Most efficient way to store music?

[indy4 155]

What I've been doing up until now is ripping CDs into my iTunes library. The problem is this is taking up quite a bit of space on my computer. Is there a better way to store music, and to still have access to it even when I don't have internet access?

Thanks!

[Jay 37,287]

That is the best way.

Buy a larger hard drive.

[Andy 4,085]

Yes, I rip apple lossless to my iTunes and have my library on a 2 TB hard drive.

[Dixon Hill 4,233]

In your head.

[Jim Ware 526]

That is the best way.

Buy a larger hard drive.

This. Buy another one for backup too. Storage is cheap.

[TheTennisBallKid 17]

In your head.

Yes! Like the book people at the end of Farenheit 451.

[Datameister 2,037]

I keep mine on an external hard drive as well, with backups on another external hard drive. Keep a lossless copy if you want (I do) and if you're also putting the music on an iPod or some other portable device, create additional compressed versions (AAC, mp3, whatever) for that device.

[Uni 306]

Yep. It's well worth the $100 or so to get yourself an extra TB of space.

[Balto's Claws 2]

External hard drives - I have three for safekeeping in different places. Ripped in foobar2000 and stored as FLAC files. Still got 80gb of free space left on each, so still no reason to get a fourth one that is larger. If you're really pressed for space, you can either get a bigger hard drive, or not store music in lossless...go for AAC-LC or something like that in 256kbps. You probably won't hear the difference. I can't.

[Dixon Hill 4,233]

Somewhat related to this thread, I'm trying to reduce my music collection. Listen to things I haven't listened to, decide whether or not I need to "have" them, get rid of miscellaneous stuff that's built up... anyone ever done this? Some things are nice to actually own, but I'm beginning to feel the same way I do about movies and television... so much is just "out there" now, it's hard to feel like it's necessary to keep much of it. Only the most important stuff, core material, is what I want to consistently have access to. For the rest, the internet is a great new tool, I hear.

[Trent B 337]

Somewhat related to this thread, I'm trying to reduce my music collection. Listen to things I haven't listened to, decide whether or not I need to "have" them, get rid of miscellaneous stuff that's built up... anyone ever done this? Some things are nice to actually own, but I'm beginning to feel the same way I do about movies and television... so much is just "out there" now, it's hard to feel like it's necessary to keep much of it. Only the most important stuff, core material, is what I want to consistently have access to. For the rest, the internet is a great new tool, I hear.

I've got all my CDs ripped onto my internal 2tb and external 3tb drive. For my iPod though I only have the most listened to scores on that.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

Somewhat related to this thread, I'm trying to reduce my music collection. Listen to things I haven't listened to, decide whether or not I need to "have" them, get rid of miscellaneous stuff that's built up... anyone ever done this? Some things are nice to actually own, but I'm beginning to feel the same way I do about movies and television... so much is just "out there" now, it's hard to feel like it's necessary to keep much of it. Only the most important stuff, core material, is what I want to consistently have access to. For the rest, the internet is a great new tool, I hear.

Yep, I'm doing the exact same thing now.

I used to own a shitload of DVDs and CDs, but I realized some time ago that there were many of them that I rarely rewatched/relistened to, so I decided to sell a lot of that stuff, and stick to the essential. As a result, I now own a lot less Blu-Rays/CDs, but it's material I know I'll revisit for sure.

And from now on, before I buy a Blu-Ray/CD, I always sample the whole film/album online before I decide whether I really want it or if it'll end up being a dust collector, eventually.

[Dixon Hill 4,233]

Yeah. Of course, if there's ever a massive internet disaster or loss of digital information or something, we'll be kicking ourselves for not owning everything we like, but... oh well.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

My first year on this board was purely as a trader. This was at a time when I was expanding my film score collection at an exponential rate. I would trade for literally anything and everything. I used to have every single Horner score and boot, Goldsmith, Barry, Zimmer, pretty much any composer you can name, all the OSTs and any expanded stuff that existed. Then I think when I got a new computer several years ago (probably 2008 or 09), I went through and deleted the stuff I never listened to and only used for trading. Nowadays I just have whatever I buy or receive for reviewing purposes, and even the latter stuff is a lot of build up that I typically never listen to.

People look at me weird when I say I have almost 500GB of music.

I still buy blus but nearly as much as I used to, and I tend to wait until they're really cheap. For instance, the new Kingdom Of Heaven blu is $5. Sold.

[Wojo 2,453]

I've still never seen that, which is strange because I like older biblical epics.

[indy4 155]

Thanks for the advice everybody!

I'm in the same place as many of you...caught between conflicting desires to a) own physical CDs of music, b) own digital copies of music or c) rely on Spotify, YouTube, etc. A few years ago I was only interested in owning physical copies. Now when I buy physical copies it's either because it's a John Williams album, it's the cheapest way to acquire the music, or it's not available on Spotify, etc.

[Marian Schedenig 8,173]

Somewhat related to this thread, I'm trying to reduce my music collection. Listen to things I haven't listened to, decide whether or not I need to "have" them, get rid of miscellaneous stuff that's built up... anyone ever done this?

Not in that way, no. I have the hard drive space, and I'm attached to the physical part of my collection (that's the collecting aspect of the hobby). I've been trying to limit my expansion speed, because it's becoming painfully obvious that my listening can't keep up with all the interesting music that's out there, but I haven't really been successful so far.

...that's actually why I'm still avoiding streaming services. I can barely keep up with my own collection, how should I handle having even more music at my fingertips (and it still wouldn't save me from having to buy a lot of this film music stuff, because only some of it is available for streaming).