How much time have you spent on your server-based music library?

plonkywonki

plonkywonki

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How much time have you spent on your server-based music library?

I was amazed in my case how much time I've spent on standardising artist names, titles, adding genre, adding release years etc. I think I am easily 200 hours down and not done yet. estimate 1000 albums.

And you?
 
plonkywonki said:
How much time have you spent on your server-based music library?

I was amazed in my case how much time I've spent on standardising artist names, titles, adding genre, adding release years etc. I think I am easily 200 hours down and not done yet. estimate 1000 albums.

And you?
Click to expand...

Almost none. I use Roon.


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plonkywonki said:
How much time have you spent on your server-based music library?

I was amazed in my case how much time I've spent on standardising artist names, titles, adding genre, adding release years etc. I think I am easily 200 hours down and not done yet. estimate 1000 albums.

And you?
Click to expand...

I usually only spend minimal time to correct what is not imported correctly only if it is lacking important info such as song title or artist.

Otherwise I don't spend too much time on it.
 
I set up a simple file structure early on, with a few specific rules. It works pretty well. A few years ago I switched to Roon which is even better.
 
i have approx 9800 Albums on my Wadax server, about 19tb. lots of high rez and dsd at various levels of resolution. have room for another 13tb and will likely fill it at some point. i use Roon so pretty easy to sort things and find things. yet, i do miss my previous file structure somewhat where i could see lists and groupings from when i acquired them. now my alternative is playlists which i do use as i go along. easy to add to my various playlists when i want to.

so i spend zero time organizing. Roon offers the 'Focus' tool for sorting on the fly. nothing you do to prepare.

with Roon, Tidal and Quboz, i'm much more living in new streaming files and traveling that way for new music access. but i play my files maybe 20% of the time, of my digital listening.
 
plonkywonki said:
How much time have you spent on your server-based music library?

I was amazed in my case how much time I've spent on standardising artist names, titles, adding genre, adding release years etc. I think I am easily 200 hours down and not done yet. estimate 1000 albums.

And you?
Click to expand...

Should I assume that your library include lots of classical music? Unfortunately, the metadata for classical music is all over the place.

I ripped my CD collection more than 15 years ago and spent many hours fixing the metadata (I used MP3TAG software for that). However, if I were starting today, I would not bother ripping my CD collection. Instead, I would subscribe to a music service like Qobuz/Tidal/Other and only rip the albums from my collection that are not available via those services.

Someone mentioned using Roon and Focus. I second that. Roon has the best data management available in the industry and using Focus, playlists, and tags, you can customize your searches and organize your music in ways that make it very easy to find your music (even classical).

I replicated my physical CD collection using Roon/Qobuz. In Qobuz I found the albums that I have in my physical collection and added them to my library. Any albums/recordings from my physical collection that are not available in Qobuz, is a candidate for ripping. I then add the (missing few) ripped albums to a library that is accesible to Roon. Then in Roon, I "tagged" all those recordings as "my CD music collection". That allows easy and immediate identification of my entire music collection. Playlist is another way to manage your music particularly when metadata can be an issue (classical). You simply create a playlist that meet your preferences (like "All My Bach Cantatas").

That said, 1000 CDs take a lot of space. So you may still want to rip your entire CD collection and put away your physical CDs in the attic.
 
I'd agree if I'd start over today I would look into a better cataloged solution. Thanks for all the suggestions, I really appreciate.
 
I was amazed in my case how much time I've spent on standardising artist names said:
I really only want to be able to browse my Library, or search for what I want to listen to. Most non-classical music finds its way into an appropriate folder (I want the album in a file titled "ABBA" or "Agnes Obel" in alphabetical order by first name if they use such. Then I can go to my Non-Classical section and find a list of around 100 Artists, each sub-folder having my entire collection of ABBA or Agnes Obel.

With Classical, the metadata picked up while ripping is dire, but editing this metadata is time consuming and, in my opinion, unnecessary.

Once ripped the album may find its way to say my Beethoven folder, but just as likely into a Ludwig van B folder, or Karajan, LSO, Brendel or whatever the metadata thinks most important. I want it all in my Beethoven folder, so I use Windows' simple Cut & Paste to move any misfiled folder to my Beethoven one. Simple 2 minute job.

If I want to see my Brendel music I just use Search and it will find amongst other works his Beethoven sonatas.

In my Classical main folder, I have about 100 Composers, plus 3 or 4 multi-composer (Collections) albums that I move to Instrumental, Orchestral, Choral and Opera, etc. Again dead simple using Cut & Paste.

Albums with say 2 piano concertos are easy to re-file from where the metadata plonks them - probably under the soloist - by moving the 3 or so tracks of Composer A plus the artwork to his folder and Composer B’s tracks plus the same artwork to his folder. More than 2 composer albums go to Orchestral or other collections folder.

So I use an identical system that Tower Records (if you're old enough to remember browsing their racks to CDs) used to offer - Main sections of Classical, Non-Classical (I don't need a Jazz section), World & Weird, and one or two others - then by artist (composer for classical) and perhaps further sub-folders if you need to separate symphonies from concertos or whatever.

The old (are they still going?) Gramophone and Penguin Guide Books also used this filing regime. I'm less likely to be looking for a particular Genre, but I occasionally use my control app (BluOS) to list albums of a particular genre.

I recommend this simple and familiar-to-everyone system as it's so much easier than messing with metadata.
Click to expand...
 
I'd second the above. My basis for manual tagging was the sort by folders like a CD vendor as well.
E.g.
Blues \ Artist A - Z
Classical \ Composer A - Z
Upto
World \ Artist A - Z

With the additional tagging you can select by artist and skip over the genres, or browse by genre and then deep dive to the artist. Nothing more difficult.

In addition I added album year to be able to slice and dice little differently. But still, it was a lot of work.
 
I have spent 300-400 hours getting the metadata correct and consistent. A huge portion of my music library is live music which is not available via the streaming services and requires doing my own tagging. I have spent much less time on commercial releases but even those require some effort since I have my own tagging rules.
 
I imported 10 CD's and eight DVD's into my Kaleidescape system today. They were all recognized except for an obscure Madonna single. It's trivial to enter the album art and track titles for any unrecognized content.
 
plonkywonki said:
How much time have you spent on your server-based music library?

I was amazed in my case how much time I've spent on standardising artist names, titles, adding genre, adding release years etc. I think I am easily 200 hours down and not done yet. estimate 1000 albums.

And you?
Click to expand...

I've easily exceeded your 200 hours, perhaps by multiples. I've ripped or download about 4000 discs equivalent.

About 90% of these are Classical genres. The problem with Classical is the very great inconsistency of metadate tags. Since I organize and search based on the tags, it's vital that I create the consistency myself which needs be done vitually all the time.

I've used various tools to edit tags: Foobar2000, Tag&Rename, MP3tag, dBPoweramp, and others.
 
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