SERIOUS Music Management Issues

RAJRAJ tenacious local 7,779 Posts
How are you people listening to your music digitally?

For years it has been external hard drive & iTunes.  Unfortunately I had a hard drive crash recently that wiped out my collection of over 20,000 albums (lost a lot of raers too!).  I'm a bit of an obsessive about archiving and cataloguing music.

After being a long time hold out, I just joined Spotify.  While it does have a very impressive library it only has about 60% of what I had archived.  Plus it only lets you save 10,000 songs!?

My dream is to have what I had in my iTunes library accessible through streaming and backed up so that I don't have to worry about hard drive crashes.

How are you managing?

  

  Comments


  • ppadilhappadilha 2,233 Posts
    sometimes I backup my mp3 library to another external HD just to be safe, other than that I generally curse the shittyness of iTunes and the fact that my Airtunes thingy is wonky and does not provide the convenience it had promised. So basically, I am not managing.


    kicks79

  • Im curious how folks around here are doing this too.
    Finally got around to digitizing all of my CDs (yes, im 15 years late to the game) and adding them them to my mp3 library and now i have a 2 TB external Hard Drive that I am just hoping wont ever crash.  What does anyone else do?  

  • I use Google Play to backup and stream my iTunes library and playlists.  It works so well I've stopped saving any mp3s to my phone. I think you can store up to 25,000 songs for free and pay for more than that.  So I only upload my 4 and 5 star-rated songs, which comes to between 5 and 6,000.

  • DORDOR Two Ron Toe 9,896 Posts
    I would just have your music on a NAS and run Plex or something.

    I use Plex for my music, movie/TV and photos. Use it locally and remotely.





  • trzakhstantrzakhstan IA 198 Posts
    I have en external hard drive but it is only 1TB and I haven't backed up my mp3s in over a year. I need to back up my photos from ten years ago on another external hard drive.

    I lost my internet connection for a couple weeks and I thought I would get some of my music in itunes that I hadn't gotten to yet, but itunes ran super slow without an internet connection. It made my two weeks with no internet very frustrating.

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,885 Posts
    Coming from a Windows head:
    Get a decent NAS, stick your movies, photos and music on it.  4TB should do it.  Hardwire it with ethernet CAT6 directly to your wifi router, make sure your wifi router has 1GB ethernet port.
    Signup for cloud storage too (I recommend Crashplan as they can do NAS folders).  I only cloudstore my photos, I can get the music off slsk or friends if somehow the NAS was stolen/blew the fuck up.
    Once you are on NAS, all the devices in the house can browse content from it (I recommend Devolo homeplugs and wifi homeplugs) and decent NASs will give you a web interface so you can stream it from anywhere.
    I use Media Monkey to manage my mp3s, all tagged up with artwork.  I am a bit anal about it.


    SAIL A VEE




    ketan

  • kicks79kicks79 1,333 Posts
    I can't stand the new version of itunes. its so clunky and unusable makes me not want to play music on my phone. I havn't signed up to spotify or use any streaming music service. I usually just plug my phone or laptop into a set of pc speakers if Im not playing records.

    If i can ask another management question. Do all you serato heads just use your itunes libary or do you have your serato libary separate ? 
    I run my serato from itunes but lately its become unmanageable trying to find things. 

  • serch4beatzserch4beatz Switzerland 521 Posts
    1x Qnap Nas with JBOD RAID 3TB mirroring files on my selfbuilt NAS running Nas4Free with 8TB in a ZFS RAID.

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,885 Posts
    1x Qnap Nas with JBOD RAID 3TB mirroring files on my selfbuilt NAS running Nas4Free with 8TB in a ZFS RAID.
     

  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,778 Posts
    There was a thread on here a while back about the unreliability of hard-drives, internal or external, after 4 years, and that the best long-term storage solution was probably burning everything to CD as information files for a predicted life-span of 80 years. Only likely problem could be phasing out DVD drives.
    All my WAVs are now backed-up on discs that should outlast me.

  • ppadilhappadilha 2,233 Posts
    There was a thread on here a while back about the unreliability of hard-drives, internal or external, after 4 years, and that the best long-term storage solution was probably burning everything to CD as information files for a predicted life-span of 80 years. Only likely problem could be phasing out DVD drives.
    All my WAVs are now backed-up on discs that should outlast me.
    yeah but then your CDs also have a purportedly short shelf life (didn't people use to say 10 years instead of 80?), so really the proper way to go is to record all your WAVs onto 1/4" tape and keep a reel-to-reel player with them in a temperature-controlled storage unit that is at least 200m above sea level to protect them from the eventual effects of climate change. The only catch is that you might have to store an alternative power source for said reel-to-reel because by the time you need to access your backup we may have reached peak oil and contemporary civilization will have collapsed and you won't have access to modern-day luxuries like electricity coming out of a wall socket or store-bought orange juice but at least you will still be able to rock those Oingo Boingo raers.
    ketanPickles

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,885 Posts
    "I'm not an iPod guy, but I do have a magical unicorn that follows me around and sings perfect reproductions of any song I could ever want to hear whenever I want to hear it. But check this???it always smells faintly like unicorn shit. I mean, what are we? Barbarians? Stupid unicorn. "
    - DB Cooper
    caippadilha

  • RAJRAJ tenacious local 7,779 Posts


    What the hell is a NAS?


    kicks79

  • RAJ said:


    What the hell is a NAS?



    Thank you.  Now we can feel old together!
    Duderonomy

  • dollar_bindollar_bin I heartily endorse this product and/or event 2,326 Posts
    RAJ said:
    How are you people listening to your music digitally?

    For years it has been external hard drive & iTunes.  Unfortunately I had a hard drive crash recently that wiped out my collection of over 20,000 albums (lost a lot of raers too!).  I'm a bit of an obsessive about archiving and cataloguing music.

    After being a long time hold out, I just joined Spotify.  While it does have a very impressive library it only has about 60% of what I had archived.  Plus it only lets you save 10,000 songs!?

    My dream is to have what I had in my iTunes library accessible through streaming and backed up so that I don't have to worry about hard drive crashes.

    How are you managing?

      

    As a fellow obsessive archivist and cataloger this hurts.  If you need any titles from the Soul Strut 200, I've been working my way through it on my commute.

    There's no perfect backup, redundant hard drives plus cloud backup will probably be the easiest way to get things back. If you have Apple music then you can cloud stream anything in your iTunes library, it's terribly convenient.  The downside is that you're locked into the Apple ecology, there's zero backup, and once you stop paying every month it all goes away.  Apple has also made it more difficult to modify the album artwork and sometimes it changes the art for tracks you upload, it's hell on one's OCD.  I use it because for convenience, but I have everything socked away on multiple hard drives as a backup.  Floppies, hard-drives, zip-discs, usb drives, cloud storage--I've probably lost data from all of these media, redundancy is the only defence.  

    Protected from heat and light, the PVC plastic in LP records means that they will probably outlast every digital media I have.  I would go with those.


  • Fred_GarvinFred_Garvin The land of wind and ghosts 337 Posts
    RAJ said:


    What the hell is a NAS?


    A NAS is like Earth Wind and Fire, rims and tires... except it holds more data.
    ketankicks79

  • DJ_EnkiDJ_Enki 6,471 Posts
    RAJ said:


    What the hell is a NAS?



    Thank you.  Now we can feel old together!
    NAS = Network Attached Storage

  • kicks79kicks79 1,333 Posts
    I too had no idea what NAS was. Thanks
    CD-Rs fail as well.
    I had a whole wallet of useless coasters that no cd drive can read now 
      
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