I am not unfamiliar with the migration from one format to another. Each time I bought into the argument that the new format was better than the last and I would finally hear the music the way the artist and producer had expected.

I loved the clarity and durability of the CD format but I struggled with the idea of taking all of my music with me or even a good chuck of it necessitated having binders of discs with the accompanying cover art and liner notes.

It is not just the music that is important but also the things that go with it. Whether it is the album art that attempts to graphically connect the listener to the music or the notes booklet that contains the lyrics and words of the artists. All of these things together make up the listening experience for me.

When the iPod came along it changed music listening. At first it was just the songs. There was no way to even maintain the album art. The music became impersonal and was deduced down to a series of zeroes and ones. Before long, Apple recognized the need to have the other aspects of the music experience.

Album art was the first ancillary artifact to find its way into the equation. Sites sprung up that would allow you to search for album art and attach the graphics to the sound files through tags. Soon other tag data would follow with users having the ability to add additional information about their music.

Lyrics are a big part of the music listening experience. So many times with today’s music it is hard to decipher what the exact words are within a song. During my album and CD days I would reach for the liner notes that included the lyrics to the songs.

With digital downloads and CDs ripped into an electronic file, the liner notes have seemed to become less important; less important to everyone except the consumer. I still find myself wondering what the words are that are being sung.

The problem is, the music industry for whatever reason has decided that the lyrics are top secret and should be guarded like national secrets. They have made it nearly impossible to easily add lyrics to the music files.

Each time a new program or service attempts to make it easier for the consumer to add lyrics the music industry swoops in and shuts them down threatening legal action against the developer. I find it extremely frustrating and confusing as to why they would treat the music customer so haphazardly.

It is not like we are stealing the lyrics and reusing them in some way to cheat the artists out of their just rewards. We are simply trying to quickly and easily add lyrics to those music files that we rightfully have purchased.

There are now rumors running ramped around the Internet that the music industry is working on a model where they will charge the general public to access the lyrics. These lyrics files, which were included in the price of an album or CD suddenly, have become a hot commodity and a value add.

The customer is left frustrated having to go to numerous locations trying to find these simple lyrics files. It is decisions such as these that makes the consumer want to see the music industry fail. It is based on antiquated business models and no one seems willing or able to find a model that will work.

I have to believe that this is how the dinosaurs must have died. Their inability or unwillingness to adapt to the changing environment will ultimately kill them and the artists that they represent. On that day I will gladly dance upon their graves singing the lyrics that I had to search an hour to find and enter by hand.

Depending on what theory you adhere too, there were either outside forces at work that destroyed the environment of the dinosaur or the species simply did not react to changes going on around them and over time nature went a different direction leaving the dinosaur to die out.

During my lifetime I have seen a metamorphosis occur in the music industry. What I am about to describe will no doubt date me and give my children more than enough ammunition to accurately compare me to actually being a dinosaur.

When I was a young boy I remember listening to music on vinyl records. There were the 45’s, which contained one song per side, and then there were the 12-inch albums that would fit several songs per side. The album not only included music but also came in a very cool cardboard jacket that featured artwork on the front and informational tidbits on the back.

The problem with these vinyl albums were that they scratched easily, were susceptible to temperature changes, and were pretty much impossible to take with you to listen to away from home. The music industry adapted and the age of tape arrived. I remember my parents purchasing an 8-Track tape player for the car.

By today’s standards the 8-Track was huge. It had its own issues such as stretching when hot and who could forget the garbled sound you heard as the tape player began eating your favorite tape? I spent many a night helping my father trying to rethread an 8-Track tape hoping it wasn’t damaged too bad.

The great thing about the 8-Track was that it could contain about the same amount as an album so you could carry along the works of a specific artist. The album art was shrunk and now was the label on the 8-Track tape but it still felt like an album.

When I became a teenager the 8-Track was nearly dying. It was being replaced by an even smaller format, the cassette tape. Most of the music from my high school years was on cassette. Rather than having to deal with tracks, we dealt with sides. One side of a cassette was similar to a side on an album. The artwork was shrunk yet again and now adorned the front of a cassette case.

The cassette was the ultimate in portability especially with the invention of the Sony Walkman. You could carry along several albums worth of music and listen to it while you went about your life. The tape players were more durable than the 8-Track but still managed to eat your favorite tape at the most inappropriate time.

The digital age came to music with the invention of the CD. Now we had these little silver platters that looked like a space age version of the vinyl album but in a more compact format. The CD was amazing. It seemed relatively bullet proof (until you left it in the hot car all day). A CD could contain an entire album at very high quality. The artwork of an album again morphed and now was displayed on the front of the CD case.

