Cataloging

My musical quest continues. At my current position, I've gone through the vast majority of my own collection and have put a sizeable dent in my wife's when it comes to loading them onto the iPod. The current length, if playing every song until they were all played once, hovers at just under 40 days of music. Theoretically, I could ride out The Flood. Well, the flooding part. Not so much the floodED part. I might have to hear a song more than once, may God have mercy upon me. I was a bit worried, though, because a lot of stuff that I consider to be essential, along with some stuff that isn't, was MIA until late last night. As it stood, I was going to be without Soundgarden (not to be confused with Savage Garden...gah...my wife scares me sometimes...*shiver*...) and the MTV Unplugged disc was my only Nirvana. I still had AiC to up the Seattle count, but From the Muddy Banks... was unaccounted for and there's a lot of good Cobain stuff on there. Live tracks, no less. I'm considering the amount of work involved in creating a Live Tracks playlist, among others, and it would be hurting without some Heartshaped Box. Beyond that, I was also missing Jars of Clay's Much Afraid and a couple Beatles CDs. There may have been a logic to placing all those in the same case, the one that was hidden until last night, but it escapes me now.

They'll have to wait until I finish my wife's collection, which should take only an hour or two more. That's helped by the fact that, even though I'm endeavoring to load most everything on, there are certain things I will not abide. Savage Garden being one. I don't remember seeing any in her stacks, but if it is, it's getting bypassed.

My wife doesn't see the point in all the effort I'm going to get it ALL loaded on, but I think she'll appreciate it the next time we have to iPod it across the country to Idaho. I mean, not having to lug a CD case of the things we thought we might want to listen to, having it jammed in the front seat, taking up precious real estate, these all appeal to me greatly. Even if I have to have The Dixie Chicks on there.

Yeah, I managed to let them pass my crap filter. I don't feel good about it, but I did.

I've been lying to her, though, about how I just need to finish loading them, because unless we want to listen to them shuffled randomly or sorted by artist, album or whatever, there's no appreciable way to hear what I want to hear in groups. I mean, REALLY the way I want to hear it. Smartlists are fine, but somehow my Sinatra CD got into the 90's list I have going. That was a strange one.

It occurs to me that the Seinfeld CD is probably in there, too.

The problem with playlists, like mixtapes, is that they're just snapshots. Now, I'm not going to wax poetic on the subject, Cusack did that well enough, but finding a way to meaningfully divide music in a way that will remain relevant in the coming days, weeks, months, whatever...you know, when I'll actually be listening to it...seems daunting. I mean, it's not permanent like a tatoo (I had a hard time with that one...), but the active time committment of wading through thousands of songs to piece together a list (versus the passive time committment of loading them in the first place) is serious business. On the upside, I won't be dominating the DSL by that point (I should've put a wireless router on my Christmas list...).

By the by, if anyone knows of a way I can import cover art for the CDs iTunes couldn't find art for, I'd love to hear about it.

I suppose that, really, the playlisting is something I should consider a work in progress. I mean, I really don't need to become obsessed with that after I finish this.

Who would've known that taking my music into the 21st century would be so much work?

Capacitor

I recently acquired an iPod in a game of chance. Rest easy. I didn't kill anyone you know for it. The iPod, as a status symbol, never much appealed to me. I mean, I remember when the Walkman was the cool thing and the iPod was just a new iteration of that idea. I mean, I'd had an mp3 player and gotten maybe 10 or 12 hours of use out of it before deciding it was too much trouble.

You'll have to forgive my ignorance.

The strength of the iPod lies in the fact that it doesn't just hold the music you put on it from A playlist and, possibly, shuffle them in different, random, yet oddly repetetive orders. Instead, it holds all the lists you can devise. I wish someone would've been kind enough to inform me of this. Also, the click wheel interface didn't much make sense to me at a glance. So you can skip forwards and backwards. So you can play and pause. So what? I didn't realize you could actually wheel about! Why is it that no one lets me know when I'm thinking something stupid?

...Wait, they do.

Why is it that people don't let me know when it's something I care about?!?! It's reintroduced music into my way of life.

Now, the one I own is a 5th generation 30gb, making it tiny by current standards. That's fine with me. First of all, it was free. Second of all, it's better than the iPod I had before. You know, none. Plus, as I am blissfully ignorant and don't know if it's a bitrate matter or one of file format and compression, I'm finding that at this point, after uploading at least half, if not 2/3 of my CD collection, I'm just barely cracking 2.5gb. And I've loaded EVERYTHING.

Well, not EVERYTHING. I did leave a couple tracks out from a CD or two that I copied because the tracks were bad. They never played right. I assume that my CD burner was faulty. I also skipped a couple compilation CDs that came in some magazines because I wasn't ready to weed out the feces from the good stuff at the time. I may just go back and load the whole thing later. Who knows. And I also skipped a couple entire discs that I bought cheap because they were CDs that my brother owned when we were both at home still. Had I taken into account that his tastes are wildly different from mine, I might've saved my $1.50.

I may load those on, as well. You never know when I might want to listen to crap.

On a whole, though it's been a pleasant experience, the main lesson I'm carrying away is that I don't own enough music. It's like a challenge to fill it up, and at this point, I don't think I can without cheating and loading tons of videos or something on it. I mean, my wife says I'm displaying obsessive behavior, which is kind of true, but loading CD after CD onto iTunes takes a while. After I get it all loaded onto that, one sync and I'm effectively finished (except for when I get new CDs...at Christmas and birthdays...) and the only other things I'll need to do with it (besides listening) are when I get an idea for a new playlist or something.

The lack of fillage (not a word) is rather annoying, though. I mean, according to the iTunes library, I've got 35+ days, DAYS, of music loaded currently and that's only 8.3% of it's total capacity. It suddenly makes sense that so many people are illegally downloading music. I mean, who has the time, let alone the funds, to continually shop for new music to fill these things? I think Steve Jobs is in cahoots (I despise that word) with the RIAA and probably the courts. He throws down the gauntlet by continually upping the capacity on his players. The User has to find methods to fill the player. The RIAA takes them to court for the illegal methods they use. The RIAA, the lawyers, and the courts collect their respective fees and winnings, and Jobs probably gets kickbacks or something. I don't know.

Now, lest ye think that I'm making some lame, old guy grab at the last vestiges of cool available to him, I should mention that of the non-music files on the iPod, which I named iPodicus Maximus...ironically, I think, I have pictures and videos of Aaron.

Sweet, but not cool. Because I was never that to begin with.