starting a digital music library discussion

[jefferiestubes8]

Hey guys, Well this week the music of the Beatles entire discography is now available as legal digital downloads.
By chance on Sunday I started creating my digital music library.
I have a project ahead of me with about 450 audio CDs to convert to audio files.
I do not currently own a portable music player (yet) and I do plan on getting rid of the shelf & all of the physical audio CDs in 2011.

I am ripping files to the FLAC format (free lossless audio codec), adding ID3v2 tags and album artwork and then transcoding to MP3 files and keeping the MP3s and FLAC files. I plan to possibly use the Zune software for a library. Not sure yet. I may be getting a Windows Phone 7 this Winter/Spring which has the Zune software on it with syncing to your library to use for portable use.
This week I've already ripped about 30 albums to FLAC and made MP3s.

Now without arguing over the walled garden of iTunes software and the iPod product line itself let's discuss digital music libraries and just starting out.
Would you guys & gals share your experiences with converting your collection of audio CDs and perhaps any knowledge you could impart on someone just starting out? things like how to organize the library itself and genres, tags, etc.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Well, my digital library is in three places -

1. iTunes/my iPod, which contains most of the stuff I listen to regularly. Most of it came from CDs imported into iTunes - for the most part, I still purchase the CDs in a store or on Amazon and import them to iTunes - the one sort of exception being if I just like 1-2 songs on an entire album done by an artist I don't really care about and don't want to purchase the album as a whole - then I might download the 1 or 2 songs individually, usually from iTunes.

In this case, iTunes does the file organization and I just change my views as I like, develop playlists, etc. Just got done putting together a new running playlist - songs that work well with the pace I run at normally.

2. Large boxed sets - mostly of classical music. These are a mix of FLAC and MP3 tracks and I do not keep them in iTunes. I have a fair amount of classical music in iTunes...but some of these really big opera sets and composer sets I don't really want taking up space on an iPod, but I do like the ability to listen to them on my computer. I usually just keep these in file folders on a hard drive and open them/listen to them using VLC or Winamp or whatever. The files are organized by composer> piece of music (for classical).

3. Live rock concert bootlegs. These are almost exclusively of Bruce Springsteen shows (going back to the early 1970s!) and Pearl Jam shows (btw, these are my long-standing 2 favorite groups) and are of varying sound quality. Many of these shows (particularly the later and/or soundboard-recorded Springsteen shows and pretty much all Pearl Jam shows) are of good enough sound quality to put on an iPod if I were so inclined...but that's what studio albums and 'officially' issued live albums are for! Both Springsteen and Pearl Jam have such large officially issued catalogs of live music that I don't need to put concert bootlegs on an iPod. Pearl Jam also has an extensive collection of 'official' bootlegs available and I was collecting them slowly...but don't have the money to continue that in recent months.

Anyway, these concert bootlegs are organized into two giant folders (one for ESB and one for PJ) with subfolders by show - all of them in 'YYYY-MM-DD Arena Name, City, Country' format. Within each show subfolder I include a .txt file with the set list and any other relevant notes. In Springsteen's case in particular, the bootleggers have gotten really fancy, making CD album covers and everything for these boots...and if those are available I'll keep those in the folder also...in case I ever get around to burning these bazillions of shows to disc. Like that will ever happen!

One of these days, I'd like to find the time to organize all of these concert bootlegs into a program (not iTunes though) for easier playing and track changing...but I need to do the research about what would be the best program to do this in. I downloaded Songbird..but never installed it and so I am still open to suggestions here.

 

[Sakrysta]

I used to use Real Player extensively, and I still do for ripping CDs. I HATE, DESPISE, LOATHE, AND DETEST ITUNES. Ahem. Sorry, that just slipped out there. I find the Zune software bloated and non-intuitive. I am very weary of big pictures and swirly interfaces that don't actually tell you what you're looking for. I much prefer the simplicity of something like RealPlayer or WinAmp. For ripping, I confess, I am not discerning regarding audio quality. I generally rip directly to mp3 at 160 kbps, which is more that adequate for my ears. I file by album name only, so there's only one layer of folders to deal with in Windows Explorer. Some people like to do artist first, then have a subfolder for each album. To me, that's unnecessarily cumbersome. Also, I only use song titles in the file names, which makes it annoying when I occasionally purchase a song download and the file name is five miles long with all the artist & album info. I have all my music saved on its own external hard drive and have that shared on my home network, so I can listen from any machine in the house as long as that hard drive and the machine it is connected to are on, which they usually are, as it's the one I use for watching TV too. I'm a physical media-type person, so I haven't gotten rid of my discs. I have them organized and stored in boxes where I can find them if I want to reference liner notes. Usually when I listen to music, I have a pretty good idea of which artist/album I'm in the mood for, so I just load that one in WinAmp and play it. If I'm in a random genre mood, I have all my music in Real Player, and I use that. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I hardly use my mp3 players for music anymore. I have a Zune that I regret spending money on, but oh well have it, might as well use it, and I have a lot of my audio books on it. For in the car, I either grab a few CDs and listen to them over and over, or plug my iPhone in and run Pandora. I have three Creative mp3 players that I don't regret buying and got years of use out of, but they're collecting dust now.

