Need help building a music library

[LonesomeSTX]

I know that for most people this is almost common knowledge. So I realize I am way behind on this subject matter. That is why I am asking all of you computer and tech type people these questions.

My wife went out and got us some MP3(4) players. They are not the high end kind but they work just fine. I no longer want CDs or any similar type of music storage. I want to build and maintain a decent music library that I can update as I hear a song I like. Eventually I even want to get rid of the head units in our trucks. But that is for another conversation. Anyhoo, I have a good amount of music that I collected from other people on my external hard drive. But I have not been able to update any of it since 2009. I use to use Limewire but after losing two hard drives to viruses I said no more. I understand that if I want “safe” downloads I have to pay for it. But how do I know which sites are safe? How do I know which ones will not up the price on me? How do I know which sites will not rip me off? How do I find the best value? Are there other ways? Once I figure out how to get the music I will get into details about what I plan to do with it.

 

[Schnot]

I use iTunes. You gotta pay for it but you can rip the CDs into it so you don't have to buy music that you already have copies of. Plus apple support has been really good to me.


Sent from my iPhone.

 

[LonesomeSTX]

I do not have any Apple products though.

 

[97RangerXLT]

itunes is safe, but a complete pain in the ass. I hate the format, and if you download the crapple format you have to burn it to a cd/ and rip it to get it into mp3 format. plus then there is the DRM...

Amazon MP3 is pretty good. you still might get DRM but it is in mp3 format and works well with windows media player.

Another way to get them is go to yard sales and buy used cd's cheap (at least older stuff anyhow), and then rip them to mp3 on your computer. The one thing about having an mp3 collection is that you want to make sure you have your music in at least 2 separate drives or backed up on some kind of dvd/cd media because once your hdd croaks, bye bye music.

AJ

 

[LonesomeSTX]

I have heard a lot of bad things about Apple and Itunes.

 

[AllanD]

iTunes uses pseudo organization.

I say that because if a single track on an album has a guest artist THAT TRACK is placed in a separate folder.

Wait until you see what iTunes does with "Greatest hits" albums.... frankly you probably don't want to know.
The Root of iTunes problem is that Apple IGNORES (and leaves blank) the "Album Artist"
field in the imbedded ID3 "tag" file and this lack leads to massive confusion.

iTunes files are not universally playable like mp3 files.

THE important thing is organizing your files so you can find AND PRESERVE
your music.

I currently have a music library that is just shy of 40,000 tracks (Yes, REALLY!)
and I have it backed up with multiple redundancy.

I have all my music organized by Artist, album & Track.

So "Hells Bells" by AC/DC on my computer has a complete file path:
G:\mp3 playback Library\AC-DC\08 Back In Black [RM]\001 Hells Bells.mp3

I am one of those annoying people that prefers a physical CD so I can "Rip",
"convert to mp3" and "tag" my files myself (If you want to KNOW something
is done correctly...)

When I Do (rarely) buy digital music I tend to buy mp3 files from Amazon.

Purchasing from Amazon is also something of a PITA, which is why I have less than 100 purchased tracks. I prefer physical media as the safest data storage I know of is PRESSED optical discs, BURNED optical discs are not as good as storage on a disconnected hard drive stored "someplace safe" (I keep my "ultimate backups" in a fireproof box that is in turn stored in a fireproof file cabinet.

I actually get paid to organize music libraries for people, because
those online services don't work all that well...

I compare them to having someone clean up your house... after someone
has accused you of being a hoarder... The issue is that if you are a serious
fan of a band and have twenty different live recordings of a particular band
playing a particular song in different concerts 30 years ago that "clean up
service" is likely to delete all but one (at random)
OTHERS will tend to throw away treasures with the trash.

I'm currently working on a 380gb Music Library where the owner of the
library is a serious Grateful Dead fan... personally the dead leaves me
bored stiff, but I will see to it that all his files are correctly tagged
so that upon playback they will correctly identify themselves...
WITH appropriate cover art from the original media (Much of this
is available if you know how to search)

You shoulda heard the excitement in this guy's voice when I offered
him a copy of the complete Government Mule discography....
People who like the Dead also tend to like Government Mule I could
care less about either band but I am an archivist and I only delete
data if I have a better copy to replace it.

Stuff I don't particularly like simply goes in a different folder.

Relative to the $1per track cost of most songs Hard Drives are cheap.

As I sit here my personal desktop has 7Tb of storage but most of that is not audio...
Video is an enormous data hog... wait until you get into storing your movie library.

 

[LonesomeSTX]

I have heard nothing but complaints about Itunes. If they are so bad why does Apple do nothing to correct it?

 

[97RangerXLT]

Because the members of the iHerd will buy anything mac related even if there are obviously better alternatives..I gotta agree with Alland's philosophy on data retention and music ripping. I do not go as far as the fireproof safe within a fireproof safe but I do have multiple backups. My cd collection if lost by fire should be covered under my homeowners policy but I would still have to actually find and replace them. Many of them are no longer in print.

I haven't had any issues in buying tracks from Amazon MP3. For single tracks it is the way to go. For entire cds the best route is buying the physical disk.

AJ

Sent from the Galaxy to the interwebs

 

[LonesomeSTX]

Then you have all those CDs taking up shelf space. I am at the point where I want nothing taking up space. I even got rid of most of my living room funiture.

 

[cvar]

Good info, AllanD. Minor point, though...

The Root of iTunes problem is that Apple IGNORES (and leaves blank) the "Album Artist" field in the imbedded ID3 "tag" file and this lack leads to massive confusion.

Well... Itunes will respect & use that field, if it is filled in. To do that in Itunes, select all of your (dozen or so) tracks from a rip'd album, and then use "Get Info" to enter "Album Artist" for all those selected tracks, all at once (not just 1 at a time). Same for artwork, or any other fields.

iTunes files are not universally playable like mp3 files.

That's your player's fault, not iTunes fault. Besides, iTunes will happily organize both MP3 and non-MP3 in the same library. Even if iPod can't play them.

I prefer iTunes for its simple & intuitive user-interface to organize music files, of all kinds. I agree that CD & backups are necessary.

 

[mp3deviant721]

Amazon is the best way to go if you have a standard MP3 player. As far as I know, Amazon does not use DRM on their files. I have a few songs bought off Amazon and I know they are not DRM'd.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

 

[LonesomeSTX]

I have been looking at Amazon. I might go that route.

 

[michowski]

Do you have a smartphone of some sort? If so the best program ive found is spotify. You can easily search and add a song to your playlist. Its like 10 bucks a month and you get every feature. They have a desktop app for your pc so you can do everything on the pc and it will automatically be converted over to your phone app. Its truly the best way to listen to music as far as building your own playlists.

 

[michowski]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzfH5ruEaiE

 

[LonesomeSTX]

I still have a flip phone.

Thanks for the link.