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Need advice for digital music management.

strop

Now half as wise
I am probably about 15 years behind most of you guys when it comes to computers and electronics, so I nned some advice. Many years ago my sons advised using Itunes to manage my CD collection. I had a mp3 player and wanted tolisten to my CDs. They were loaded into Itunes and then to my player, or I listened while using the computer. I never downloaded any music.

I now have a new computer. In addition to wanting to move my old music files over, I think I'd like to start just buying the e version instead of actual CDs. Are there programs better than Itunes? Can I move my old Itunes files to another storage area? If I use Itunes, do I have to purchase thru their store? or can I purchase from Amazon? Other good places to purchase?

I guess I need to have a teenager at home again:lol:
 
I organize all my digital music in folders by artist. And then in each artist folder there are separate folders for each album.

Individual track filenames are roughly in this format "Artist Name - Album Name - (Track #) Track Title.mp3/flac/etc."

The only exception is classical music for which I have a completely separate folder.

Personally, I hate iTunes. I use the last version of Winamp before it was discontinued. But that's just to play music I have locally on my PC (about 106GB right now). I also subscribe to Spotify and use the play.spotify.com link instead of the actual Windows program.

Everybody's different though.

EDIT: I use the program CDex to rip my CD's (yes, I still buy them). There are other programs too like Exact Audio Copy. I don't even rip stuff to .MP3 anymore, .FLAC only. But I'm weird so...
 
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I organize all my digital music in folders by artist. And then in each artist folder there are separate folders for each album.

Individual track filenames are roughly in this format "Artist Name - Album Name - (Track #) Track Title.mp3/flac/etc."

The only exception is classical music for which I have a completely separate folder.

Personally, I hate iTunes. I use the last version of Winamp before it was discontinued. But that's just to play music I have locally on my PC (about 106GB right now). I also subscribe to Spotify and use the play.spotify.com link instead of the actual Windows program.

Everybody's different though.

I do find iTunes dreadful on PC platforms.

I will admit I have gulped a large glass of Apple® Kool-Aid.
 
I do find iTunes dreadful on PC platforms.

I will admit I have gulped a large glass of Apple® Kool-Aid.
Yeah I find it to be one of the most bloated and clunky pieces of software ever. But it wouldn't surprise me if it was a different experience altogether on a Mac.
 
Yeah I find it to be one of the most bloated and clunky pieces of software ever. But it wouldn't surprise me if it was a different experience altogether on a Mac.

It is still a bit of a pig on Mac, but considering I have gone "all Apple",(TV,PC,Mobile devices, etc.), the ease and seamlessness between devices drives my choices.
 
I'm not sure if your new computer is a PC or a MAC. If it is a PC, just copy your music over to the new machine and you can use Windows Media Player. If it is a Windows 8.1 machine it will have XBOX music on it to access and play your tunes.

As for going forward, consider using a streaming music service like Google Music or XBOX Music, Spotify etc. If you do this, for a few bucks a month you never really have to buy another CD. I think the all have about 20 million songs. You won't run out of music!
 
I would rather give myself a thousand paper cuts to the face than use anything apple related.

That being said I've had good luck with Music Bee.
 
I would buy on Amazon as it automatically loads into iTunes, plus you can load an Amazon cloud player onto any smart divide and listen that way too (Amazon purchases).

i prefer not to buy digital music from iTunes.
 
I'm sticking with my music collection just the way it is.
$8 track.jpg
 
Can't stand itunes. I currently use a Samsung Galaxy player, and get most of my music from Amazon. Easy to download and move from device to device.
 
My iPod is about 7 years old and I use iTunes. I don't really like it, I'm just too lazy to learn a new program. In those 7 years, I bought only 2 songs from the iTunes store. All my mp3's come from CD's, amazon, mp3's converted from youtube videos and even old free napster songs. Never had a problem with iTunes playing songs from other sources. I did have to upgrade my iTunes earlier this year from version 8 or 9 to version 11 in order to backup a new iPhone. I hated the new version until I found a youtube video on how to get it to look like the old version.
 
And backup your stuff! I have ~100GB of music and I use Crashplan to back up remotely and an external hard drive. I will also once a year or so create DVDs of everything.
 
I got an Android phone about a year ago and switched my music to Google. I'm no expert, but it was easy enough to switch from iTunes. We (meaning my wife) just got a brand new Mac for home and my wife and oldest daughter have iPhones so I may switch back to an iPhone and iTunes in the near future. I think iTunes is fine if you're all Apple, but otherwise not so much.
 

strop

Now half as wise
So, I discovered my PC (Windows 8) has XBOX music. Turns out when I copied all my old files from my old computer over , the music files ended up buried in my picture files. Moved them out and they automatically showed up in XBOX!:thumbup1: Although they wee on an old,old version of itunes, I had never purchased any, so I think that is why they copied over.

Windows Media Center was fairly easy for this computer illiterate to figure out to copy (it's now apparently called rip) some other CDs. I've been looking at Amazon and Google+ Music. That should keep me busy for a while.

Thanks. I'll be back with more questions if needed.
 
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