 

[Pingfah]

2 suggestions:

1. Back it up.

2. Back up the back up.

 

[Sakrysta]

LOL, yeah, especially if you're getting rid of your discs.

 

[trekkiedane]

Yeah, I heard the good news about the Beatles collection, but I've FLAC'ed my entire Beatles (vinyl) collection years ago

I am ripping files to the FLAC format (free lossless audio codec), adding ID3v2 tags and album artwork and then transcoding to MP3 files and keeping the MP3s and FLAC files.

Why?

I mean; why both FLAC and mp3?



WinAmp for me (but I usually transcode in Super©) and with, very, few exceptions I don't use 'playlists'! Folders do the trick for me.

I have three portables that all play the FLAC files and the two of them I actually use (one of which is my 'phone') also take µSD cards (that I have found to be a very convenient feature in such devices).

I don't use the 'genre' tag as I have found it to be more confusing than clarifying (some might call it 'orchestral', others 'classical' - some say 'rock' where others think 'rock 'n' roll' - and so on...
(And sometimes a 'soundtrack' is merely a collection of 'pop' music )

 

[Sheep]

Sounds like you're already on your way.

I have a 100GB partition on one of my HDDs devoted solely to music (my M: drive); it's only about 60% full so I have plenty of room to add more. Putting everything in one location makes backing up much easier--in my case, just copy everything from M: to my backup HDD and no worries about having audio files scattered all over the place like Windows likes to do.

I use a combination of CDEx and MP3Tag for all my ripping and tagging needs--once you have everything set up it's pretty painless to get your CDs ripped to MP3 or another audio format. I use the following file and naming convention:

/Music/Artist/Album/Track

Track is the track number with a leading zero followed by the song title for single artist albums. For compilations, it's the track number with a leading zero followed by artist, a dash and the song title (e.g., 01 Sarah McLachlan - Possession). I started doing this when I had a crappy MP3 player that didn't recognize tags properly and relied on sorting the filenames in alphabetical order (obviously not ideal for listening to albums), and it stuck with me even now.

If you're using the Zune software, for compilation discs with multiple artists (e.g., soundtracks and the like), Zune doesn't handle them correctly unless you change the BAND (or ALBUM ARTIST) tag to "Various Artists". If you don't do this it will show each track as a separate album which is completely asinine. I use MP3Tag to manually batch edit those tags when necessary. Like Sakrysta I loathe iTunes and gave up on it years ago because it's a complete dog on Windows.

And follow the advice above--back up everything and in multiple places if you can. External HDDs are dirt cheap now so make sure to do at least one backup that isn't on your main HDD.

I mean; why both FLAC and mp3?

MP3 is a lot more portable considering companies are moving away from ginormous HDD MP3 players in favor of smaller flash drives. 16 or 32GB isn't that much space!

 

[Sakrysta]

Oooh, don't even get me started on the problem of multiple artists on the same album. Grrr.

As for genres and things like that, that's one reason I prefer ripping with Real Player, because I know how it works, and I edit all the pertinent fields BEFORE I rip the album. So I have "Film Score" which is for soundtracks that are all instrumental and "Film Soundtrack" for those with songs.

 

[trekkiedane]

^Use your folders!

[ETA:] Do you, then, have a third category for those soundtracks that also contain sounds and dialogue from the film?

I mean; why both FLAC and mp3?

MP3 is a lot more portable considering companies are moving away from ginormous HDD MP3 players in favor of smaller flash drives. 16 or 32GB isn't that much space!

That's where the practicality of the µSD-drive comes into play
And, of course, using your 'phone' as a portable media-player also allows you to just load the media (or stream it) from your PC/server at home where ever you are (you'll need a phone that isn't bound to some expensive 'plan' though).

 

[Sakrysta]

Oh, I do. It just looks tacky to have all those names. I prefer the simplicity of "Various Artists."

