Who'll admit to having a "vulnerable" digital music collection?

My vulnerability is more on the hours spent digitizing through ripping, needle dropping, cleaning up, etc. than on actually losing the source. I've got most, but not all, of my digital music backed up, and if I lost my network drive I'd probably lose a healthy amount of hours of labour.

 

Folks who want a FREE backup solution Google Play Music offer a 50,000 track storage 'locker': Google Play Music song storage limits - Google Play Help

Files supported:
Google Play Music supported file types - Google Play Help

To redownload your music unlimited times, you have to use the Google 'Chrome' browser.

Your own tracks can also be played on SONOS, apparently, without a monthly fee.

For larger libraries - Amazon Music storage subscription, you can upload up to 250,000 for approx £20 / $20 per annum.

 

Everything's I get, I put on my old iMac from 2006..... and , I'm just about out of memory!
This computer is not 'hooked-up' to the internet in anyway...
I call it my 'thousand-dollar juke-box'!

 

I burn to an external drive and create 2 copies. To be honest, I still haven't figured out right protocol to copy lost data from my safety drives, so I'm not sure how secure I feel. I use Sync Folders.

 

Then, back it up as soon as you do the work!

It's not memory, it's, disk space!

 

IF you believe in FREE backup I got some land if Florida for sale cheap

Its free to start, but they'll come calling to collect, you can be sure

 

I keep thinking that about Dropbox, I've only got 10GB with them, but I've had it for years and never paid them anything!

Surely they'll demand money at some point to continue this service!?

 

I understand what you are saying, but Google have offered FREE storage for nearly 6 years Comparison of online music lockers - Wikipedia , all be it less tracks in those days.

If they do start charging I image it will be similar to the Amazon cost, but folks do benefit while its FREE.
Google want to know what music folks listen to so they can build a profile to sell ads, they dont lose out.
They do the same with data mining photos with their FREE photo storage.
Cheers

 

Well that just means the advertisers are paying for your storage space...for now

 

Being a bit of a Luddite if it doesn't exist in the real physical world it is to wispy and weird for me.
I get little joy from keyboards and scrolling through little screens.

I do have a couple of terabytes of bootleggy and trading type stuff that I enjoy and do sometimes worry a little about.
Evidently not worried enough to do something about it.

To bug my kids whenever I talk about putting something on the cloud I point to the sky. They just shake their heads ...

 

Basically yes!

 

Do you like all of them ?

 

Google music is great for uploading music to play on your phone but for backing up everything it can be a pain and you can only back up mp3's. If you have lossless, it will be converted to mp3. This is a perfect backup solution for a smaller mp3 collection. For Photos, the free photo backup is great but Google will apply lossy compression to your photos. The quality is very good but you aren't going to be backing up raw format images.

For just backing up lots of stuff if it's original format, it's hard to beat the price of Amazon unlimited.

 

digital? oh you kids.....

 

To be blunt, that's one of the reasons I switched back to vinyl earlier this year. Before switching, I always had this nagging feeling that my music collection exists close to the edge, as it were.

I'm talking about approximately 1 Tb digital music. Yes, I have it stored on 5 or 6 external drives, but, to begin, each of those drives holds slightly different content. If the hard drive on my Mac mini goest tits up, I'd have a lot of sleepless hours trying to restore music from the correct storage.

At first I was enthusiastically trying to keep all my external storage units in perfect sync. But little by little, things started drifting apart. Human nature -- laziness and sloppiness.

At one point I was looking for some music that I had stored externally but not on my Mac mini (it has only 500 Gb storage, so I cannot load my entire library in there). I grabbed one external drive, and just as I was about to plug it into the Mac, I accidentally bumped it against the table. Sure enough, the bloody thing instantly died!

It seems extremely easy to break those external drives. You just look at it, or cough, and the pathetic little thing goes belly up. So that's the disgusting little truth about the digital tech.

OK, what about the cloud? Yeah, what about it? Cloud providers are like drug pushers -- giving free drugs to kids during recess, only to later on jack up the prices once they create an army of addicts. I don't plan to become their bitch.

So today I'm belabouring under the old familiar regime -- I am buying LPs, and then I'm cleaning them in my RCM. Yes, it's a chore, but at least I don't feel I need to juggle multiple versions and worry about an LP suddenly stop working. True, my house may get hit by a meteorite and my collection get destroyed, anything's possible. But how probable is it? Vs how probable is it that my digital collection of FLAC and WAV and AIFF files will somehow disappear on me?

 

I ripped a lot of CDs into my laptop at 256 AAC. I got rid of a lot of those CDs (the ones I'd unlikely listen to from beginning to end but that had songs good for mix CDs). It was actually very freeing.

I then put all the stuff in an external hard drive which I keep in the car in case something happens to the apartment.

 

The very thing I was thinking of in that I was wondering what percentage of my collection will I never listen to again. 60%? What once was beloved. I've backed-up x 4 with 2 off site (1 at work, 1 w a friend). If all were still lost? There'd be cursing and a description of my loss to friends and co-workers who for the most part would think it's much ado about not much. I can only listen to one album at a time so let the collecting begin. It would be an interesting exercise to learn what my first 10 or 50 albums would be.

 

60% ?! Really ?! I still love everything I got. Then again it's under 1000 titles between CDs/Lps. How big is your collection ? Before I buy something I make sure I'll likely, and rarely it's not a keeper. My guide is the Amazon star rating.

5 stars- Love it
4 stars- Like it
3 stars-It's OK

I make sure most of my titles are at least 3 stars, but most are 4 and lots 5. I guess it's different in the 1st world; you fellas buy whatever might catch your attention, give it a listen and keep it even if you don't like it enough to give it a second listen ?

 

Sounds a lot like "Database Administration" and "Disaster Recovery" IT procedures. Makes me feel like I am at work. No thanks...I will roll the dice with my simple backup solution.

 

Sounds like a business opportunity to help the "fools"

 

Just a touch of snark
How do threads get so far afield ?
You don't have digital collection in jeopardy (or you might, sounds like whatever backup system you followed was hosed by your sloth) ; you have irregular ideas about the fragility of hard drives; and you enjoy vinyl.
I am aware that your prefer vinyl, but I don't think that the @OobuJoobu was calling to you in the OP.

 

Good point...there are simple programs that just sync file sets across drives. I've used those. One can recovery by hand that way.

 

"The Cloud" is nothing more than a bunch of servers buried in the side of a mountain in who-knows-where.

 

I'm almost 50 and no fires, floods, thefts, etc. thus far. But I've had my fair share of computer failures, hard drive crashes, and "oops" moments.

 

All my LPs were stolen (no back up ) just as CDs were coming to market. Therefore my digital collection includes music that hasn't aged well for me...now that I consider, I love those albums and can't part with them (they're a part of me) but I never feel like listening to them (Led Zeppelin, etc). I just looked and there are 6,609 Folders/ albums. I'll bet I've deleted as much over time. I guess 60% is too high. 30%? Some music just always seems to be down the queue. Taking a look now, some day I will listen to "The Exciting Wilson Pickett" (1966) in mono.