So I got Margie a (promissary note for) an iPod for her birthday, so that she can have music in her tiny little cube at the office (or “where ever she goes,” to be more lyrical).
This has raised the issue of our home music library. I have ripped all our CDs — all 20Gb of them — onto my notebook, which is, to be honest, very much cramping my disc space. As I’m the person who buys most our CDs, it makes sense for me to rip them, and being the fanatical organizer I am about some thing (don’t laugh), it makes sense for me to rip them onto my machine.
(And, actually, I’m in the process of re-reviewing all our ripped music to update the Artist and Composer fields, which are usually sorely lacking in most CD libraries. Oh, and cover art.)
(We don’t actually buy a lot of CDs any more, but occasionally we do — and, no, not so much into the “download your favorite tune for 99 cents” kind of thing, as more than once my favorite tune on an album/collection has turned out not to be the one I bought it for. Serendipity is all, man. Groovy.)
I currently use iTunes for my music jukebox/library, which works well. It collects and stores all sorts of metadata beyond the basic fields for the music, etc. etc.
Ideally, I’d like the music library on Margie’s machine at home, with just enough music on my machine to satisfy my occasional desire to listen to music (I’m on the phone too much to listen to much at the office).
The iPod might make that possible, along with some new features in iTunes 7, such as being able to have multiple libraries. If I can create a library on one of our external drives, with a smaller “my tunes” library on my hard drive, everyone will be happy. We’ll have the music, I’ll have my local bits, etc.
The main question is whether to get the 30Gb iPod (which will also hold everything), or an 80Gb (to allow for some added content down the line). Pondering.
Links for future reference: Multiple Libraries in iTunes 7. Moving your iTunes Music Library to Another Computer. Sync Both Ways.
Also: Moving Your iTunes Library to Another Hard Drive.
I had to move all of my Library to a seperate external 100gig drive, and then added “the gift of Music” in August.
So I have the iPod, and three different computers that I have iTunes on and it seems to work fine.
I have a 60gig iPod (top of the line back in the spring, it I am only using half of it.
Good to know.
I just want to be sure that (a) I don’t lose any history/metadata on the music when I move it, (b) we don’t end up with music loaded onto the wrong place.
I’m thinking the external 100Gb drive I recently got would be perfect for this (and some other things) — as long as it, in turn, gets backed up on occasion. 😛
Ahhh, yes, the backing up. 🙂
I’d go with the larger iPod myself. I have a 20GB one, and it’s already full. I’d love to get another, but can’t justify it since the one I have works just fine. I also think an external HD is really the way to go, as long as you like you say remember to back it up.
Since my shiny new BlackBerry plays MP3s, I was hoping to use it to play NPR podcasts. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to support such features.
I can’t see going out and dropping a wad of cash on an iPod just for that capability, though. Besides, I’d look silly with the BlackBerry tethered to one ear and the iPod to the other.