 

[trekkiedane]

Oh, I do. It just looks tacky to have all those names. I prefer the simplicity of "Various Artists."

I seriously hate 'Various Artists' -makes it difficult to get good results when searching in the music database!

 

[Count Zero]

In Springsteen's case in particular, the bootleggers have gotten really fancy, making CD album covers and everything for these boots...and if those are available I'll keep those in the folder also...in case I ever get around to burning these bazillions of shows to disc. Like that will ever happen!

Isn't that sort of normal for bootleg CDs? I used to collect Beatles and Beatles related bootlegs (well, mainly Paul McCartney) and they all had rather fancy covers. Most of them are on CD-Rs I traded with other collector over the years. I probably have more than 200 discs, so you're better off leaving them as digital files on your hard drive, I think. (Although, come to think of it, how do you prevent the short gap between tracks in that case, which are really annoying in live shows?)

As for the OP I don't really have any advice. I just keep my music in various folders (artist - album).

 

[trekkiedane]

(Although, come to think of it, how do you prevent the short gap between tracks in that case, which are really annoying in live shows?

That's a setting in the media player.

 

[Count Zero]

So how would one do that in VLC?

 

[trekkiedane]

I wouldn't know, I only use VLC for playing video.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

In Springsteen's case in particular, the bootleggers have gotten really fancy, making CD album covers and everything for these boots...and if those are available I'll keep those in the folder also...in case I ever get around to burning these bazillions of shows to disc. Like that will ever happen!

Isn't that sort of normal for bootleg CDs? I used to collect Beatles and Beatles related bootlegs (well, mainly Paul McCartney) and they all had rather fancy covers. Most of them are on CD-Rs I traded with other collector over the years. I probably have more than 200 discs, so you're better off leaving them as digital files on your hard drive, I think. (Although, come to think of it, how do you prevent the short gap between tracks in that case, which are really annoying in live shows?)

Well, as I mentioned in my first post, the only two bands I collect bootleg shows on are Pearl Jam and Springsteen, so I can't speak at all about what is 'normal' for bootlegs. All I know is that the 'official' Pearl Jam bootleg collection has covers of a sort, but they are pretty cardboard-ish bland looking, so I almost don't count them as album covers, really. And the 'unofficial' PJ bootlegs I have are spotty - some came with covers, some not. Although I will grant that I do not have nearly as many of those as I do of Springsteen, so perhaps my sample is not representative.

That said, some of the Springsteen bootleggers have gone to some great lengths to make 'album covers' that look like they could be used on actual albums - some really nice work.

Bottom line for my fairly small bootleg collection of only two artists (maybe 80 Springsteen shows and about 20 PJ shows) is that PJ bootlegs have the better sound quality as a rule (makes sense since all of them were made in an age where technology was better), but Springsteen has the nicer covers included..and perhaps the more interesting notes from people who were actually at the shows (although I might be thinking they are more 'interesting' because some of these antidotes are from the mid-70's, etc.)

Anyway...I am by no means an expert on bootlegs as a whole and I don't trade them around or anything (although I do that within the classic film community, so I am familiar with the concept, having over 10,000 classic films in my collection) - I'm just a run-of-the-mill fan who REALLY loves Springsteen and Pearl Jam...and so I collect a few little bits and pieces past the basic studio & live albums. Wouldn't call myself a 'collector' or anything...just a 'slightly more interested that normal regular fan'.

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

Have been using itunes to organise all my music on my laptop. Currently have around 40Gb from over 400CDs that I've imported over the last 15 months. There are some CDs in my collection I'm yet to add to my collection. I have ipod shuffle as my MP3 player at the moment.

 

[Sakrysta]

...some of these antidotes are from the mid-70's....

There is no antidote for the mid-70s.

Well, actually, I was the antidote for the mid-70s. Once I was born, things started getting better.

 

[trekkiedane]

 

[Pingfah]

Bottom line for my fairly small bootleg collection of only two artists (maybe 80 Springsteen shows and about 20 PJ shows) is that PJ bootlegs have the better sound quality as a rule (makes sense since all of them were made in an age where technology was better), but Springsteen has the nicer covers included..and perhaps the more interesting notes from people who were actually at the shows (although I might be thinking they are more 'interesting' because some of these antidotes are from the mid-70's, etc.)

The great thing bout the PJ bootlegs is that they play a totally different set list every night, so you can collect quite a few of them from one tour without getting bored or feeling like you own the same concert over and over.

They are definitely one of the best bands out there in terms of rewarding their long term fans. I mean how many other bands record and press a special 7" vinyl single for their fans every Christmas?