How do you collect music?
Apr 15, 2017 at 4:58 AM Post #46 of 58
It's a good point about backing up..
Nice thread by the way, quite an interesting read.
As a listener from before even the invention of the CD I was always heavily invested in physical music. Had a very nice stereo system that was bought with money from part-time jobs as a teenager. I am of the opinion that working hard for something special adds a lot of value, and I treasured my Marantz gold turntable, Akai receiver and Nakamichi cassette deck. :) Big Pioneer speakers completed the system, but sadly I cannot recall the make of headphones that I had, even though I used them daily...:frowning2: Bit of a fail for head-fi :wink:
Anyway, obviously vinyl was the thing, and the ritual was always buying, after careful consideration as every guilder spent really meant something, the desired record and carefully removing from the cover. A quick system check followed, and a blank chrome or laterly metal cassette was cued up, spooled just so as not to miss the opening second of the record. Ah, quite blissful memories indeed. :) The cassette would serve daily duty and the record used sparingly and always kept pristine, no dust or scratches on my babies.
Then the age of the CD, the CD Walkman, and rebuying a lot of music. And of course collecting new CD releases. Never had quite the same magic, somehow, but being better​ paid meant better equipment, and a rapidly growing collection.
Enter the digital age. :blush:. First stop was a mp3 player of a brand that totally escapes me now, whatever was the first big storage unit I guess, and as I began traveling the world I ripped all my music to mp3. Then I sold all my CD and record collection for cash to travel. Portable music became my reality. And I slipped out of the technology loop for a long time.
Fast forward a decade and I bought my first iPod, coincidentally the last 7th Gen iPod, which is still my main player today. It is filled with 148GB of music, ripped from CD's and yes, also torrented from, you know the places. All in 320, no substandard rips, and every month I look at the latest releases of the music that I like, and any new genres or bands of interest. I download, listen, delete or add to the collection as appropriate. I also cull from the current, as stuff falls out of favour or ceases to be of interest. In that way I keep my collection at about the capacity of my iPod - I know that I don't need to, but it's a habit and a discipline that I have maintained. Currently 18,000+ songs, enough for me to enjoy without hoarding unwanted excess.
As for backup, I don't use iTunes anymore, I use Copy Trans which is lightweight, fast and easy once the core collection is established. I keep 3 copies (not including the iPod itself), 1 on my main hard drive, and 2 on removable drives which I keep updated. I don't however have offsite storage, and might look to that in the future.
Anyway, I've just rambled down memory lane a bit, and this was fun. :)
 
May 13, 2017 at 9:21 AM Post #47 of 58
Here's the latest from me:

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Two weeks ago I got myself a 128 GB USB thumb drive at a local store for the equivalent of $33 USD, and now, for the first time ever, I can carry around my entire music collection in my pocket everywhere I go, and can easily share my whole collection with friends and colleagues!

The requirements: 1. They must have their own computer with them; 2. Their computer must have at least 62 GB of free space (or they'll need to have their own external hard drive and their computer if their PC doesn't have enough space); 3. We'll need about 45-minutes-to-an-hour for the whole thing to copy.

Anyway, my music collection is my most prized possession, so it's really exciting to be able to easily share it with people, now.

In other news, last weekend I got started on the "Open-Ended Phase" of my Music Addition Project of 2017, mostly involving material from individual music artists. Did some catching up with the latest Taylor Swift albums and singles from the last 5 years, plus her debut album from 10 years ago that I previously hadn't sampled, either. Got a bunch of good songs from a famous local boygroup pop group here in Chongqing, called The TF Boys, and added some good stuff from a reggae-pop duo from Germany, named Blue Lagoon.

I also put together a small homemade compilation album with 9 songs, including a few from Taylor Swift, Demi Lovato, and others.

Basically, for a long time, I'd been wanting to sample, select, download, organize, and add material from these particular artists, and finally got around to doing it last weekend. Spent two-and-a-half days working on this, which involved 97 songs (94 of which were newly-added), and 8 albums and singles. I used the sites Melodishop and MP3Va for the Western-world music, and various Chinese sites for The TF Boys.

