(for tom) history of mp3 players.
This seems like the ticket:
"A few players, such as the SanDisk Sansa, will play files that have been dragged-and-dropped to the flash card on a personal computer, without the use of any special software, and will automatically cope with folders containing albums, displaying everything in terms of artist, track (song), or album."
Get one of those, collect mp3s from any of a billion sources (not commenting on the "legality") and "control your destiny."
I know I probably come off as a fanatic, and I really don't want or mean to. I think the SanDisk players are nice, and I completely agree with the desire to "control your own destiny." But I am just genuinely curious about the desire to not use a software organizing program to manage your music. Is this really how you manage your collection?
I mean, do you really use your file system as your means of organizing your music? Like if you want to hear a particular song, you just look through your filesystem in Windows Explorer (I think that's what it is called) and then open it in some player to hear it? (Or can your filesystem play it?) Does this let you search or order by ID3 metadata? (I mean, can you sort by artist or album or genre or bitrate?)
My understanding (and again, I'm no Windows expert) is that you have to use software on top of the operating system, like WinAmp or iTunes, in order to allow you to search and browse by song meta information. I would be very impressed by Windows if it could do this alone.
If it is like I suspect (and certainly how it is on Macs,) and people have to use a music software organizing program to categorize and access their music, what's the harm in using the same program to load your MP3 player? It almost seems like it would be a hassle to drop back into the OS in order to 'drag and drop' the songs onto the MP3 player?
Does that make sense?
Now, maybe you don't want to use iTunes. I can totally understand that. I hate the iTunes software in a lot of ways. But then just use WinAmp. That will load an iPod or any other MP3 player (except the old Sony's that force you to use their software.)
I hope I don't sound argumentative. I'm just genuinely wondering why you would want to load an MP3 player through the OS. A dedicated database driven music cataloging program seems like a much better interface. I agree you shouldn't be locked into using a particular program to do this - but the iPod doesn't lock you into using a particular program. Only the useless iTunes Music Store does this - but of course none of us would use that, and that is completely separate from the iTunes software or the iPod.
Everybody has their own listening habits that might be weird to others.
I have my CDs and LPs organized alphabetically on the (physical) shelf and yes, I use Windows Explorer to organize folders of music by decade and alphabetically within the decade.
(that's why Frank Zappa instead of Zappa, Frank drives me crazy on filesharing systems).
My Winamp list changes constantly--I have a regularly updated master playlist of my own tunes but with everything else I create "sets" from the hard drive that never stay in one configuration for very long. If I used a portable (and I might get one of those Samsung jambox ones--I hate headphones for any length of time) I would be creating "sets" on it. Being able to drag folders with sets to the player and have the player read the metadata straight out of the folder (then just erase them when ready for a new "set") would be ideal.
Like I said, weird, but I know where everything in my collection is in terms of a physically modeled filing system.
Fair enough.
While I use iTunes, I want to be ready to drop it for something else. So my file system is something like ...
\music\who's library i got this stuff from\artist\album
I also dislike the whacky alphabetizing systems ("Beatles, The" v. "The Beatles"). I haven't taken to fighting that yet.
Jim, we may have a bit of a generational divide in that I don't use the search function for much. We didn't have that in my record store cataloguing days.
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- bill 2-11-2007 4:11 pm
This seems like the ticket:
"A few players, such as the SanDisk Sansa, will play files that have been dragged-and-dropped to the flash card on a personal computer, without the use of any special software, and will automatically cope with folders containing albums, displaying everything in terms of artist, track (song), or album."
Get one of those, collect mp3s from any of a billion sources (not commenting on the "legality") and "control your destiny."
- tom moody 2-11-2007 7:33 pm
I know I probably come off as a fanatic, and I really don't want or mean to. I think the SanDisk players are nice, and I completely agree with the desire to "control your own destiny." But I am just genuinely curious about the desire to not use a software organizing program to manage your music. Is this really how you manage your collection?
I mean, do you really use your file system as your means of organizing your music? Like if you want to hear a particular song, you just look through your filesystem in Windows Explorer (I think that's what it is called) and then open it in some player to hear it? (Or can your filesystem play it?) Does this let you search or order by ID3 metadata? (I mean, can you sort by artist or album or genre or bitrate?)
My understanding (and again, I'm no Windows expert) is that you have to use software on top of the operating system, like WinAmp or iTunes, in order to allow you to search and browse by song meta information. I would be very impressed by Windows if it could do this alone.
If it is like I suspect (and certainly how it is on Macs,) and people have to use a music software organizing program to categorize and access their music, what's the harm in using the same program to load your MP3 player? It almost seems like it would be a hassle to drop back into the OS in order to 'drag and drop' the songs onto the MP3 player?
Does that make sense?
Now, maybe you don't want to use iTunes. I can totally understand that. I hate the iTunes software in a lot of ways. But then just use WinAmp. That will load an iPod or any other MP3 player (except the old Sony's that force you to use their software.)
I hope I don't sound argumentative. I'm just genuinely wondering why you would want to load an MP3 player through the OS. A dedicated database driven music cataloging program seems like a much better interface. I agree you shouldn't be locked into using a particular program to do this - but the iPod doesn't lock you into using a particular program. Only the useless iTunes Music Store does this - but of course none of us would use that, and that is completely separate from the iTunes software or the iPod.
- jim 2-11-2007 7:52 pm
Everybody has their own listening habits that might be weird to others.
I have my CDs and LPs organized alphabetically on the (physical) shelf and yes, I use Windows Explorer to organize folders of music by decade and alphabetically within the decade.
(that's why Frank Zappa instead of Zappa, Frank drives me crazy on filesharing systems).
My Winamp list changes constantly--I have a regularly updated master playlist of my own tunes but with everything else I create "sets" from the hard drive that never stay in one configuration for very long. If I used a portable (and I might get one of those Samsung jambox ones--I hate headphones for any length of time) I would be creating "sets" on it. Being able to drag folders with sets to the player and have the player read the metadata straight out of the folder (then just erase them when ready for a new "set") would be ideal.
Like I said, weird, but I know where everything in my collection is in terms of a physically modeled filing system.
- tom moody 2-11-2007 8:31 pm
Fair enough.
- jim 2-11-2007 8:44 pm
While I use iTunes, I want to be ready to drop it for something else. So my file system is something like ...
\music\who's library i got this stuff from\artist\album
I also dislike the whacky alphabetizing systems ("Beatles, The" v. "The Beatles"). I haven't taken to fighting that yet.
- mark 2-11-2007 9:41 pm
Jim, we may have a bit of a generational divide in that I don't use the search function for much. We didn't have that in my record store cataloguing days.
- tom moody 2-11-2007 10:08 pm