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Put Your iTunes Library on a Diet
Matt Wood | Oct 15 2007
My music buying habits have slowed considerably since my college days, when I’d rush down to the music store every Tuesday and spend every penny I hadn’t guzzled through a beer bong the previous weekend, but I still managed to amass a rather prodigious CD collection. When I got a Mac and an iPod, this turned into a rather prodigious iTunes library, and quickly became a major thorn in my side. Having suffered through a couple hard drive crashes, upgrades, and subsequent backing and re-backing up lately, I’ve really been feeling the weight of that 100+ GB media millstone around my neck. I felt so great when I ripped that last CD and put all those unsightly jewel cases into storage, thinking it would simplify my life. Instead, it just created bigger headaches. I know, I know, there are a bazillion ways I can slice and dice my iTunes library, storing it on different drives, shunting the videos off to a server, pimping out my machines with terabyte drives, etc, but it begs the question: do I really need all that crap in my life? I finally started doing something about it by ordering what I called D-Day II. My D-Day I happened in college when someone swiped a CD wallet full of about 50 discs, the first major casualties to my music collection. The irony is that while my renter’s insurance paid me a pretty good settlement, I only repurchased about half of what I lost, and those were the supposed good albums that I was carrying around in my car all the time. It should have taught me the lesson back then that when it comes to buying music, we all suck. So D-Day II involved combing through my iTunes library, deleting all the music I knew that not only would I never listen to again, but would probably embarrass me if it popped up in a party shuffle. Face it, as we get older, our tastes change. All those middling, B-list albums I bought based off recommendations from Yo! MTV Raps or three-star ratings in Rolling Stone? Gone. The 90% filler tracks on albums I basically bought for one good song? Gone. It was surprising how much junk I was toting around; after one pass, without making any really tough calls, I slimmed my iTunes library by a third. And don’t get me started with video. I haven’t even bought that many TV shows or movies from iTunes, but I can already see it’s going to cause problems. Once my son passes his Dora phase, it’ll be adios, Swiper, no swiping my hard drive space. And as much as I loved those seasons of Weeds, I can’t see myself ever watching them again, so if push comes to shove, Nancy and Conrad will have to go too. I understand some of you may not have the guts to delete this stuff completely, but do yourself a favor and move the files to an external disk. Then put it away, mark down the date, and if a year later you haven’t touched it, delete that thing and use it for porn again like it was meant to be. If you’re having trouble getting started, Merlin posted some good tips about using smart playlists to identify the lame stuff. Smart people like Peter Walsh are making a career out of helping us purge our physical junk, but we neglect our computer junk and end up with digital rec rooms stuffed full of bad 311 albums and box sets of Fastlane. What’s the worst that can happen anyway? You’ll have to buy a few albums again? Trust me, you won’t even miss them. POSTED IN:
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Best of both worlds
I have a ChronoSync job that backs up changes on my “working” (local) iTunes library to a RAID every couple days.
I like this approach because it gives me the freedom to delete stuff locally with impunity, while knowing I won’t lose stuff that I bought or that I really love. It’s certainly essential after the occasional long weekend of downloading every live bootleg I can find by a band.
Different approach from what you’re putting out, but since hard drive space is cheap and plentiful (as opposed to the existential square inches taken up by, say, EBN-OZN 12-inches), I like the blended approach for pain free clutter killing, combined with confidence you won’t accidentally screw yourself.
My only other thought? Smart Playlists — e.g. an up to date listing of stuff you haven’t listened to in a while, sorted by file-size can be a life saver.
Re: Best of both worlds
Oh sure, leave it to Merlin to come up with a more practical approach.
I don’t expect most people could be as cavalier toward deep-sixing all this music as I was, and your idea of having a “working” library plus a hidden crate somewhere else makes sense. But I think that might be a second step, after you’ve done a good once through to weed out the crap.
We probably all have enough disk space that we can afford to leave some questionable items in play (as I type this listening to an impulse buy Beyonce single), but I’m guessing we still have too much stuff we know is just taking up room. I wish iTunes had some built-in “archiving” functionality to help, say, for tucking away the holiday music out of season, or putting old movies on the shelf.
purging
I agree, i think purging is becoming more and more of a necessary out come whether you’re a literal packrat or a digital packrat. I went through a similar process of going through my entire digital library and deleting what i didn’t need anymore. It was cathartic as hard as that is to believe. I realized how much my tastes have changed over the years, and one big goal has always been to retain as much of it as possible in order to share it. but ultimately i’ve realized it’s for me, i’m the one enjoying it, so if i no longer need it, i can get rid of it. What would help more though, is to have a solution of going back if the day ever came where i wanted to share something i no longer had. I believe that is more on the video front then the music front however. Keep what you enjoy, and what you’ll use over and over again. Rid yourself the weight of the rest, and life will seem simpler and whole lot more functional.
Tool Lag
I can only imagine we’re in one of those all-too-common tool “lags”, where the problem of too much information has emerged, but the tool to deal with it is not yet extant. Think the Interweb in the pre-algorithmic-search-engine days. And, really, when you think of it, the problem itself could be temporary. What’s sillier than dozens of your friends all wasting hard drive space on storing identical digital copies of the same song file?
Duplicates
When using iTunes you probably don’t have much duplicates, but when using old school folders you can get a lot of those. I like to have my mp3s correctly tagged, and so I have 2 folders: mp3, and mp3.others (that could be named incoming, music coming from friends). But sometimes I move music from mp3.others before it is correctly tagged … and the duplication begins.
I found a script that helped me delete (hardlink) those. … -> 73 Gigs freed :)
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/362459
different folders
i keep separate folders for wma’s, mp3’s & aac’s, because some of these files don’t play nice with certain devices & programs. & transcoding these files often results in loss of fidelity. but i can’t believe you actually bought albums recommended by yo mtv raps! i must admit, though, you gotta love the ed lover dance.
