For those with large collections

Individual libraries can be opened by holding “option” and launching iTunes. Not ideal, but it does work.

What an awesome discussion for me, who has enough music to last years of playback.

lammer:

I know this is a redundant posting manner - but Justin’s comments are worth a read.

I usually try to keep this space reserved for the things I enjoy themselves, not discussions on them, but I think that how we “keep” things is a part of what they are, which is to say RAID storage arrays are the new snuff box.

jstn:

lammer:

I agree entirely that its worth the time and effort to keep an orderly and comprehensive library. I think people with Marco’s attitude will end up regretting their deletions - and with the price of HD space I really don’t see the point. When I found a box of CD’s from high school in my parent’s basement I was overjoyed, and that was only 30-40 albums. I think pack-rat instincts translate easily from your living space to your digital space. But while living with a bunch of crap in your apartment is a drag, living with a bunch of files is not.

This is really true. To me, the only real cost of (or argument against) saving all your music is the time you put into wrangling it. The price of storage negligible. Also, it’s not just about the music you listen to during the day, what about stuff you keep around for mixtapes? Or video soundtracks? Or play at parties? I’ve got stuff in my collection I only dust off for certain crowds, and I’m glad to have it at the ready rather than fucking around with downloading it on the spot. The cost is so small, why not?

Your thoughts on compehensive archiving also applies to movies in my book - why not rip DVDs I like onto a HD?

Totally. I do that too, but I’m less likely to save *everything*. Music is so fleeting that it makes sense to get the access time as close to instant as possible. For watching movies I’m more willing to spend a few minutes to get it set up streaming on Netflix (for instance) because I’ll wind up sitting there for two hours. Spending a few minutes finding a song is the length of a song.

I keep everything in iTunes. I know this is crazy - but I haven’t found a better way. What do you do when you want to listen to stuff in your folder system? I’m too impatient for the 3 second import.

My file association for MP3s is set to Quicktime Player; I can doubleclick a song and it snaps open without getting imported into iTunes (which, in addition to being slow, also clutters the library if it’s on an external disk). For albums I just drag the folder onto VLC.

Now my question: Why can’t iTunes (or another music player) work with such large libraries? I’ve quite literally lay awake thinking about this issue. Obviously Apple doesn’t give a shit about the “mega-library” user, but we exist and we deserve great software that archives and plays mp3s. I know that iTunes organizes itself with an XML library - is there anything that one can do to speed up or improve the functioning of that library?

I wonder myself. iTunes is already so bloated for regular-sized libaries, the prospect of optimizing it for large libraries is probably far off in the minds of the developers. There’s certainly a big niche waiting to be filled. What I really wish Apple would do is implement a system like Aperture vaults, or some other way to quickly swap out whole libraries.

I agree that FLAC and OGG are problematic. I do use FLAC occasionally for stuff I can only find in that format - and import it into iTunes using Fluke. What you didn’t mention in your post that I would like to cast a vote for is the [Apple Lossless codec].

Apple Lossless is awesome, it solves the tagging problem and it plays on Apple music players (unlike FLAC or OGG), but it’s a closed format which makes it hard for me to get down with, especially for archiving. I know Apple isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but I still hope they open it up. I actually keep the few ultra-high quality things I have in AIFF, which I know is crazy, but at least it’s open (and still plays on my iPhone).