta), Monday, 24 August 2009 22:49 (fifteen years ago) link

No to mention I suspect that this limitless streaming is going to somehow involve a lot of commercial advertisements somewhere.

Alex in SF, Monday, 24 August 2009 22:50 (fifteen years ago) link

Yes, the next paradigm shift is clearly streaming from centralised cloud-based storage, eliminating the need for personal collections of anything bar metadata. I'm already heading in that direction [insert Eurocentric Spotify Premium gloat here - £10 per month for ad-free high-bitrate is money well spent IMO], and I unreservedly welcome it.

mike t-diva, Monday, 24 August 2009 22:51 (fifteen years ago) link

I fucking hate paradigms

cool app (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 24 August 2009 22:54 (fifteen years ago) link

yeah you can't stream OOP stuff on blogs now rite..

eh, I've spent a fair chunk of this afternoon looking for old Dolly Parton and Buck Owens MP3s and let me tell you there is a LOT of out of print stuff that is just not on the internet

go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 24 August 2009 22:54 (fifteen years ago) link

basically whenever one medium replaces another, a bunch of stuff gets lost and I don't find that particularly exciting or awesome

go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 24 August 2009 22:55 (fifteen years ago) link

being someone who still buys CDs, can someone tell me how they handle 'liner notes'?

I've been doing this narrative podcast thing recently, introducing tracks, and people are asking me 'wow you are so well researched' and... I'm just... 50% of that stuff is straight from the booklet that comes with the CD and a surprising number of my friends respond to that by saying 'that's exactly what I mean'

Milton Parker, Monday, 24 August 2009 22:58 (fifteen years ago) link

Roughly two-thirds of my digital music collection is on Lala.com, which I know because once you register for the site, you can sync your iTunes library with your Lala account and then listen to anything in Lala's database that you already own at any computer.

jaymc, Monday, 24 August 2009 23:00 (fifteen years ago) link

"old Dolly Parton and Buck Owens MP3s"
these were on CDs at some point? that is kind of surprising that they're not somewhere out there...

Philip Nunez, Monday, 24 August 2009 23:01 (fifteen years ago) link

Can someone explain Media Monkey to me?

Though most of my music collection is on CD/vinyl, I have loads of promos on my computer that just feel ... disorganised. Would Media Monkey make my life neater?

djh, Monday, 24 August 2009 23:01 (fifteen years ago) link

I have no idea if they were ever on CD (but I kind of doubt it) - I'm talking about stuff like Joshua, Hello My Name is Dolly, Just Because I'm a Woman, etc. Same goes for Buck's 60s LPs.

go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 24 August 2009 23:03 (fifteen years ago) link

there is a LOAD of stuff that is just plain not out there

which in a way is both gratifying & frustrating

Man Is Nairf! (J0hn D.), Monday, 24 August 2009 23:03 (fifteen years ago) link

xp milton: seriously ... I have a good number of free jazz large ensemble recordings I've downloaded, and I have no clue how the current I-tunes/mp3 system would even manage listing all the musicians.

free jazz and mumia (sarahel), Monday, 24 August 2009 23:04 (fifteen years ago) link

to really have access to everything ever recorded you would def have to have 1) a computer 2) a turntable 3) a CD player 4) a cassette deck and...shit a record player that plays 78s maybe proably? A wax cylinder? 8 track player?

the turdlike genius of Jeff Tweete´ (M@tt He1ges0n), Monday, 24 August 2009 23:05 (fifteen years ago) link

there is a LOAD of stuff that is just plain not out there

which in a way is both gratifying & frustrating

I dunno what's gratifying about it but it annoys me that this fact is always glossed over by hyped-up digital acolytes

go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 24 August 2009 23:06 (fifteen years ago) link

I mean its not like this stuff I'm looking for is obscure - these were hits! By major artists! With huge distribution networks! But a few decades later *poof* gone.

go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 24 August 2009 23:07 (fifteen years ago) link

xp Was anything really released exclusively on 8-track?

