Managing Music Library post-iTunes
April 25, 2021 8:53 AM Subscribe
iTunes recently cost me years’ worth of carefully ripped music when I upgraded my last iPhone. I’ve got backup copies of those songs in Carbonite as mp3s, but I have no idea how or where to store them. Could anyone please point me in the right direction? I’m looking for an accessible library that can handle that format and that also won’t be plagued by Apple’s nonsense. I’m a Gen Xer who is mildly computer literate.
I checked through MeFi seeking answers about this, but the last message was from 2017, so here goes again.
Thank you so much.
I checked through MeFi seeking answers about this, but the last message was from 2017, so here goes again.
Thank you so much.
Response by poster: Oh, of course. I have an iPhone, which had all my music, collected from various hard drives, which are now defunct or decayed. I have never used music.app. The files existed in ITunes. I don’t really have a hard drive anymore, just an iPhone and an iPad. Do I need one?
posted by jfwlucy at 9:04 AM on April 25, 2021
posted by jfwlucy at 9:04 AM on April 25, 2021
If I'm reading you correctly, it sounds like something happened with the iCloud sync stupidity - Everything you need to know about iCloud Music Library:
On preview: yes, you should definitely have a hard drive & some kind of computer if keeping data (like music files) is important to you. Bluntly, the whole thing about mobile media is that most people - and thus the developers - use it as temporary stuff; they listen to the top hits of the week, they have like 25 popular & readily available songs on their "workout" playlist and another 25 on their "chill out" playlist, they've got the most recent episode of their favorite two TV shows, if all of this disappears off the phone/iPad for some reason it's not really a big deal and easy to get "new" versions. If you've seriously curated & ripped some unique and hard-to-find tunes, you don't want to rely on mobiles.
On the most basic storage level, you just have a folder labeled "Music" on your drive and store the tunes there. VLC/Videolan is a free media player that works on multiple platforms that might be worth checking out if you want to get away from Apple for playback & organization entirely.
If you turn off the iCloud sync thing you can use Music.app (the iTunes replacement) as a regular media player, you just have to do some dragging & dropping, and because you will be putting actual files on your phone & iPad you might run out of storage space on the device pretty quick. (Another reason to have a drive & computer - storage space for your music is far greater.)
posted by soundguy99 at 9:23 AM on April 25, 2021 [5 favorites]
"When you subscribe to Apple Music or the standalone iTunes Match service, Apple scans your iTunes music library to check and see which tracks you own are also listed in the iTunes Store.So, there can be a difference between "music gone forever" and "music not appearing on my iPhone", because the stuff playing on your phone via the iCloud sync thing may not actually be your files.
To save space and upload time, any track in your library that's also available in the iTunes Music Store catalog will "match" to the catalog version; this means that when you play that track on your iPhone or another Mac, you'll get the iTunes Music Store version (a DRM-free, 256kbps-quality AAC file, for those wondering), rather than your original file. Apple uses metadata matching and audio fingerprinting to match your songs to iTunes Store versions. It's not perfect, and you may run into issues with live or rare tracks matching to studio versions — for most users, however, you should be able to use the service without any problems.
Any songs that don't match to the iTunes catalog will be uploaded to iCloud in their original form, save for tracks that are too low-quality (under 92kbps), too long (over two hours), too big (over 200MB), or you aren't authorized to play (say, a song from another user's iTunes account that you don't have the username and password to unlock)."
On preview: yes, you should definitely have a hard drive & some kind of computer if keeping data (like music files) is important to you. Bluntly, the whole thing about mobile media is that most people - and thus the developers - use it as temporary stuff; they listen to the top hits of the week, they have like 25 popular & readily available songs on their "workout" playlist and another 25 on their "chill out" playlist, they've got the most recent episode of their favorite two TV shows, if all of this disappears off the phone/iPad for some reason it's not really a big deal and easy to get "new" versions. If you've seriously curated & ripped some unique and hard-to-find tunes, you don't want to rely on mobiles.
On the most basic storage level, you just have a folder labeled "Music" on your drive and store the tunes there. VLC/Videolan is a free media player that works on multiple platforms that might be worth checking out if you want to get away from Apple for playback & organization entirely.
