As you all well know, my home storage is tipping a terabyte, with nearly 450 gigabytes of music. Which in real world is a nightmare. It takes me about 10 minutes to find the obscure song I fancy listening to, but then the moment is gone. (In case you were wondering, i have the complete works of Frankie Blue Eyes, and always enjoy them with a glass of single malt. Unfortunately, the alcohol evaporates while I look for a rose is just a rose!)
I still have not been able to master the trick of adding three different storage locations to one iTunes library. (Tips anyone – I have two network drives and music on my laptop!) Still, since most of the music I listen to is on a Buffalo LinkStation. So I have made that my default library, and today I have discovered a new software that just is fantastic. Mobster. Fine folks behind MusicMobs have released this brilliant desktop add on to iTunes (comes in both delicious Mac and antibiotic WinXP flavors.)
What i does is basically recommends artists/songs that match the one playing in your iTunes. So for instance if I am cranking Panjabi MC, it tells me I might like Usher (which is not in my library but other Music Mob users are saying so!) or Rishi Rich (which is in my library!) This is when I set the software in “hipster” mode. Unfortunately, there is no rapidly-aging former hipster mode. Instead, it is called Mainstream.
To recap – Mobster watches the music you play in iTunes and uses recommendation information from Musicmobs to suggest other bands that you may like. You can use Mobster to control iTunes, make playlists, find new music and browse your library more efficiently. Being the picky sort, I believe that the developers could simply enhance this to become a “home network environment” search -and-recommend tool. In fact, I think folks at Blinkx could marry this with their own technology and create a fantastic “music recommendation and search engine” for the home users. I will actually pay for it.
Assuming you don’t have over 10k tunes…just drag and drop the folder..iTunes will add it to the library database.
This is how I combined my GF’s library and my own into one.
*Note if the drive is removed, iTunes is NOT smart enough to mark witch songs are moved..it will mark them only if it tries to find one and it is not there.
Rob, the problems is that i have songs all over the house and since i use laptop to monitor and run itunes, that is a bit of a problem. however, i guess i should use a fixed computer as the main itunes channel?
Try Last for your âmusic recommendation and search engineâ?. It’s got a plug-in for iTunes that monitors everything you listen to and records it to your account (you’ll need one on the site).
It then auto-associates your selections along similar artists and users, a la Flickr. It’s free and it’s got a streaming capability for your (editable) profile that will stream either a set comprised of your past selections or one based on your listening profile which will expose you to stuff that others in your auto group are listening to.
http://www.last.fm
What I really miss is an app that looks at my collection, sees that I also have the complete works of Frank and can tell me the tracks I really should listen to. This used to be called a DJ back in nineteen hundred and analogue only.
If anyone knows of such an app I’d really appreciate it. I have all of Mozart but I might as well be looking into a field.
great idea pearse. like an auto deejay. i think tagging songs and ranking/rating them would be a fantastic service. i think
you might want to have a look at last.fm and audioscrobbler.com