Yeah, I know this should be in the clubhouse section, but, from what I understand, no one here reads it, so i'm posting this here because it's important.
Moth of us have sizable music collections: CDs, vinyl, tapes, ect. We love and enjoy it, too. But, how many of you have backed up all that music? What if a disaster happened? You would be devastated! Just like your computer files, you have to back them up because damage, theft, or disaster could happen.
Now, you can't easily back up the packaging, artwork, and liner notes easily, but you can save the music. What are you doing about it?
I have a huge music collection of tapes, records, CDs, and digital files. Several years ago, I decided to just start backing up all of my CDs. So, I bought an external hard drive and went to work. I ripped small stacks of CDs every day and in my spare time for a year until I was done. I didn't worry about tagging or artwork beyond using Gracenote or CDDB I mostly used dbpoweramp, but also used Exact Audio Copy and Audition to rip. I went through two DVD drives to rip all those CDs. I had so much music that I had to by another hard drive! I ripped everything to FLAC, which is lossless and gives me the exact, same quality as a CD, or better. Then when I was done, I made copies of those hard drives. Then, I made third copies, and created mp3 versions of everything. I created a server so I could stream, and download my music from anywhere. The records? I carefully digitized them and added them to the hard drives.
I'm still in the process of catching mistakes and tagging, but at least I have all the music I have been collecting since the late 60s archived. It feels good to know that if I lose a CD or album, or it gets damaged, that I have a backup. I won't have to worry about tracking down a rare copy if something gets lost or stolen ever again. If I lose a hard drive, I have backups. I can sleep at night. If I want to take my music with me, I can just copy it onto a CD-R or USB thumb drive, take it wit me, or download it.
There are some people here who think that they can just rely on YouTube or streaming services, but those can go away, and the sound isn't as good. you need your own solution that you have control over.
So, how about you, what are you doing to preserve your music? Insurance can't always replace a rare recording.
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