iMusic

[twirlgrrl]

Well...

I know I posted when I got all my music ripped into MediaMonkey. That was really exciting.

Lately, I've been getting over my block against carrying an MP3 player. For one, I don't do headphones; I get a creepy feeling that someone could sneak up on me and I would never know. And I'm opposed to MP3s on principle; they don't sound good to me. I'm wedded to CD-quality sound. But then it occurred to me: I'm already carrying an MP3 player around--my iphone! And sound quality might not be so key in my car, where I'm already dealing with road noise. So I might as well use it and see how it goes.

I got an adapter thingie to play my iphone through my car stereo. I got all excited about the possibilities. Imagine not having to bring a book of CDs with me on car trips!

I started adding album art to my music. I reorganized my files and started converting them to MP3s (I have them stored in FLAC which is lossless.) I dumped all the MP3s into a folder for easy syncing to my iphone.

Then I decided to start figuring out how many songs I can put on my phone.

Turns out my 8GB iphone will only hold maybe 2000 songs. And that's if I don't have much else on it. I like to keep a couple of Super Why videos handy for emergencies. So, for me, 1000 songs.

Have I mentioned lately that I have more than 15,000 songs on my computer? I already have 500 songs in my MP3 folder, and I'm not even through the A's yet.

How am I going to choose which songs to put on my phone? How often am I going to have to reorganize and sync my music library? I was so excited to just dump everything on my phone. Not gonna happen.

Oh well. It'll still be nice to have some of my favorite music available in the car at all times.

How do you guys manage the contents of your portable music player? Are you out of room? How often do you shuffle things around?

Comments

[alexisyael.livejournal.com]

haha, I hear you about the creepy headphones thing. Also, it seems to me to be very antisocial (in most circumstances, except the gym). Actually, I mostly do headphones at the gym!

I do not have NEARLY the amount of music you do, so it all fits on my phone (which is 4GB? I think...) But, most of my CDs are not on MP3, I still need to get that done (plus, I'm cheap and don't buy a lot of CDs... the last one non-belly dance CD I bought for myself was about a year ago...)

[twirlgrrl.livejournal.com]

I've definitely slowed WAY down on the CD buying thing. But I don't buy MP3s either. If I do buy music it's almost always on CD still. I'm a relic. :)

[alexisyael.livejournal.com]

I haven't ever bought an MP3 (tho *ahem* I do have some!)!

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

As you can imagine, my music collection sneers at the size of my iPod. and I have a 16gb mini, no pictures or video on it!

So here is what I do. First thing I did was scan my text archives for every "desert island disc" post I've ever written, and I loaded those 25 or 50 albums up. That takes up hardly any room in the grand scheme of things.

Next I load anything I bought recently that I haven't listened to yet, or listened to enough. I create a playlist or two out of this, by genre, so I can give it some concentrated listening on the bus.

Then I have three or four playlists, also by genre, that I load up. There is an Ambient playlist just for the slow lush stuff, and a Dub playlist for the Orb and similar artists (but I have to be careful, because I could easily eat 25% of my capacity with just the Orb). I have a Goa Trance list that over time I have pruned down to the top 30 or so tracks in the whole genre. I have a few hundred pop and rock tunes with actual lyrics and stuff that I know I will want to hear almost anytime.

THEN

I load up 2-3 Grateful Dead shows and a handful of "random albums across all genres that I haven't listened to in a year or three". I do this until I run out of room.

Every 4 months or so I plug the thing in and swap out the Orb, Dead, "new purchases", and "random not recently palyed". :) Only the Goa, non-Orb dub, Ambient, and the couple hundred "songs with words" stays constant. Over time, material from the new purchases may get added to any of the playlists as a semi-permanent addition. So far in 5 years, I have only had to start from scratch (added too many songs to the playlists and wound up with no room for new purchases) once.

Short answer: I change shit around every 4 months :) based on complicated rules that may not work for any other single person on earth.

[twirlgrrl.livejournal.com]

HOORAY!!! I knew you'd have an awesome answer. I'm going to start planning my playlists now.