My collection now stands at 10,662 songs, and 752 albums and singles. Is 61 GB in size. Thus far in 2017, I've added a total of 838 new songs, and 48 albums & singles, which is about 5 GB.

Below is a screenshot of this latest addition from last weekend.

New Songs 5-8-2017 screenshot.jpg
 
May 13, 2017 at 1:59 PM Post #48 of 58
When I first got into music my friends and I would borrow each other's LPs and then copy them onto cassette.

Times have changed!
 
May 15, 2017 at 10:39 PM Post #49 of 58
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May 16, 2017 at 8:00 AM Post #50 of 58
Bulk-buying CDs in good condition. It's a gamble, but it's working out well while I establish my collection.

I have just finished up as broad a base for classical music as I can get for a while, so I am happy with that. I'll have to start buying more artist/composer-specific works from now on to flesh it out. I have some in mind that I definitely want, one of which being Verdi and there's a 75-disc complete operas set, so that's on my list to buy and rip to FLAC.

I also have a database of sorts in Google Drive Spreadsheets that lists every album I own, the barcode, any numbers or codes on the spine, the publisher, whether I have it in FLAC, whether I own the discs and also the catalogue number I have stored it under. This way if I see any CDs while I am out and about for a good price, I can check quickly to see if I own it already :)
 
May 16, 2017 at 9:08 AM Post #51 of 58
I also have a database of sorts in Google Drive Spreadsheets that lists every album I own

Since 1999, I've been keeping an Excel spreadsheet of my music collection that I update anytime I add any new albums or singles. It lists the music artist, album title, number of tracks, date of acquisition, and whether it's domestic (relative to the U.S.), or an import, or a homemade compilation. I keep two files: one that's arranged alphabetically by artist, then album title; and the other file is arranged chronologically by date of acquisition.

This spreadsheet really came in handy in 2001 when converting my whole CD collection to MP3.

Anyway, in other news, I forgot to mention on this thread that I'll be attending the New York spring meetup on Saturday, June 10th. If any of you would like to attend, then you're more than welcome to copy my whole collection to your computer, as long as you bring your own PC!
 
May 16, 2017 at 12:51 PM Post #52 of 58
My library is both legally and illegally collected, although I've recently buying a lot since no one share my music taste
I buy my music at 2 sites in Japan called Mora and E-Onkyo Music, since the CD price tag and shipping fee is quite high I help myself and buy the Hi-Res digital format instead since they have the same value a (if not lower) as buying a CD and shipping it back to my country
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Because 95% of my collection are literally uncompressed (Mora sells uncompressed flac), I only have about 5k3 songs but they are about 580GB worth
 
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May 26, 2017 at 2:01 PM Post #53 of 58
I have been collecting music since I was a kid. I started with tapes, moved on to CDs. While the CD craze was going on, people started dumping records in mass as they transitioned to a new format. I took advantage of this and began collecting vinyl. I massed a large collection and gradually sold off my vinyl collection. I kind of regret getting rid of the vinyl at that time. I didn't have much choice. I started traveling and moving around. I found that records and moving make for very heavy work!

These days, I still collect vinyl. I mostly buy reggae on vinyl. I have 500+ reggae 7" singles that I don't play enough. I have a much smaller collection of 12" vinyl also made up of reggae artists...probably 100+ records. I also collect CDs, digital music and currently have a Spotify subscription. I collect my digital files on a Subsonic server. Subsonic is a streaming media server that I have run on various computers over the years. Currently I have a dedicated NAS with two mirrored 2TB hard drives that keep things nicely backed up. I don't have many FLAC files and have have mostly 320 kbps MP3s.

