I’m getting a late start on today’s blog post, because I spent the morning trying to move more of my music collection from my old computer. It mostly went smoothly, until I got to Sting. I have tons of music by Sting, and that seemed to complicate matters a lot. I have multiple copies of several albums, along with different versions of the same albums. I kept trying to put them on my external hard drive, so they could be moved, only to find that either the albums didn’t make it onto the drive, or I got partial albums.
Making matters worse was the fact that every time I tried to move the damned files, duplicates were generated on the old computer. And even then, it was a crap shoot as to whether or not they’d successfully migrate to the hard drive, even when I tried to check.
I know this is a first world problem, but moving these files is legitimately a real pain in the ass. I have to get up from my chair to go to the other computer, which doesn’t have a chair. Then I stand there and wait for the colorful wheel to stop spinning so things won’t be frozen. After awhile, I got the bright idea to delete some of the duplicate files, only to find that I accidentally permanently erased a few of them.
iTunes won’t let me replace the lost tracks, because they’re already purchased. Amazon won’t let me buy MP3 albums here, because I have a US based credit card, but I live in the German market. And I have a US Apple account, so I can’t buy from the German store. Even if I wanted to do that, I’d still have the credit card issue. Sometimes, I can use PayPal to get around that kind of stuff, but it was all just getting way too annoying and complicated. And sometimes there are other editions of an album available that can be purchased, but there I was no such luck for the album I messed up today. So I ended up buying an actual CD so I can manually replace the lost files.
Hopefully, my Superdrive CD-ROM peripheral will still work properly. I’m not sure if I managed to move everything else I have by Sting today, but I simply had to quit trying. My mood was progressively getting worse by the minute.
The good news is, I don’t have too much further to go in order to be done with this “project”. I managed to get to the Ts, my trials with Sting notwithstanding. So, hopefully, I will be finished with moving my music tomorrow. Then I can make new playlists. I might have said “fuck it” regarding Sting, but he happens to be a big favorite of mine. I have some pretty great stuff by him, some of which is rare. I’m not willing to sacrifice a thing.
I’m sure I could probably send Apple a note and see if they might make it possible to download those files again on the new computer. However, as much as I’d like to be practical and save some money, my concern is that it would take too much time and effort to deal with customer service.
You know… as much as I like how easy and convenient it is to download music, and as nice as it is not to have to find places for physical CDs, I will say that using CDs was a lot easier. Plus, once you own the CD, you have the music for as long as the CD lasts. I don’t want to join Apple or Amazon Music, because I don’t want to rent my music. Plus, I don’t want them fucking up or with the files I have. Some of my most cherished MP3s date back to Napster circa 2000.
So anyway… because of this project, I don’t have anything else to write about today. Sorry to have wasted your time. 😉 Maybe I could rant about how it’s 2023, and I’m having to waste so much time on this shit. Why wasn’t all of this automatically moved on the cloud? iTunes/Apple Music really sucks on many levels for multiple reasons.
But there are lots of other useful posts in this blog… and other blogs on the Information Superhighway. I now feel the overwhelming urge to go lie down somewhere and try to decompress. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll be back with something more exciting to share.
As an Amazon Music subscriber and CD collector, I agree when you say that there are upsides and downsides to both media. I won’t repeat what you said about the pros and cons; it’s not necessary.
I will point out that the one thing I dislike about Amazon Music is when you get a free digital copy of a CD album when you purchase the latter, you are never sure what the music label will do with the content on your digital album. In the case of Sony Classical’s 1999 “John Williams: Greatest Hits 1969-1999,” I once had all 28 tracks present on compact disc in my digital copy, which I got gratis when I bought a replacement for my 1999 CD a few years ago. A couple of years ago, though, I noticed that tracks were vanishing from the Amazon Music app. I didn’t delete them, nor does anyone here mess with my PC. But now, in 2023, I only have 25 tracks on Amazon Music, while the two-CD set still has 28.
It is, as you say, a “first world problem,” and since I do have the CD set, it’s not a big deal. But what if I had only purchased the MP3 album?
I hope the rest of your day is less vexing, and that you did, indeed, go and decompress.
Yeah. I will see if I can end this ordeal tomorrow.
Best of luck, and may the ordeal end with a satisfactory conclusion!
Thanks. It’s ridiculous that this annoys me as much as it does. There was a time when I regularly went without electricity, for God’s sake. I think going through that, honestly, has made me less tolerant.