Fears and Frailty

[cahwyguy]

We all have fears. Some find strength in them. Some let them shape their lives.

Fear, thy name is Apple.

This post, of course, is brought to you by the letters “i”, “t”, “u”, “n”, “e”, and “s”. Put them together, and they spell “iTunes” — the reason for this musing, especially after reading an article titled “How iTunes built, and then broke, my meticulous music-listening system“. I’m one of those folks: curing my iTunes library, making sure the meta-data is right, the album art reflects the version of the album I have — for all of my 40,000+ songs (yes, I’ve crossed the 40K song mark). Although the article discusses the problem of iTunes with newer devices, I’m dependent on the software to sync with my modded iPod Classic (512GB storage). I’ve even stayed on iTunes 11, because I know that will work with the device. I will never get an iPhone, because that would mean upgrading iTunes — and we all know that will spell doom.

So what are my fears?

Well, my iPods could die. I’d still have the music of course: tracks lovingly downloaded, ripped from CDs, recorded by hand from LPs, extracted from videos. Most of the music not available elsewhere digitally. But that’s why I have a backup iPod Classic. Primero and Segundo. Prime.

But what if iTunes 11 no longer works when I move eventually to Windows 10. How will I sync my music? How will I move everything to another library system. I really do not want my music in the cloud. There are so many places where streaming just does not work. Not to mention, of course, that it is MY music. I paid for it, I should be the only one to control it.

That, by the way, is why I tend to buy digital music from Amazon, but not use Amazon Music.

This brings us to the problem with MP3 download collections. Unlike CDs or LPs, there’s nothing tangible. Nothing to pass on. It is in a fixed format that might not be supported in the future. Then what? Pay for your music again, if you can find it. I can still listen to LPs from almost 80 years ago (alas, I can’t deal with 78s). We can still listen to CDs from 30 years ago. 30 years ago, the MP3 format didn’t exist.

30 years from now, how will we listen to our expensive MP3 downloads? We will probably still be able to find CD players (although forget those CD-ROMs you recorded — they’re likely toast now). We’ll find the cassette players, and LP players. But will our computers still be able to play MP3s? Ask yourself this: Could you open a Wordstar file?

So a big fear of my: My music won’t age well with me. Of course, in 30 years I’ll be 87. I probably will have forgotten how to use a computer. Hopefully, my iPod Classics will still be working 🙂

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

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Comments

[marahmarie]

But what if iTunes 11 no longer works when I move eventually to Windows 10. How will I sync my music? How will I move everything to another library system. I really do not want my music in the cloud.

I want to point out that even if there are many places streaming does not work that there is no reason not to upload to the cloud simply so you have a place to download from in the event Things Go Wrong.

Windows has been funky about how it handles music files since Windows Vista - it won't display certain files in Windows Media player (at least that's been my experience; either the DRM it's looking for is missing or else it's not; one or the other of these states makes Windows refuse to load the offending file into Windows Media Player. I mean, the file will not even show up in the library, but I've never tried to find out exactly what state of DRM - missing or not - causes this to occur).

That said, you can always play the file directly out of the Music folder - right-click/play with Windows Media Player, which is awful because it can't be synced to a playlist or played directly from the Library, but it will still play. And of course using another program like VLC or WinAmp should get around the problem altogether.

But even given that, Windows 10 comes with 5GB of storage on OneDrive included for free, and if you sign up for Office365, you get 1TB of storage per year, for free (Office365 is a yearly subscription; I currently have it only because the license for it came with a tablet I got last year).

I have 8GB of music so I'll have to find another answer to using OneDrive when my subscription runs out, but putting what you have in the cloud through any service - especially non-sensitive files like music (no personal information is on them that might be compromised by others) beats losing all your music if things go wrong (of course, I also keep an external hard drive loaded with a copy of my entire music library for just that reason).

Win10 has a backwards compatibility checker that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't; if it does, it will run programs that were drawn up all the way back when XP was still in style. You might want to run a test copy of Win10 on something that's not in daily use around your home to get a feel for what it can and can't do before making the switch (unlicensed copies are easy to get directly from the Microsoft website and are perfectly usable, they're just not customizable, will be watermarked on every screen, and will "expire" in something like 90 days, I think).

[cahwyguy]

Well, my music is kept on a separate drive from my computer, and that drive is backed up to a third, disconnected drive. Additionally, having 2 ipods that are mirrors of each other means there are two more backups of the music files (although not named right). Lastly, all Amazon purchased music that was digital or autorip (not the physical only CDs or marketplace) is duplicated in the amazon Cloud, although often with poor metadata.

I'm current dealing with 40037 songs, 156.57 GB, on a 512GB iPod. The ammount of time it would take to upload that would be sizable.

[marahmarie]

Yeah, and you'll probably need to buy at least one terabyte of storage somewhere to comfortably allow for future expansion. As far as how long it takes, you could set it and forget it - start the upload on a computer you're not using say, on a weekend off and just let the cloud do its thing. I'm not sure what your connection speed is but that as much as anything will determine how long it takes.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.