Last summer I tried to make backups of many records. The recordings were far from perfect. I have a couple of Audio Technica AT-LP120 turntables that have USB output. I did many recordings and was mostly unhappy with the results. I could hear the slight whir of the turntable motor in the background. I need to do some mods on my turntable (heavier mat to isolate sound better, perhaps?) that might help improve the recordings. I am also skeptical about the quality of the USB output of the turntable. At some point, maybe I'll invest in a dedicated sound card just for recording records.

Unfortunately, many of the records I have were recorded less than perfectly and the actual vinyl is less than perfect. This is part of the fun collecting Jamaican vinyl!
 
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May 26, 2017 at 3:53 PM Post #54 of 58
I spent tens of thousands on my music collection: mostly CDs, but also some vinyl, tapes, and digital downloads.

I ripped the CDs to lossless and store them on hard drives, naturally. All of my listening nowadays is via digital files.

I've bought music from all sorts of sources: CD shops, record labels, Amazon, eBay, Discogs, Bandcamp, Otaku.com...the list goes on.
 
May 28, 2017 at 5:55 AM Post #55 of 58
Had to add a few more new songs (mostly from 2017 or late 2016) to my music collection before my upcoming trip to the U.S., which begins in just 12 days! Several days ago I noticed that the various-artist album series Bravo Hits (from Germany) had a new volume (number 97) that had just been released on Melodishop, so I sampled the songs and got the ones I liked. Unfortunately, though, this album only had 11 songs (out of the 45 on it) that I actually liked. This was quite a contrast from the previous Bravo Hits 96 that had 29 out of 45 songs that were good.

So I checked to see if Melodishop or MP3Va had any other good, new, European various-artist dance-pop albums from 2017. As a result, I found a fairly-new one from the NRJ Hits album series (from France), called NRJ Winter Hits 2017 that came out early this year. (In my music collection, I've labeled it NRJ Winter Hits 2016-17 to eliminate any confusion.) Here's the links for this album:

NRJ Winter Hits 2017, CD1
NRJ Winter Hits 2017, CD2
NRJ Winter Hits 2017, CD3

This album has 24 (out of 54 songs) that I both like and that I don't already have on other albums in my collection, so it makes for a good addition. I also got several other songs from the previous year's Winter Hits album, plus a few tunes from Alan Walker that I didn't already have.

I had to spend a little time getting some "replacement MP3s" from various sources, since some of these songs on the various-artist albums had lackluster sound quality.

But here's the big disappointment: the "Restrung Version" of Alan Walker's hit song "Faded"...is a bad victim of the Loudness Wars! This version is an awesome classical-music-style rendition of the song, and after completing this latest music addition mini-project, I was eager to play this particular tune through my headphone system first. But,.........ugh! The orchestral arrangement during the choruses sounded utterly crushed -- with audible distortion and virtually no dynamics. It also was really loud-sounding with the volume setting on my iPod turned down quite a bit lower than I usually listen to it at -- even when compared to most new pop music! Ugh! A major disappointment.

Anyway, I've got my music all set for the trip. My collection now stands at 10,710 songs, and 757 albums and singles. 61.1 GB total. Thus far this year, I've added 886 new songs, and 53 new albums and singles, which is about 5 GB.

Below is a screenshot of this latest little addition, along with some of the new album covers.

New Songs 5-27-2017 screenshot.jpg


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May 28, 2017 at 6:29 AM Post #56 of 58
Started building my collection late 80 and 90 and have hundreds of cd, been selling them piece meal at my local buy and sell shop have not bought one since early 2000. Strictly download from I tunes and my God would wish I knew what I knew now. I now look at my cd and blue ray film collection with quirky what was I thinking dust collection.
It's all hard drive 3 Tera bite 384 fr 32 bit AQ jitterbug quality USB to various dac amp combos, never look back. Considered new software or other playback devices but are not convinced of benefits...
 
Jan 29, 2018 at 4:40 PM Post #57 of 58
I bought music from mora, HD track. And some of the classic music are ripped myself from CDs.
I usually use Spotify to explore and listen music before I buy it. I will also consider the quality of recording!
 

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