Updating tags means reading in a file, then writing it back out, and then doing that for potentially hundreds of thousands of files. Large, bulk jobs like transferring a large amount of music from computer to computer should be done over a wired connection. Re-organising your music should probably also be done over a wired connection, because re-organsing normally means updating tags. However, the reliability and performance of a wireless network is well below that of a wired one, and when performing certain tasks this difference really tells. Wireless networking is great for some applications – it’s perfect for allowing casual Web browsing around the home, and it supports music streaming too. In the days of Wi-Fi networks I think this is sometimes overlooked. It’s best to backup off-site, but backing up on-site, perhaps to an external USB disk, is better than nothing. It’s a service that works well with simple Linux commands, and they have fantastic support. Personally, I use to backup from my Linux home server.
There are generic, cheap storage solutions such as Amazon S3 and also some solutions bundled with computer security software or even your ISP.
Even if you don’t have a commercial NAS, you can still setup a backup routine from your computer to the Internet. Many NAS servers now come with backup features as standard. The solution is to backup your music, ideally offsite. This could happen for many reasons: hard disk damage, accidental deletion, a virus, maybe even burglary or a house fire (although you probably have other things to worry about with the latter). Automate backup to lower the impact of a disasterĮvery digital music collector’s worst fear must be losing all their music. More recently the trend in NAS and home servers has meant you can store your music on a low power, separate server so that you don’t need to switch a computer on whenever you want to listen to music, and you can easily share the music between different devices.
Similarly, if you want to copy music from your collection to a portable player, you need the computer turned on. If you have a system to stream music from the computer to large speakers, you still need the computer turned on.
But this means that to play the music you have to have your computer switched on. Many digital music collectors start with a hard disk stored in their computer on which they store their music. And, of course, there is simply more space to store more music.īut as important as the capacity of your music storage, it’s also worth considering its flexibility. Lossless music becomes a possibilty, as does high definition music. This means you can purchase more and more disk space at a cheaper cost. Over time, the cost of this storage goes down and down. Flexible, capacious storageĭigital music is typically stored on large hard drives. What are five ways of making this process easier? 1. So large music collections are costly, both in terms of acquiring them and the effort involved in keeping them organised. Not only, in the event that you lost your music, would you have to replace it, you would also have to re-organise it as you require.
This effort, plus the value of the music collection itself, makes large music collections especially costly to replace. The normal distribution means that as a collection grows you’ll inevitably attract different music at either ‘long tail’. Perhaps another day you’ll add music from a new genre. Maybe you’ll start building a collection of “high-def” music. Perhaps one day you’ll realise you have added some amateur music without useful metadata, and you can’t find any on the Web either. Large music collections are characterised by their variety as well as their size.
Working through all that data using manual processes takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, and with that comes the increasing likelihood of making mistakes. Adopting new music players can mean changes to how your music is organised. The sheer quantity of data means you need to employ different strategies to both achieve a level of consistency and correctness throughout the collection, and also to do it while maintaining your sanity. It’s difficult to tame large music collections.