I remember when the CD came out and I thought it was the ultimate delivery mechanism for music. I enjoy the album experience as you listen to a group and attempt to understand the theme the musicians were attempting to share through the body of work.

At some point though we as a society decided that albums weren’t that useful. Instead we only wanted the hit songs and viewed the others as “filler”. We began creating “Mix CDs” with just a single song from an artist. Everything became a countdown of sorts with music being scattered around.

This concept was further solidified with the invention of the MP3 player and subsequently with the on-line music store. Here you are able to buy just a single song that might be hot this week. Many of the on-line music stores still offer the album but the majority of purchases are for a single song.

The once admired cover art is now an afterthought and the notes and liner data has gone away replaced by an obscure fan site if the listener is interested.

I somehow cannot force myself to embrace this new paradigm. I still like looking at the artwork while I listen and I want to hear the whole album regardless of whether all of the songs will become hits. I want to read about the band and what they were thinking when they built the album.

Now though as recording acts become younger, the concept of the album is beginning to die out. Instead an artist bio is linked to a song or the artwork depicts the artist rather than the album. Songs are single entities designed to stand-alone.

Perhaps I’ll finally come around to this type of marketing or maybe I’ll be like the dinosaur and ignore the environmental changes and slowly fade away as a forgotten market segment.

As soon as these were released I invested in a set for travelling. I used the term invest because these headphones had a suggested retail price of nearly $200. At the time I was a struggling software developer and these were definitely more than I really could afford if I was honest with myself.

I happened to be flying quite a lot between assignments and needed something to try and eliminate the background noise that is prevalent in air travel. I was skeptical that noise cancelling technology was capable of making a difference but after the first use of these Sony headphones I was convinced.

The noise cancelling circuitry uses a single triple-A battery which is located in a compartment over the right ear. There is a switch on the ear cup that will turn the noise cancelling circuitry on and off.

I found that the noise cancelling circuits were not only good for removing the background noise away from the music but were helpful for distinguishing the voices of flight attendants away from the engine noise when I wasn’t listening to music.

Although I have now moved to the Bose QC-3 headphones there are still features of the Sony that I prefer. For one the Sony headphones will still work if the battery happens to go dead. That is not the case with the Bose which do not work at all without a battery.

There will be some who do not like the over ear style but I found the ear cups of the Sony to be quite comfortable even for extended periods. The headphones fold up slightly to store easily in a carry-on bag. Even in their folded state they do take up some room so they are not the most compact item in your bag but for what they do, I would not leave home without them.

If you find a used pair or find someone closing these out to make room for the newer Sony models I would not hesitate to recommend the Sony MDR-NC20 headphones. They definitely saved my sanity for a long time until I had children but that’s another story.

Growing up everyone heard the conspiracy theory that suggested if you played this song in reverse that the lyrics said “Turn me on, dead man” which were supposed to be clues the band was leaving that Paul McCartney had died.

I was very young when The Beatles reached their zenith of popularity. The band’s first album appeared when I was just two and they had broken up by the time that I had really cared about their music. They were a band that although were influential were something your baby-sitter listened to.

As I have gotten older I have begun to realize what an impact The Beatles had on music and culture for that matter. I’ve seen videos of the near riots that occurred when the band would arrive at a venue. It seems inconceivable in today’s society that a band would reach that level of popularity.

Over the years I have had several discussions questioning whether a band could ever have an impact the way The Beatles did. I tend to think it is impossible given the immediacy of the Internet and how news travels. Much of The Beatles impact was a result of building hype leading up to their American debut.

With avenues such as the Internet and MTV, and now YouTube it would be impossible to drive the music industry into such a frenzy as we saw in the early sixties. Further, society has changed and become much more jaded than it was at that time. The Beatles were in the musical equivalent of the perfect storm. They were in the right place at the right time and had the right members to make it work.

I don’t mean to trivialize their impact or importance to the music world. They were an amazing talent and the vocals of John Lennon and Paul McCartney sound amazing especially on the newly re-mastered CDs.

As The Beatles catalog was being re-released I wondered which albums people were most looking forward to. I decided to conduct my own non-scientific survey and asked which two albums you would most like to own if you could only have two Beatles CDs in your collection.

I quickly realized that this band meant a lot to a lot of different people. After collecting data from several social media sites I found that answer to be different for each individual. I don’t think there was a clear favorite. I had expected Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Revolver to be at the top of everyone’s list but while mentioned neither of these were a clear winner.

An underlying message that was presented was that if you were going to own only two Beatles albums you were in for a very difficult decision and ultimately whatever choice you made you would be happy with.

