At some point I will summarize my home audio set-up that I use to manage the massive amount of digital files I have accumulated — a collection that, naturally, keeps on growing. The system I’ve landed on is both complicated and not complicated, a contradictory scenario that came to a head this weekend when I tried — and, I’ll clarify in advance, succeeded — to slot a second external hard drive alongside the initial one I plugged into my Mac Mini when I first got this thing running.
However, the process was not without its complications, including a cloud back-up error I have yet to sort out, a reminder of how not intuitive the interface is for the software I use to run the system, a fresh experience of what a mess digital files are in general (while Bandcamp automatically tidies up metadata, music publicists often leave the fields blank), a morass of log-ins and passwords, a confusion of apps with similar names yet different capabilities, and other snafus and inadequacies that display just how far we, in our collective popular culture, have strayed from the relative simplicity of iTunes at its height — and of course before that the world of physical media and radio.
At one point I was tagging some wav files and sorting out the respective cover art, and I found myself quietly cursing the time it was taking to do this and the time it had taken to download the files in the first place and then the time it took for the metadata-sorted files to transmit to the new hard drive, and the time it took the software to register the arrival of new files. All of which was about two minutes, maybe three.
And then I thought of walking the half-mile-plus in my teens from home to the record store, only to find out they hadn’t even heard of the album I’d just heard on the radio and wanted a copy of. And around the same time: taking the bus for an hour to the mall to purchase a new album by a favorite band, and then making the return trip by bus, only to find out that the record was horrible. Or: listening to a different brand new LP, and then dropping it before even getting to hear the B-side, and watching the vinyl slide along the tile floor and becoming ruined in the process.
So, maybe three minutes isn’t so bad. But then I think: at best that’s only 20 albums per hour. And then I think: “only” 20 albums per hour? It’s an embarrassment of riches, and I should recognize it as such.