Saturday, November 15, 2003
iTunes & the Portable Lifestyle
As a person with a rather large music collection, and a laptop as my primary computer, I use three sources to store my music collection�an external 200GB LaCie d2 Firewire drive, my 40GB iPod, and my laptop hard drive. My biggest ease of use issue is, that I can't point to the LaCie drive as my primary music folder, since I'm not attached to it 50-60% of the time, but using my laptop hard drive as my primary folder, 1) is taking up way too much hard drive space, but more importantly 2) defeats auto management, since I regularly have to decide which music to keep on the drive, and what to move over to LaCie. I manual manage my iPod, so thats not an issue.I figure I’m not the only geek music fan in the country, nor the world. From things I’ve heard, my music collection is rather paltry compared to others. That said, my music collection takes up a healthy 80GBs of space. Too much for my 40GB iPod, and far too much for my puny 40GB hard drive. Along came LaCie and saved the day, now my digital life is stored via Firewire�a 200GB LaCie d2 for music, a 250GB one for Television shows, another for movies, and a final for software installers. Daisy chaining them together, and plugging in a single cable to my laptop allows me access to music, TV, movies, and software. This works for me.
What doesn’t work for me, is NOT using iTunes auto-management features. I’m a work-a-holic, but I’m a lazy bum. I used to use MP3 Rage by Chaotic Software to assist in managing my music collection. Monthly, I would go through the ritual of transferring music, running it through MP3 Rage to folder and file it, then placing it on my music drive. This is not a knock against Mp3 Rage, its fantastic software, but once your music collection is organized, its a pain to keep organizing it. Its far better to have it automatically organized for you.
For example if I download Poses by Rufus Wainwright, assuming all the ID3 tags are correct, I want it to automatically be filed under artist: Rufus Wainwright, album: Poses. Having to manually go to the Rufus Wainwright folder, create a new folder called “Poses” is too much work. Sure, I use to do it, but elegance often begets laziness. Scheduling time weekly or monthly to organize items that could have been automatically organized is pointless, and takes away time from actually enjoying the music.
So why the hissy? I’m stuck in a quasi-limbo, between automation and manual. Because I essentially have two primary music locations�my hard drive when I’m purchasing, downloading, or importing, and my LaCie drive for everything else. Yeah, yeah, woe is me. But seriously, woe is ME. My music is auto-managed only while its located locally, which means when it comes time for me to reclaim hard drive space for work projects, I’m suddenly tossed back into the world of manual management. With this comes the need to remove songs that used to be in my local Music folder, and reimport them from their new location. I then lose other identifiers such as play count, ratings, date added, last played, etc. which are essential for my Smart Playlist. But even worse, all references to the moved songs are now erased from any playlist that they existed in.
So now we get to my primary point. It would be great if iTunes had one or both of the following features:
1) Multiple Music Folders
It would be nice to be able to select my laptop hard drive to store “recent music purchases” and then have my LaCie music drive store everything else, this would work best with the number two option, but would have some benefits by itself.
2) Synchronized Music Folders/Local-Archive Strategy
What would be great, is if that I could contiue to purchase music on impulse, per normal (not great for my bank account, but works well for my sanity). Music purchased from iTMS gets stored on my local hard drive and when my LaCie music drive is plugged in, iSync or iTunes synchronizes the music collection per my instructions. Typically this would entail transferring all or selected newly purchased to be stored in my secondary music folder (the LaCie drive), and retaining a local copy of only certain albums, so I could transfer them to my iPod.
The big issue is convenience, or lack of it. It’s darn awkward, cumbersome, difficult, disadvantageous, and a host of other words, to manually transfer /manage multiple storage locations, but thats what a portable life requires. The truth is, I LOVE my laptop�15” PowerBook, but even with plans to purchase the new 15” with an 80GB hard drive, I still can’t store my entire music collection locally. I currently have just shy of 80GBs of music, and my collection grows weekly�through purchases, as well as the ongoing process of converting CDs and cassettes to .mp3 or .aac files. I’ve already owned a 10GB, 20GB, and now a 40GB iPod, and expect I will purchase a 60GB and or an 80GB iPod when they come out. But even with that, a secondary drive is the best option for storing and backing up music. Currently the LaCie 200GB, but eventually the LaCie 500GB drives.
The ability to retain use of my laptop as my primary machine for work and play is important to me. I don’t want to have to wait til I’m at home to purchase a song from iTMS , but not being able to synchronize two music folders often kills my impulse. A few basic or intermediate level options for us with large music collections and portable lifestyles, would make iTunes indispensable.
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Categories: Music •Personal •Technology •
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