442 gig. 6,352 folders. 102,520 songs. The first stage of the MP3 Project is done. All of my mp3s that were formerly stored on CDs and DVDs are now stored on my home network. No more digging through lists, bulging binders and towering stacks of CDs/DVDs just to find the album I’m looking for. Now, with just a few clicks, I can be listening to anything from ABBA and AC/DC to Zakk Wylde and ZZ Top, with lots (and lots and lots) of stuff in between. The entire collection has been backed up to an external drive, which is being stored off-site. I’ve also imported my collection into Songbird, and am in the process of cleaning up my tags …
After dumping the directory into Excel and playing with it for a few minutes, here are the artists with the most albums on my hard drive: AC/DC, Alice Cooper, Anthrax, Beastie Boys, Beatles, Beck, Black Sabbath, Buckethead, Insane Clown Posse, Iron Maiden, KISS, Korn, Machine Head, Madonna, Marilyn Manson, Megadeth, Metallica, Motley Crue, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, NOFX, Ozzy Osbourne, Prince, Public Enemy, Queen, REM, Sepultura, Smashing Pumpkins, The Beatles, The Cure, Therapy, Tori Amos, and Weird Al Yankovic.
That’s actually a fair representation of some of my favorite music, although a couple of them stand out like sore thumbs. I couldn’t name you a single Insane Clown Posse song — I must’ve just run across their albums and absorbed them into the collection for some reason. Therapy released a ton of CD Singles, which is why they made the list. Then there are bands like the Beastie Boys, who only have seven studio albums, but appear on the list over twenty times, thanks to live bootlegs, imports, and CD singles.
In honor of completing Phase I, I have completed one of those mp3 memes where the goal is to put your mp3 player on random and attach a randomly selected song title as an answer to each question. A few of them turned out sorta/kinda funny, but most of them were just jiggerish. Oh well.
What do your friends think of you?
Metallica – Helpless [Hah.]
If someone says, “Is this okay?” You say?
Wolfmother – Woman [I may start saying this.]
How would you describe yourself?
Queens of the Stone Age – Burn the Witch
What do you like in a guy/girl?
Silverchair – Cemetery [Ew.]
How do you feel today?
Twisted Sister – Destroyer [!]
What is your life’s purpose?
Fu Manchu – Downtown in Dogtown [?]
What is your motto?
Black Sabbath – Sweet Leaf [Not true, but funny.]
What do you think about very often?
Kylie Minogue – Whenever You Feel Like It [Probably true …]
What is 2 + 2?
Richard Cheese – Last Christmas [?]
What do you think of your best friend?
Jessica Andrews – That’s Who I Am [Sounds good.]
What do you think of the person you like?
Eminem – 365 [I do like her 365 days a year, almost!]
What is your life story?
Sonic Youth – My Friend Goo [?]
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Smashing Pumpkins – Once Upon A Time [?]
What do you think of when you see the person you like?
Richard Pryor – MS [Double Hah!]
What will you dance to at your wedding?
Black Label Society – Destruction Overdrive [?]
What will they play at your funeral?
Fat Boys – Wipeout [Oh I wish.]
What is your hobby/interest?
Scorpions – Now [?]
What is your biggest fear?
The Sugarcubes – Birthday [Terrible fear of icing and candles …]
What is your biggest secret?
Primus – Too Many Puppies [?]
What do you think of your friends?
Twilight Singers – Twilight [They sleep?]
What will you post this as?
3rd Bass – The Gas Face [Haha, ends on a fart joke.]
Drop the puppies and back away slowly, Mr. O’Hara.
I hadn’t really figured you for a Tori Amos fan, to be honest. Or ICP for that matter. LOL
You’ve got some tagging work to do: the Beatles are listed twice and it’s “Therapy?” (note the question mark).
And a “well done” to the off-site backup. Priceless, and easy to implement.
Wheres the downloads/uploads?
So, did ya decide to embed album art as you go? Highly recommended!
Though rare, I ended up having to make a few command decisions and do a little futzing around with artists whose names morph over time. For example, John Cougar a.k.a John Cougar Mellencamp a.k.a John Mellencamp. I ended up nesting all of his albums under an artist folder called simply “John Mellencamp.”
Likewise, you may run into this with others like “Joan Jett & The Blackhearts” and “Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band.” Just gotta decide if it makes more sense to you to keep the whole thing or truncate to simply the artist name.
And you may hafta fudge a little with some artist names too. For example, the folder for AC/DC is actually called “AC-DC” because the corward-slash character is not a legal character for inclusion in a folder name. (At least on a Windows-based PC, anyway – can’t speak for how this might work on a Mac or Linux box.)
I didn’t add the art or fix the tags as I went. The mp3s I put on the server are things that had already been ripped (some, poorly). Phase two is to finish ripping my remaining audio CDs (another 500 or so to go …) and phase three will be to go back through, double check all the tags and add album art.