The re-mastered albums were very well done and the recordings sound better than they did when they were first released. My compliments to the engineers that worked on these; they did a great job. I suggest you go to your local music store and peruse the newly released albums. Pick up a couple and prepare to be transported back to a magical time in musical history.

While the iPod itself is an incredible device that has changed the way many of us listen to music, an equally important aspect of the experience is iTunes. For all that it does, iTunes is many times maligned. I am sure that if you ask any iTunes user they could produce a laundry list of features or changes they would make to this application yet very few people actually go as far as replacing iTunes with a different application for managing their music files.

I count myself among those users who sometimes have a love/hate relationship with iTunes. I absolutely love the user interface and the ease of use decisions that went into the design of this software. On the other hand I am constantly frustrated by the lack of advanced search criteria or the ability to build more intelligence into a Smartlist.

Perhaps one of the most confusing points of iTunes is the seemly haphazard way it manages your music files and the difficulty users have in migrating their iTunes library from one location to another.

Having been using iTunes for several years now and being a self-proclaimed music pack rat I have somehow accumulated a fairly sizable music library consisting of roughly 12,500 individual songs.

It’s not just the sheer number of music tracks that is alarming to me. It is also the fact that I have spent countless hours managing the data associated with each song. I suffer from some sort of personality defect which causes me to spend enormous amounts of time making sure each track has as much associated information as possible such as composer, lyrics, album art, etc.

Given the amount of time I have spent making sure each track has the most accurate data possible you can imagine my nervousness when it came time to migrate my iTunes library from one computer to another.

I initially made a fairly naïve assumption that I could just copy the music files from one computer to another and all of my data would magically appear including playlists, track play counts, and track ratings. When I copied the files and opened iTunes on the new computer I nearly fainted when I saw this data had all disappeared. This was clearly unacceptable and I began searching for a solution that would allow me to successfully migrate iTunes from one computer to another. What I have come up with is a workflow that works for me. I am sure there are several ways to solve this issue but this one worked for me so I thought I would share it in case others find themselves in a similar dilemma.

The first step I took was to set a few preferences in the iTunes located on the computer I was migrating from. If you are fortunate enough to have all of your music located in a single location; I want to congratulate you. Unfortunately for many of us long-time users the music location has changed through the years and because of this we have music spread across our computer landscapes.

One of the great things about iTunes is that it will keep track of where your music is located. It stores the file location for each of the tracks so when you click on a song it will know exactly where to find that file to begin playing it. The key to migrating to a new computer though is to gather all of this music together through a sort of an iTunes cattle drive.

Within the iTunes preferences screen under the Advanced tab are two check boxes that need to be selected. “Keep iTunes Music folder organized” will allow iTunes to create folder structure under your iTunes Music folder by artist and album folders and will go a long ways to making the migration easier. The second preference, “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library” will allow iTunes to move your music files into the iTunes Music folder thereby neatly putting all of your music in a single place for migration. The key to both of these of course is having accurate data in your iTunes library for artist and album otherwise the files will be consolidated but into a filing system that might be difficult for you to find anything later.

Once you have set both of these check boxes you are ready for iTunes to do some heavy lifting. Hidden under the File/Library menu in iTunes is a gem named simply “Consolidate Library”. What this option does is essentially consolidate all of the files listed in your iTunes library into the iTunes Music folder as defined in the iTunes preferences. It will copy the files from their current location into the iTunes Music folder renaming them with the track name and organizing them into a folder structure of ARTIST\ALBUM. Depending on how large your iTunes library is, this step could take a while as it moves all of your songs to a single location. It should also be noted that you need to make sure you have adequate space on the drive where your iTunes Music folder is located.

Once the Consolidate Library option has completed running, your iTunes music files will all be located in the iTunes Music folder ready for migration. You will then need to copy the iTunes Music folder contents from the old computer to the new computer. I used a portable external hard drive to move all of my music. I simply copied the iTunes Music folder to the drive then disconnected the drive and attached it to the new computer and copied the folder to its new location.

Merely copying the files from one computer to another is not enough. If you stopped here the music files would be on the new computer but the new iTunes may not be able to find them and even if it did you would lose ratings and play counts at a minimum.

Going back to the computer you are migrating from, launch iTunes. Under the File/Library menu you will find an entry called “Export Library”. This will create an XML file with all of the information iTunes knows about your music files. This is a key piece that we need to take with us to the new computer. The XML file that is created will have the song information but will be pointing to the file locations on the old computer. We need to edit this file to tell iTunes where to find the songs on the new computer.

An XML file can be opened in any text editor such as TextEdit or TextWrangler. Opening the XML file you will notice an entry for each song file that shows its location. Using the global search and replace function of your text editor, change the disk and folder names from the old system to the new location on your new computer. Once the replacement is completed; save the XML file and transfer it to the new computer.