If you turn off the iCloud sync thing you can use Music.app (the iTunes replacement) as a regular media player, you just have to do some dragging & dropping, and because you will be putting actual files on your phone & iPad you might run out of storage space on the device pretty quick. (Another reason to have a drive & computer - storage space for your music is far greater.)
posted by soundguy99 at 9:23 AM on April 25, 2021 [5 favorites]
I simply keep all my MPs in the Music folder and use Audacious to play music. Audacious doesn't create a database or anything like that. It simply plays the folders I request - or it also plays playlist files. This means I don't get fancy auto generated playlists of favorites or whatever, but it also means I never lose access due to database corruption. The Music folder is synced to a cloud drive and I also back up manually to GDrive.
Simple, cheap, and hasn't failed in a decade +.
posted by COD at 10:28 AM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
Simple, cheap, and hasn't failed in a decade +.
posted by COD at 10:28 AM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
Not to derail (and I hope this isn't really much of one) but any data that you only have one copy of is data that you will lose eventually. Kudos to you for keeping the Carbonite backup, but as long as it only exists there, you're dependent on Carbonite to safely keep that data. Whatever solution you end up using, make sure you have a copy of your data on at least two different devices or services if you don't want to lose it.
Seconding the recommendation to manage and/or back up your collection on a computer or other storage device like a NAS server or external hard disk. If you go the NAS server route, you can potentially use something like Plex to stream music from it to your devices.
posted by Aleyn at 12:42 PM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
Seconding the recommendation to manage and/or back up your collection on a computer or other storage device like a NAS server or external hard disk. If you go the NAS server route, you can potentially use something like Plex to stream music from it to your devices.
posted by Aleyn at 12:42 PM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
If you download the MP3's to a hard drive, you can then copy them over to the iPhone bypassing iTunes with either iMazing (Mac/Windows) or CopyTransManager (Windows only).
posted by Lanark at 1:02 PM on April 25, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Lanark at 1:02 PM on April 25, 2021 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Okay, I think I’m starting to get it. So if I set up an older laptop as a storage machine, and transfer ALL my music files to it, (which I then back up with Carbonite), and I’d like to use a music app that is compatible with iTunes, does it matter if the machine is a Mac or a PC? I find arranging and organizing a lot easier on a PC. And what app is best for that machine?
What IS the best long-term storage for recordings and images? I once thought CDs would last forever. Now I’m considering a thumb drive in our safety deposit box. Some of the stuff I have is potentially valuable for future researchers (field recordings, OOP vinyl on its last legs, etc) and some is just very sentimental.
Sorry to be a dope about this. I’ve asked a few friends’ kids, but they looked rather aghast at the prospect, so of course I did not press. Thanks for your continued patience.
posted by jfwlucy at 3:31 PM on April 25, 2021
What IS the best long-term storage for recordings and images? I once thought CDs would last forever. Now I’m considering a thumb drive in our safety deposit box. Some of the stuff I have is potentially valuable for future researchers (field recordings, OOP vinyl on its last legs, etc) and some is just very sentimental.
Sorry to be a dope about this. I’ve asked a few friends’ kids, but they looked rather aghast at the prospect, so of course I did not press. Thanks for your continued patience.
posted by jfwlucy at 3:31 PM on April 25, 2021
Well, for my own situation I use a couple of external Western Digital drives rotated (and updated and spot checked) every 6 months between home and safe deposit box. So in other words each has approximately the same contents except for one being more stale.
The size you need may be much different. The linked drive is also USB 2 which is slower but there's a price trade-off. I also don't know how often you add music. Take this with a grain of salt, YMMV.
posted by forthright at 3:53 PM on April 25, 2021
The size you need may be much different. The linked drive is also USB 2 which is slower but there's a price trade-off. I also don't know how often you add music. Take this with a grain of salt, YMMV.
posted by forthright at 3:53 PM on April 25, 2021
Regarding your 2nd followup question:
If you have a Windows computer ideally you'd use iTunes to sync music to your iPhone. I've heard iTunes on Windows isn't great because it slows down the whole system, but if you're not really using the computer for other things maybe that doesn't matter much.
