How do you manage a large digital music library?

[canyelles]

iTunes/Music have dynamic playlists and last played/play count statistics.

This enables you to easily set up dynamic playlists such as ...

"Albums I haven't yet played" or "Albums I haven't played recently" with your own definition of "recently"
or "Classical music not played recently"

This feature alone is sufficient to stop me moving to any other playback software.

 

[foxwelljsly]

I used to love the view in the old iTunes that showed covers you could 'flip' through. Was really quick and I could flip to the section I was thinking of. No idea why they got rid. Anyway I usually start with genre now and then sometimes just shuffle or scroll through artists. I still have my entire nearly 2k CD collection out though.

I still miss front row. Combined with an apple remote that was pretty snazzy.

 

[MotelBlues]

iTunes/Music have dynamic playlists and last played/play count statistics.

This enables you to easily set up dynamic playlists such as ...

"Albums I haven't yet played" or "Albums I haven't played recently" with your own definition of "recently"
or "Classical music not played recently"

This feature alone is sufficient to stop me moving to any other playback software.

Additionally, it was a happy day for me when I discovered iTunes could shuffle whole albums rather than just individual tracks.

 

[AndyU]

I have around 2,000 albums all stored digitally. With so many albums, I find it difficult to choose what to play and seem to disproportionately play newly added music. I did not have this problem with a physical collection as I would quickly scan the shelves and remind myself of my collection. But browsing my music in this way on my computer/phone doesn't seem have the same effect.

I thought about curating a core collection of around 100-200 albums and separating it from the main collection, but Roon doesn't support that sort of organising.

Shuffling the songs in my library when driving/running/cooking etc digs up some forgotten gems that I later play in full. Any other tips on how to hold a large library but still play a good range of it?

[For me, the benefits of a digital collection over a physical one far outweigh this drawback before anyone points that out.]

If you only have your own rips then I would suggest that JRiver gives you much better control over how you browse your music. You can set up an arbitrary numbers of different views, there is a very useful stack of albums icon that effectively reminds you of things without needing to scroll, you can search in many ways. Roon (which I now use) is much better if you use streamed content, but I miss the things JRiver let me do and, like you, possibly spend too much too much time on recent stuff and forget core content from the past.

 

[sq225917]

Do you always browse your records left-to-right, shelf by shelf, starting from the top-left, to arrive at the album you want?

Actually my records are stored right to left on the top shelf and left to right below and so forth. With all classical and jazz being in separate squares, classical by composer, everything else by artist.

 

[matt j]

I really struggle with this, constantly scrolling through the same stuff on my phone I regularly never get to something I actually want to listen to. Not helped by the fact my vinyl isn't in any order at all so seeing everything in the same order on the phone wrecks my head a bit.

 

[Rico]

Does any library software give you a list of albums or artists that are similar to what you are listening to? I suspect some do, but I wonder if it is any better than Amazon's "people who bought x also bought y" links, which tend to be rubbish.

oddly enough, Naim's app does this, and very well. I don't particularly rate the app, though this is something it does... and if you also have Tidal enabled, you can simply select that album and play it. I imagine the newer streamers do this with Cobuz as well.

Linn's app also does this.

 

[Zombie]

LMS, even possible to mix your favourites on streaming services with the local library. Roon didn't do that, so I dumped it. LMS has two random modes. Or use genre tags to play random from certain genres.

 

[Lowgroove]

In Roon I have about 3500 FLAC rips of my CD's and about 4500 albums from Tidal (just over 8000 in total).

I just created a tag called "Fav" and tag all the albums I want in my virtual CD shelf:

(a) When I want to listen to the sort of stuff I would have on my shelf I just filter using this tag;

(b) When I want to listen to newer music I have yet to feel warrants inclusion in this I look at all albums; and

(c) When I want to explore new stuff I search Tidal for albums not in my collection

I also have set up many playlists for other purposes, although this takes a lot of time. Tidal also has 6 new daily playlists every day based on your library as well as many other more permanent Roon playlists.

However if I am sitting down for a critical listening session, I usually play vinyl (unless it is an album I only have digitally, then it is streamed).

 

[AndyU]

In Roon I have about 3500 FLAC rips of my CD's and about 4500 albums from Tidal (just over 8000 in total).

I just created a tag called "Fav" and tag all the albums I want in my virtual CD shelf:

(a) When I want to listen to the sort of stuff I would have on my shelf I just filter using this tag;

(b) When I want to listen to newer music I have yet to feel warrants inclusion in this I look at all albums; and

(c) When I want to explore new stuff I search Tidal for albums not in my collection

I also have set up many playlists for other purposes, although this takes a lot of time. Tidal also has 6 new daily playlists every day based on your library as well as many other more permanent Roon playlists.

However if I am sitting down for a critical listening session, I usually play vinyl (unless it is an album I only have digitally, then it is streamed).

Why did you bother with a tag when there is a “favourite” tag - the heart icon - available and extremely easy to use?

 

[Lowgroove]

Why did you bother with a tag when there is a “favourite” tag - the heart icon - available and extremely easy to use?

