Digital music library vs. Steaming radio.
Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 2:06 pm
This thread is a product of some research I was doing on sound systems. I was looking at the Sonos wifi hifi system, and was actually pretty keen on the idea of picking one up somewhere down the line -- I live in a pretty big house, my computer and 5.1 system is in the basement, and I often wish I could have access to all my music upstairs. I was pretty stoked, to be honest, about the Sonos system, until I did some further digging on it and realized that the app it uses to organize and play the music you have kept on your hard drive has a hard file limit of 65,000 mp3s/ogg/etc.
This is probably not a problem for most people, as most peoples' collections tend to come in well under that. My collection is sitting at about 200,000 mp3s, and counting as we speak.
I started downloading music when I was about thirteen -- I'm 24 now. As time has gone on, particularly over the last three years or so, there's been a pretty sharp turn away from keeping digital files on your own computer in favor of streaming services like Pandora, Last.fm, Spotify, etc. While I appreciate all these applications for what they are, I prefer to keep my own collection. It allows me access to things that those programs can't provide me, particularly in certain subgenres such as noise. Furthermore, I take great pride and joy in spending time organizing my collection, fixing tags, finding album art, etc.
I understand the push towards streaming audio, but due to that push, I have found myself stymied multiple times when it comes to things such as the Sonos system -- all these sorts of streaming and storage services have limits on file counts that I far exceed. It's endlessly frustrating.
What are your guys' opinions? Personal library or streaming? Both? Why? I'm mostly just venting steam here, but I figured I'd see what you guys had to say on the topic.
This is probably not a problem for most people, as most peoples' collections tend to come in well under that. My collection is sitting at about 200,000 mp3s, and counting as we speak.
I started downloading music when I was about thirteen -- I'm 24 now. As time has gone on, particularly over the last three years or so, there's been a pretty sharp turn away from keeping digital files on your own computer in favor of streaming services like Pandora, Last.fm, Spotify, etc. While I appreciate all these applications for what they are, I prefer to keep my own collection. It allows me access to things that those programs can't provide me, particularly in certain subgenres such as noise. Furthermore, I take great pride and joy in spending time organizing my collection, fixing tags, finding album art, etc.
I understand the push towards streaming audio, but due to that push, I have found myself stymied multiple times when it comes to things such as the Sonos system -- all these sorts of streaming and storage services have limits on file counts that I far exceed. It's endlessly frustrating.
What are your guys' opinions? Personal library or streaming? Both? Why? I'm mostly just venting steam here, but I figured I'd see what you guys had to say on the topic.