There's another app which people seem to like that can sync music from a Windows machine to an iPhone, called MediaMonkey. In order to work it needs iTunes to be installed on the computer, but you don't have to actually use iTunes -- MediaMonkey just needs it to be installed on your machine in order to have the necessary drivers available.
As far as your question about long term storage of digital media... this is a big question that lots of people are wrestling with. Bit rot and obsolescence are problems that don't have easy solutions for ordinary folks over a span of decades or longer. That being said, I would advise you NOT to rely on thumb drives to store files for the long term. They're just not designed for that.
posted by theory at 4:32 PM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
If you have a Windows computer ideally you'd use iTunes to sync music to your iPhone. I've heard iTunes on Windows isn't great because it slows down the whole system, but if you're not really using the computer for other things maybe that doesn't matter much.
There's another app which people seem to like that can sync music from a Windows machine to an iPhone, called MediaMonkey. In order to work it needs iTunes to be installed on the computer, but you don't have to actually use iTunes -- MediaMonkey just needs it to be installed on your machine in order to have the necessary drivers available.
As far as your question about long term storage of digital media... this is a big question that lots of people are wrestling with. Bit rot and obsolescence are problems that don't have easy solutions for ordinary folks over a span of decades or longer. That being said, I would advise you NOT to rely on thumb drives to store files for the long term. They're just not designed for that.
posted by theory at 4:32 PM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
First things first is to see if your music files actually exist on your iPad or phone. Turn off the iCloud sync, (instructions here), then under "general" in settings should be an ipad storage page displaying what's actually in your iPad's memory. There's a list of apps under that, click either iTunes or, probably, Music - which, again, is the new name for what's basically iTunes - and it should list the artists and songs. If the stuff you thought was lost is listed there, you've still got the tunes, it's just that they weren't playing via cloud. If they're better quality than your Carbonite mp3s you can copy those to whatever hard drive you get.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:51 PM on April 25, 2021
posted by soundguy99 at 6:51 PM on April 25, 2021
As a gen-Xer who also listens to MP3s, an increasingly old-fashioned activity, I have my music library on a Mac, and play it in Music.app (previously iTunes). That is the Single Source Of Truth for those files. I can edit their metadata, create and change playlists there, etc.
Those files are backed up to a hard drive using Time Machine, and to Backblaze online.
Every so often I sync some of those files to my iPhone and iPad (neither are big enough to hold all of the files). While I don’t think of either device as disposable, their copies of the mp3s are not important. I try not to keep the only copy of anything on those devices.
There have occasionally been questions here about alternative ways to manage music, e.g. this recent one about alternatives to iTunes/Music.app.
posted by fabius at 5:54 AM on April 26, 2021
Those files are backed up to a hard drive using Time Machine, and to Backblaze online.
Every so often I sync some of those files to my iPhone and iPad (neither are big enough to hold all of the files). While I don’t think of either device as disposable, their copies of the mp3s are not important. I try not to keep the only copy of anything on those devices.
There have occasionally been questions here about alternative ways to manage music, e.g. this recent one about alternatives to iTunes/Music.app.
posted by fabius at 5:54 AM on April 26, 2021
So - I am old-school - I keep all of my music as files in a manually curated folder structure on an external drive (well, technically a NAS server, but a drive would work as well - it also runs Plex, which I sometimes use at times like Christmas via the TV and it's soundbar). Then, I point streaming devices/software to the top-level folder when I am on my local network (say, a Raspberry Pi with volumio (or Kodi) hooked to my big stereo), and control those devices with either apps - or their webpages.
Then, I manually load the music (a subset of my entire library) which I want onto my iPhone using "CopyTrans" - which is now free. (And yes, this means I typically buy an iPhone with at least 128gb of storage)
Basically, I do anything possible to avoid iTunes...
posted by rozcakj at 6:51 AM on April 28, 2021
Then, I manually load the music (a subset of my entire library) which I want onto my iPhone using "CopyTrans" - which is now free. (And yes, this means I typically buy an iPhone with at least 128gb of storage)
Basically, I do anything possible to avoid iTunes...
posted by rozcakj at 6:51 AM on April 28, 2021
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by slkinsey at 9:00 AM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]