Alex in SF, Monday, 24 August 2009 23:07 (fifteen years ago) link

The loss of cassettes is kind sad though.

Alex in SF, Monday, 24 August 2009 23:08 (fifteen years ago) link

shakey, you should learn about google blog search, i think everything is out there, it's just a matter of how you look for it:

http://boxofmuzik.blogspot.com/2009/04/dolly-parton-rare-album.html

(*゚ー゚)θ L(。・_・)   °~ヾ(・ε・ *) (Steve Shasta), Monday, 24 August 2009 23:08 (fifteen years ago) link

those files are all gone shasta nice try

go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 24 August 2009 23:09 (fifteen years ago) link

Due to a violation of our terms of use, the file has been removed from the server.

go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 24 August 2009 23:09 (fifteen years ago) link

don't get me wrong I'm so glad the record company that owns those albums is being so diligent to make sure Dolly fans can only hear that music on albums purchased from used record dealers. which doesn't make them any money anyway.

fucking people. I hate them.

go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 24 August 2009 23:11 (fifteen years ago) link

Hey they aren't going to undercut the 17-disc Dolly Parton Boxed Set that's coming out next year!

Alex in SF, Monday, 24 August 2009 23:12 (fifteen years ago) link

I dunno what's gratifying about it

perhaps I haven't gone into my big ol crush on oblivion & things that get lost to history here but I think I take as much pleasure in things I can't find as others do in like finding things

Man Is Nairf! (J0hn D.), Monday, 24 August 2009 23:15 (fifteen years ago) link

well then if there's no blogs, there are torrentz:
http://www.torrentz.com/9d3f1bd617739c27a411978313ce445e7fa1dc76

(*゚ー゚)θ L(。・_・)   °~ヾ(・ε・ *) (Steve Shasta), Monday, 24 August 2009 23:15 (fifteen years ago) link

You aren't exactly proving your point, Steve.

Alex in SF, Monday, 24 August 2009 23:16 (fifteen years ago) link

I ain't installing now torrent client software on my machine at work, that is asking for trouble

go Nick go! Scrub that paint! Scrub it!! Yeah!! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 24 August 2009 23:17 (fifteen years ago) link

OK so an annoying thing about Bandcamp doing all the new downloads in 24/96 is that the WAV files don't fit if you are burning a CD with them.

#firstworldproblems

go polish your nose ring (sleeve), Wednesday, 2 October 2024 19:27 (four days ago) link

Hmm... just checked my own label's page and am rather surprised to see downloads in 24/44.1 offered, as I only uploaded 16/44.1 WAVs!

Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Wednesday, 2 October 2024 19:32 (four days ago) link

You could get Goldwave and save the files as 16bit 44hz before burning a cd. Extra step, but it would work.

The Artist formerly known as Earlnash, Wednesday, 2 October 2024 19:33 (four days ago) link

sorry yes I meant 24/44.1 xp

go polish your nose ring (sleeve), Wednesday, 2 October 2024 19:41 (four days ago) link

and yeah I can recode them using Amadeus, but it's a giant PITA< I don't need 24 bit versions of Australian garage punk

go polish your nose ring (sleeve), Wednesday, 2 October 2024 19:42 (four days ago) link

I discovered this recently trying to make a mix CD of recent stuff

go polish your nose ring (sleeve), Wednesday, 2 October 2024 19:42 (four days ago) link

I’ve never downloaded anything but MP3s from Bandcamp.

o. nate, Friday, 4 October 2024 02:31 (two days ago) link

People are still burning CDs?

ArchCarrier, Friday, 4 October 2024 13:48 (two days ago) link

for the car, yes

go polish your nose ring (sleeve), Friday, 4 October 2024 14:17 (two days ago) link

not just cds though. i've had problems with playing files on my (cheap) portable device because the files were 'better' than the usual files and i had to downsample them to get them to play.

koogs, Friday, 4 October 2024 14:28 (two days ago) link

wild

go polish your nose ring (sleeve), Friday, 4 October 2024 14:32 (two days ago) link


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