Digital Music Nirvana
:: By Matt Wood ::
The debate over how we acquire music gets all the press these days. Napster and Kazaa are household names. Apple debuted its Music Store and Steve Jobs was on the cover of Fortune magazine with Sheryl Crow. Arguments over downloadable music, file sharing, fair use, and the role of record companies can and will go on forever. I’m not jumping into the debate now; people will get their music one way or another. But once we’ve amassed our gigabytes of MP3s, how many of us really know how to enjoy them? Follow this step-by-step guide to digital music nirvana.

Step 1: Obsessive Compulsive Order
You have to be able to find that Sly Stone track exactly when you need it, or you might as well be rewinding cassette tapes with a pencil. This kind of organization takes planning, and you need to settle on a system in the beginning to make it work. File your music any way you want (by artist, album, genre, etc), but you must be consistent so you can find the song that will save your life. The easiest way to do this is to employ a dedicated music manager like Apple’s iTunes or the MusicMatch Jukebox. These programs are only as good as the tags you put on the songs, however, so be vigilant with your naming conventions. If you don’t want to tie your music collection to one particular piece of software, you can come up with a directory structure in your file system. This takes more discipline, but if done well it can achieve the same effect as a fancy jukebox program.

Step 2: The Harvest
Everyone has a moral stance on how to get music. If you love downloading songs for free then go for it, it’s up to you. But whether you’re a Gnutella junkie or not, we all have a huge stack of CDs sitting around somewhere. Fire up your favorite music recorder and rip them. Rip every one that you ever remotely enjoyed, because chances are there is at least one song on each of them that makes you smile. Don’t worry about the filler at this point; rip the entire album (we’ll deal with the trash in Step 3). Most CD drives are fast enough now that ripping time isn’t an issue, and we all have more hard drive space than we’ll ever use.

Step 3: Pruning
Don’t listen to music that sucks. If there is a song in your collection that makes you cringe every time you hear it, delete it. This might sound obvious, but you know you have “Who Let the Dogs Out” somewhere on your hard drive. Get rid of it. Don’t hang onto something you wouldn’t want your friends to know about, or at least store it outside of your regular rotation. You may have 50 gigs of free space on your drive, but if one of those cornballs slips into a party mix you lose serious cool points.

Step 4: Make it Ubiquitous
Once you’ve amassed a quality collection, you have to make it accessible anywhere. You can have the coolest music library ever on your hard drive, but it doesn’t do you much good if you have to sit in front of your computer to listen to it. To truly enjoy your tunes, they have to be everywhere, in your stereo, in your headphones, in your car, AND in your computer:

• Invest in a portable MP3 player with a spacious hard drive. Nothing beats having a week’s worth of music in your hand.
• Connect your home stereo to your computer network. This can be as simple as running an RCA cable from Radio Shack, or as high-tech as installing a dedicated network music player like the Turtle Beach AudioTron. And learn about all the nifty Wi-Fi gadgets that can connect the dots auto-magically through the air.
• Get some use out of that CD burner to make mixes for non-MP3-enabled stone-age stereo equipment. Blank CD’s are so cheap now that you can afford to burn driving music for every day of the month.

Step 5: Random Acts of Funkiness
The best thing about having so much music in one place is playing it at random. Load up a playlist of your entire collection and let it spin. You hear songs for the first time in years. You discover the joy of a mix that includes Ol Dirty Bastard, Howlin' Wolf, Bob Marley, and Incubus. Even filler tracks from marginal albums sound good when they're sandwiched between "Freaks of the Industry" and "Santeria".

Step 6: Share the Love
Most importantly, make sure you let everyone in on your stash. A good music collection isn’t much fun if you’re the only one who gets to enjoy it. Make playlists for parties. Burn mixes for friends. And listen to it every chance you get.

Music is a bigger part of my life than ever now that I’ve digitized my collection. I can instantly enjoy thousands of songs once buried in dusty CD racks and zippered cases. Don’t let the headlines fool you. Getting your hands on music is the easy part; truly enjoying it is what matters. With today’s massive hard drives, broadband connections, and plethora of networked, portable music gizmos, everyone can be their own Casey Casem, Wolfman Jack, or Funkmaster Flex.

- matt wood

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