Archiving music
This post is more a rant than really a question asking for your input, but if you're willing to reply I really appreciate.
The question is simple - how do you archive your music? As you know if you read this blog regularly, I've moved a couple of days ago. Since I've only bought new music today, since then, I hadn't yet unpacked my music collection, since I knew I would get into trouble once I did it. Well, with eleven new CD's I had to unwrap at least the main CD shelf in order to archive them, and then the issues arised all over again. See, I think that I have a quite nice way of organising my music: I moved from Coimbra to Lisbon less than two years ago and with me only came those CD's that absolutely had to come. When I moved from Carnaxide (the first place where I was, in Lisbon) to Laranjeiras (where I stood until a few days ago) lots of music went to Lamego and Coimbra. So, with me there's only a part of my music, and that's the part I'm interested in archiving properly. So, I have music roughly in four different formats: digital (mp3, ogg, whatever), CD, Vinyl and Cassette Tapes. Since I don't really care about the music I have digitally I simply don't archive it more than having a ~/music that has one folder per band, with its tracks inside. When I like something enough to be afraid of loosing it, then I buy it physically. Meaning I don't backup ~/music in anyway, and sometimes I even delete random folders in it, since those are the Gb's in my hard drive there's no real loss in deleting: even Monday I had a "not enough space on the device), so I went to Amarok, ordered those tracks by user rating and just deleted the less-rated ones until I had a comfortable enough percentage in df -h|grep hda|cut -d" " -f21 . I have only a few vinyls here in Lisbon, so they're also easily ordered - alphabetically per band, chronologically for records of the same band. With the tapes I have bands ordered by "interest" (something like "what I listen more times first"), chronologically for tapes of the same band. Now... the BIG issue are CD's. I won't even discuss this part: all CD's of the same band must be together and ordered chronologicly. How else would I find a specific Marilyn Manson CD, for instance, between the 71 I have from that band and plus having all those randomly mixed between other artists CD's? But, how to order the bands? Alfabeticly makes to sense really (it's almost the same as random) since some bands have nothing to do with others. I simply don't want my Claw Finger CD's (yes, I have some, do you want to buy'em?) which I don't hear anymore near my Cranes CD's I'm often listening to! They don't match in nothing but the first letter of the band... So, how to order them? Musical style? Heck, most of my CD's have a hard-to-define musical style, I wouldn't know how to do that - how strict or generic should I be? Per label? It makes some sense: almost all CD's of the same label are on the same vein (for indies, of course), but some bands started in one label and went to other and other... And then, should still make sense to order by band? For those labels you have a big percentage of their catalog (I'm thinking on my Prophecy CD's) it might make sense, since you can follow not only a progression of one or other band, but an whole movement of the bands that had a role in it, but in labels from who you don't have the complete catalog it makes no real sense... But, with all this questions... What am I used to do? Well, I simply mix a bit of everything described here, never breaking a band's discography, and ordering it by "what have been my mood lately". Of course that it makes me frustrated, because sometimes I glance at one point and then to a distant other and think "Hey, do I really like Skrol that much more than Autumn's Grey Solace?". Oh well... But the worst of all is when you have an weirdly packed CD (like now - where do I put this 2CD digipack? I'll have to move all this band to another place 'cause this CD won't simply fit in this shelf...) and specially... compilations. Heck what do you do with the compilations? If the compilation is not that good the solution is easy: for instance, if you got that CD because of that one track, and the others aren't as good, you just put that compilation as making part of the band's discography. But what if the complete compilation, or almost every track in it, is awsome? Where will I put this CD that has tracks from both Tenhi, Antimatter, Elend and Empyrium?
Boy, being a music lover is hard!
Well, you are going to kill me, but I will say it anyway :-)
ReplyDeleteThe best method to organize things (and to find them) is numeric order, and your doubts on organizing CD's prove it.
So, the solution is very simple: for each CD you get you put it in the "next place", then make a script that returns an entry with the order number of the CD and information about it, name, tags whatever.
After that you just search the database you created with that script, see the number... et voilá!
(the best thing of comments in a blog is that when you read this I will not be near you :-D)
I'm not going to kill you or spank you or anything Paula! As a matter of fact your method might be usable for some people (I guess you're using it?)... just not for me. See, that method would work (and as a matter of fact it can be used as a complement) if I was looking for a way to quickly know where to get the "whatever" album from "The Guys" band. But that's usually not the case! I usually want to listen to something, so I want to surf with my eyes on the shelves and think about what am I going to listen now. And no, there's no database that can give me that, even one with CD-covers and everything (which would be a pain in the ass to maintain) won't give the same feeling as passing my fingers on the back of the CD's, picking one or other to take a deep look, open it and looking to the inners while thinking about another album that one remembers me about, or... well, the whole feeling deeply associated to having a music collection!
ReplyDeleteBesides, how would I number the CD's? How to order them? would it be incremental? Would "The cool compilation volume 1" be #132 and "The cool compilation volume 2" be the #459 ? What sense does it make? Sorry, but your method is completely useless to me... Thanks for the input, tho!
It all about numeric order, as I said, a new CD goes to the next place.
ReplyDeleteAnd you can get the good feeling of surfing on the CD's too. It is just that they are not ordered by any theme. This way you can even discover that you want to listen a CD that when you decided to listen music you though you didn't feel like listen to.
"It is just that they are not ordered by any theme"
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that your suggestion conflicts directly with some of my requisites... for instance the part when I say
"How else would I find a specific Marilyn Manson CD, for instance, between the 71 I have from that band and plus having all those randomly mixed between other artists CD's?"
Having the band's discography together and ordered is obligatory...
I do not think so.
ReplyDeleteIf you need to search for something specifically you will use the database, if you want just discover something you surf through the CD's... you can have both :-)
Just archive the stuf autobiographically! :P
ReplyDelete(if you don't know what that means just watch the movie High Fidelity).
I had the same issue as you when I actually used cds, now when I buy new music I just rip it to my hard drive and store the cd by band.
Heh, ordering it autobiographicly it's a wild idea... But quite inpratical :-P Thanks anyway ;-)
ReplyDeleteyou could organize by genre, and within each genre organize according to the size of each band's discography. compilations w/ only a few good songs may not be right next to any specific band, but they won't be far either. =] hope this helps.
ReplyDeleteThat's more or less what I do, but sometimes you can't just "fit" something to a genre - or sometimes two albums from the same band have two "different genres" but I still want them together... But yes, that's what I loosely do. Also, "related bands" tend to stick together: for instance my David Mellor CDs are next to Tony Wakeford, which are next to Sol Invictus which are next to Fire + Ice. Which actually reminds me that I should move Sieben there also... What I actually need is a way to build a "relations graph" so I can see the relations of "something" (CD or pack of CDs) with the other "somethings", and the strength of those relations... or something :-P
ReplyDeleteThree years later, and "autobiographically" doesn't sound that bad of an idea as I initially thought - the proof is that, because I am not really organizing them as I should, they *are* magically getting archived in a sort of autobiographically order :-)
ReplyDelete