MASS
Having worked in music for nearly 15 years, I have a cd collection that is rather large. I have it insured as a part of my homeowners…and as a result I have in inventoried, I have roughly 7000 physical cds. And oddly enough 2 records.
For me, I am just starting to consider what to do with the digital backup massive size. I am over 2.5 teerabytes of music now, and loved this artle for the suggestions.
Its funny, when I was a PC guy, I napstered, or bit torrented music with impunity. Now, as a mac user…I wont.
I find it distasteful to bring something I percieve as unclean onto my hard drives.
So snobby.
begs the question?
What you really meant in your third paragraph was it raises the question. Begging for a question to be asked is not the same as begging the question. Begging the question is a logical fallacy in which the premises are related to the conclusion in such a way that the recipients of the argument have no less reason to doubt the premises as the conclusion. The way you have used it is a colloquialism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggingthequestion
I similarly have had several D-days to my music collection. My CD wallet was stolen and I lost around 80 CDs. I replaced very few of them, and my music collection is now completely different. I have also had several hard drive crashes that have wiped me clean. With my music collection growing to close to 30gb I think it’s time again for another purge. Why do I have so much Michael Jackson?
other programs...
I have recently been going through my music on my server which is almost at 200 gb. This is ungodly— on a Mac, Doug’s applescripts for itunes is a life saver, as well as the small program they sell for 15 USD, Dupin. I slimmed almost 60 gb of crap from my itunes lib…
Unclutter
Yep. Your last paragraph summed it up. It’s all too much.
Physical purge
For years, I’ve kept my extensive CD collection, including mix CDs that were en mode in the mid to late 90s but are no longer worthy of my ears. I took them to my various homes over the years, switched from the hard plastic cases to skinny sleeves, and still had the notion that “one day I’ll appreciate having this mixed CD of DJ so and so that wasn’t really that great to begin with.”
In comes LaLa.com which, for those not in the know, allows for easy exchange of CDs for a small fee. I soon realized that User X would greatly appreciate this disc more than I would considering he/she is requesting it from me. So there goes Ultra Nate’s second album, which was horribly boring to my ears, to User X that will find great pleasure in receiving it. Sure, I paid $9.95 or possibly $15.95 for the disc back in 199whatever, but it was time to cut my losses. I then realized that I’m OK parting with music.
With digital music, it’s even easier to “say no” by deleting, even if you bought it off iTunes. And as Matt says, who wants that clutter in your Party Shuffle. :)
Cleaning up my iTunes...
I went through this back in January. I trimmed my main library from 20GB to around 6GB. Difference for me is, I kept all my music from the past. My main archival library is now around 100GB, and backed up in duplicate. My thoughts: http://tinyurl.com/yr22hw
Pixies
If you have any Pixies albums in your collection think two, three, or four times before deleting them. You may not have listened to them for a while but the day will come. Never again will I put myself in the position of having to buy Bossanova again. Three (four?) times is enough.
Purging TV shows
I recently purge a hecukva lota of TV shows. South Parks I kept—I throw on random episodes. But The Wire? It’s a great show, but I’m never going to to back to watch, say, episode three of season two. And I can’t see myself investing the time to go back and rewatch the series.
Triage Works
Here’s my solution, YMMV.
This post goes on way too long, but at least the idea of “divide and conquer” and keeping a line between Current and Archive may be helpful for others.
I don’t use iTunes to manage folders, just to manage my iPod. So the library can stay pretty clean of horseshit. Plus there is a “live” folder on my laptop with current stuff so New Stuff and Archive are 2 different things.
Archive: Wiped iTunes library info, created 3 folders Music A, B, C. All gets backed up to an undisclosed location. All live on an external drive. Only stuff in the A folder makes it onto my iPod anyway.
A= The stuff I love. A is for All of The Ramones.
B= B is for Be Real, most of this belongs in C, but I am a weak willed wussy boy.
The stuff I wouldn’t throw out if it were physical until it was time to move to a 5th floor apartment. (If it were vinyl and in milk crates, this would be the stuff that got out to the sidewalk before I realized that I was keeping all this shit just to impress a girl who broke up with me 3 years earlier and didn’t need more than one Bartok or Debussy record.)
C= C is for Craphound, which I am. The rest of the so-so album I bought to get the single, music my friends recommended that I will never get into, stuff anyone with a backbone would delete in a heartbeat. (Yes, I love that Andrea True Connection sample, LEN, but This Means You.)
The really active folder is one called “Music and Audio” where all the new stuff goes. That is where the new stuff, or newly added stuff lives. Once a year it gets archived or deleted. That folder is currently under 8 GB and has room for all the weird bootlegs of the week, etc.
As I’ve discovered since
As I’ve discovered since I’ve been getting older most music doesn’t age well. Doubly so for “indie” or “underground” music which exists in part as a statement on the time it was made in. (@smevans: that includes the Pixies, imho)
The only thing you can do is weed out your collection every six months or so. Me, I consider everything in it a candidate for removal unless I’ve decided otherwise - which is rare. So every time my iTunes collection gets over, say, 4GB, almost everything in it goes. Unless it’s on a playlist marked “keep”.
Look to the stars
I’ve come up with a simple ongoing purge method. I most often listen to my iPod on my commute to work. I pop it on random, and let it sing. Very often I will hear a song that makes me want to roll up my windows for fear of embarrassment, or makes me wonder what the heck I was thinking ripping it into iTunes in the first place. Before I skip to the next track, I give it a “one-star” rating.
Then, every once in while in iTunes, I sort my library by rating, and delete the one-stars.