I had set up many tags for music styles etc and I got in the habit of adding tags to each album as I added it (after I got through the initial large number of albums). As a part of that I set up a favourite tag. I didn't discover the heart icon until after I had done many albums, so just continue to use my own tag.

I find tags in general allow me to look at the "collection" in many ways - by artist, genre, era or whatever tags you choose to develop and use. It is like being able to rearrange your virtual CD shelf any way you like at the push of a button. If I just want to look through my Audiophile Jazz Vocal albums just select those tags.

If you do each album as you add it, it takes very little time.

 

[camverton]

Actually my records are stored right to left on the top shelf and left to right below and so forth. With all classical and jazz being in separate squares, classical by composer, everything else by artist.

That’s how more or less how I arranged my LPs and then CDs. The problem came with albums that had more than one composer. I think I slotted it in the position of my preferred composer only to find that my preferences changed. Life is so much simpler now they are all ripped and tagged; I can easily find something particulary I want and also come across stuff I’d forgotten about by browsing.

 

[onlyconnect]

I have around 2,000 albums all stored digitally. With so many albums, I find it difficult to choose what to play and seem to disproportionately play newly added music. I did not have this problem with a physical collection as I would quickly scan the shelves and remind myself of my collection. But browsing my music in this way on my computer/phone doesn't seem have the same effect.

I use Foobar 2K and Logitech Media Server, both are very good with large libraries.

As for choosing what to play, that is always an interesting question. You can play recent acquisitions which is usually a good idea. On my portable player I've been working through all the tracks in alphabetical order! quite fun though you do get some odd juxtapositions as well as the same track several times if you have studio and live versions etc.

Tim

 

[tuga]

I have around 2,000 albums all stored digitally. With so many albums, I find it difficult to choose what to play and seem to disproportionately play newly added music. I did not have this problem with a physical collection as I would quickly scan the shelves and remind myself of my collection. But browsing my music in this way on my computer/phone doesn't seem have the same effect.

I thought about curating a core collection of around 100-200 albums and separating it from the main collection, but Roon doesn't support that sort of organising.

Shuffling the songs in my library when driving/running/cooking etc digs up some forgotten gems that I later play in full. Any other tips on how to hold a large library but still play a good range of it?

[For me, the benefits of a digital collection over a physical one far outweigh this drawback before anyone points that out.]

I have more than 2k albums in my library.

I have chosen to manually add the metadata to my "classical" recordings using of all the available fields, and then I make use of iTunes/Music's excellent column browser to narrow down the search.
In my view, using a good music browser is paramount (and I still prefer to flip CD jewel cases).

I have split my music into 7 different libraries according to the following genres, I find that it helps not to see any "rock" in the Classical library or "jazz" in the Opera one:
• Classical
• Opera
• Minimal
• Jazz
• Rock
• Traditional
• Soundtracks

I don't use "shuffle" or "playlists".

 

[Cereal Killer]

It's all about the metadata.. then use the 'Focus' filters in roon Genre/Artist/Album, you can give them star ratings also or just go to most played.
The more you use roon the more it learns about your behaviour and selections, just make sure you keep you database/history backed up.

 

[albireo]

I have about 1500 albums all ripped to Flac and tagged by the usual (gennre, year, artist, album). For Jazz I also add a metadata field for label ("Jazz - Blue Note", "Jazz - Impulse" etc) and for classical I have a "Composer" tag.

I use Foobar2000 and its media library to browse, and mainly start with genre and take it from there.

But the above is not optimal and I find myself increasingly preferring to open a drawer and search for a CD. I'm finding that media libraries, tablets, phones and digital browsing get in the way and distract me.

I'm actually buying a Marantz CD6007 player soon (or perhaps an Audiolab 6000 transport, we'll see), and making it the primary source for my standmount speaker listening station. I will most likely ditch the computer playback, or perhaps relegate it headphone listening while at my desk.

 

[gavreid]

I'm actually buying a Marantz CD6007 player soon (or perhaps an Audiolab 6000 transport, we'll see), and making it the primary source for my standmount speaker listening station. I will most likely ditch the computer playback, or perhaps relegate it headphone listening while at my desk.

I preferred the Cambridge to the Audiolab - the sound is just a little warmer, to my ears anyway

 

[AndyU]

I find tags in general allow me to look at the "collection" in many ways - by artist, genre, era

There’s no need to create tags for artist, genre, era etc. in Roon, they are already there and you can use the Focus feature to select combinations of them, and useful combinations can be bookmarked.

 

[tuga]

There’s no need to create tags for artist, genre, era etc. in Roon, they are already there and you can use the Focus feature to select combinations of them, and useful combinations can be bookmarked.

I have no experience with Roon but I have bought classical music downloads from different labels and they all make a mess of the tagging, one of the reasons why I prefer to tag manually.

 

[camverton]

The essential for tagging is consistency and the tags on classical files as supplied are all over the place. For classical, manual tagging is, for me, mandatory for the system to work properly.

I’ve tried Roon a couple of times and was very unimpressed with their tagging. I took it up with them and they admitted how much work needed to be done for classical and that I would be welcome to trial again at a later date. It might be worth doing out of curiosity but given that JRiver with JRemote works so well for me at a fraction of the price it’s probably not worth the bother for me.