On the new computer open iTunes and go to the Preferences screen. Under the Advanced tab enter the location where you want your new iTunes Music folder to reside. While on that screen make sure that “Keep iTunes Music folder organized” and “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library” are both checked.

The next step is to actually import the XML file that we created above. It took me quite a while to figure this part out as it was not as logical as I would have expected. Under the File/Library menu you will find a menu option called “Import Playlist”. I know what you are thinking, we are not importing playlists, we are importing an XML file. Believe me, I didn’t think that was right either but you have to trust me on this.

In the dialog box select the XML that you modified with the new file location and let iTunes do its thing. It will parse the information contained in the XML file and in the end you should see all of your songs listed in the library with their associated ratings, play counts, and other data.

Once done, you should probably review your library and remove any redundant files. I haven’t had a problem with duplicates showing up in this process but if you had multiple copies of some of your music files it could have introduced duplicates during the library consolidation step.

That’s it; you should now have all of your music files with their associated meta data on your new computer and be ready to once again enjoy your music. These steps should work regardless of whether you are transferring your library between two PCs, two Macs, or between PC and Mac. The only differences may be where you find the iTunes preferences. Good luck, hopefully this will make your iTunes transfer less painful and reduce the level of stress in your life.

I had an 8-Track recorder for recording music and I own a Sony Betamax VCR because the technology was better than VHS. Not all my choices were wrongly placed. I have one of the early Blu-Ray players as I felt that technology had more capabilities than what HD-DVD could provide. I realized early on the power of digital photography and have a fairly large collection of digital cameras of various sizes and capabilities. I could make a nearly endless list of technology and gadgets that I have accumulated over the years. A few weeks back I began going through the stack of hardware I have accumulated trying to decide how to dispose of some of these relics. As I looked at each device I tried to categorize it. What I found was that I have an abundance of devices dealing with audio. These included phonographs, 8-Track players, cassette recorders, Walkmans, Mini-Disc players, Compact Disc players, and now several generations of iPods from the original all the way up to the latest iPod Touch.
I had not realized how important music had been in my life nor had I realized how many different formats I had migrated from to maintain my music collection. I initially had a collection of vinyl albums but those were migrated to 8-Track tapes due to the ease with which those could be portable. Those 8-Track tapes were in turn repurchased or migrated to cassette tapes to allow further mobility and to reduce storage space. My cassette collection turned into compact discs again reducing storage but more importantly to increase quality. This format put my music into a digital format and gave me a fairly sturdy medium to keep and maintain. From the CDs I would create Mini-Disc recordings to take with me and later would rip the songs into a format that could be transmitted to my iPod. To me compact disc was the appropriate trade-off between quality and storage. As iTunes began to grow and the MP3 format proliferated I refused to move to a totally electronic model. I didn’t care much for the quality of MP3 sound. Its lossy format degraded the sound to the point that I didn’t care for it at all. I chose instead to migrate my music to a lossless format such as Apple Lossless MP4, APE, or Windows Media Player lossless. None of electronic outlets were willing to provide this level of quality so I continued to purchase compact discs. I honestly don’t remember the last time I put a CD in my stereo system as a playback mechanism. Mostly I buy the CD then rip it into a lossless file and then store the CD for safe keeping. This has worked out quite well and I am content with the workflow I have developed.
Lately I have noticed that the CD and music sections of most major stores have begun to shrink. Beyond a few new releases the number of compact discs has begun to diminish. I still have a few older format media that I would like to move to CD and I am not having a harder time finding these as a CD. I can find the electronic MP3 songs but not a CD pressing of the album. I’m ok with technological shifts as long as it brings an increase to quality or somehow edifies my way of life but when technology changes for the sake of reducing the quality of a product I am not happy. Lately I have begun channeling my grandfather. Each time one of my kids comes to me with a new MP3 file they have downloaded that sounds muddled and of low quality I find myself starting sentences just like my grandfather, “Back in my day…” followed by a long explanation of how audio quality has declined since the invention of the CD. The next thing you know I’ll be telling stories about having to walk 20 miles to school in the snow and how we had to eat dirt because we couldn’t afford anything else. The most telling sign happened with my daughter Mallorie who at 22 is now feeling old. For the first time in her life she said, “back in my day Pluto was a planet” whereby I responded, “back in my day Pluto was a dog”. I guess everything is relative. I’m just not sure I am ready for my music to take a step back from a quality perspective. I’ll stick with the compact disc until someone can convince me that they can provide a high-quality lossless file in downloadable electronic format. Until then don’t take away my CDs sonny!