Just another nerd.
The other day I needed to download bunch of Soundcloud clips so I could listen to a podcast without needing to have access to the Internet.
I’m sure there are a lot of different ways to do this, but website-based Anything2MP3.com worked perfectly for my needs.
I just fed it the URL of the Soundcloud podcast, and within a few minutes I had an MP3 version of the sound file in my Downloads folder.
The site asked me to turn off my ad blocker, but worked fine even with it turned on.
Michael Calore has the same problem that I’ve run into lately — what do you do when your music library starts to get really big?
My friend — let’s call him Jimmy — has a music collection of truly epic proportions. His library consists of roughly 90,000 MP3s at last count, which is about 560 gigabytes of data. That’s enough music to bring just about every software media player to its knees.
While Jimmy was building his massive library (which he stores on a local 1 terabyte RAID), he was importing and managing everything using iTunes. As soon as the library grew beyond 300 GB, iTunes started acting sluggish. After Jimmy’s music library passed the half terabyte mark, iTunes was so bogged down that it became almost unusable.
The folks in the comments section recommended a couple of solutions for Windows users — Media Monkey and Foobar 2000.
Personally, I like and use Media Monkey. It is not as slick as iTunes, but it handles the very large number of MP3s I’ve got without a problem. I especially like the fact that it embeds song ratings as metadata within MP3s which is much preferable to iTunes practice of simply storing ratings in the iTunes database (which means if you lose the database you lose the ratings — precisely why I never bothered with rating songs when I used iTunes).
The weird thing is that when I mention this to other people the typical response is, “why would anyone need 1 terabyte of music? Who has time to listen to that much music?”
I certainly don’t have time to listen to all the music in my collection. Then again, I don’t have time to read every web page ever created, but this doesn’t stop me from going to Google on a whim and finding exactly the pages I want/need to read now.
Music is the same way. I have no idea what I’m going to want to listen to tonight, tomorrow, or six months from now. Might as well just grab it all now and let the computer sort it out with the metadata and smart playlists.
I was so close to buying a Sonos system until I read about the 40,000 track limit on its hand controller. The weird thing is that I’ve read dozens of reviews of the Sonos system in computer and audio magazines and not a single one mentioned this limit. Maybe most people don’t have 40,000 tracks, but I’m guessing the subset of music lovers willing to spend $1,000 or more on the Sonos are likely to (I’ve got about 35,000 tracks at the moment).
Now, I’m seeing stories about Sonos’ 2.0 firmware upgrade, but again no mention of the track limit. To Sonos’ credit, they have done something about the track limit, but unfortunately the upgrade is underwhelming on that point.
According to Sonos’ web site, “the maximum library and queue size has expanded to 50,000 tracks.”
Well, it is an increase, but 50,000 tracks is still relatively small for such an expensive system.
Sorry, no sale.
After years of trying to get it shut down outright, the music industry seems to have scored a minor victory with Visa’s decision to suspend service to Russian music site AllofMP3.com. VISA International spokesman Simon Barker told CNET,
It’s [AllofMP3.Com] no longer permitted to accept Visa cards. The action we’ve taken is in line with legislation passed in Russia and international copyright law.
AllofMP3 countered that Visa International’s decision was “arbitrary, capricious and discriminatory.” Moreover, AllofMP3 continues to maintain that its business practices are completely legal in Russia, where it sells MP3s without the permission of copyright holders and pays a pittance in royalties to a Russian rights agency.
Since there are dozens of ways to download the exact same content, even if the Visa change is permanent, its at best a pyrrhic victory for the RIAA. Wow, I can’t buy music at AllofMP3 anymore — I guess I’ll have to go back to downloading it for free.
Sources:
Blacklisted AllofMP3 slams ‘capricious’ Visa and Mastercard. Drew Cullen, The Register, October 19, 2006.
Visa halts its service for allofmp3.com. Greg Sandovel, CNET News.Com, October 18, 2006.
Maybe it’s just me, but in the Web age why would Archos ever name a product 404?
I was seriously looking at the Sonos system to play my MP3s throughout my house. First, though, I need to get my MP3s and other data onto a larger NAS system, and I was doing research to make sure that the NAS system I was going with would work with the Sonos.
It was at that point I ran across the deal killer for the Sonos. Those handheld controllers look sweet, but the Sonos system can only index a maximum of 40,000 tracks — less depending on how thorough the metadata on each track is (and I am very thorough with my metadata). That’s a pitifully low maximum number of tracks for a higher-end music system.
For that price I can buy a few Squeezeboxes, add a PDA with 802.11b for a remote, and search through 100,000+ tracks.