How do you avoid buying CD's you already have?

1 minute ago, davide256 said:

Reaching the library size where I find myself occasionally buying (used) CD's of material I already have. I'm wondering if there is a good inventory

program out there I could run against my FLAC music library and check against the results on my iPhone when out shopping?

All my CDs are in MPD, and I wrote a shell script to extract the album names from the MPD database to a text file. I upload the text file to my Google drive so I can search it via my phone when I’m out shopping for CDs.

1 hour ago, davide256 said:

Reaching the library size where I find myself occasionally buying (used) CD's of material I already have. I'm wondering if there is a good inventory

program out there I could run against my FLAC music library and check against the results on my iPhone when out shopping?

I use JRiver Media Center to  access and play my library remotely.  It's easy to check whether I already have something I'm contemplating buying as a CD.

9 hours ago, Mayfair said:

I use JRiver Media Center to  access and play my library remotely.  It's easy to check whether I already have something I'm contemplating buying as a CD.

mmm, don't think Roon does this... unless I go to the complexity of adding VPN remote connection  for my home network over the internet. And cell phone data bandwidth can be unpredictable. I like  @Richard Dale's approach, but would want a solution that required no script knowledge and allowed the list to be locally

searchable on a cell phone

One of the reasons I keep JRiver as my back-up player is for this purpose:

1 I have a smart playlist in JRiver called All My Music.

2 I use the ''export playlist'' option in JRiver to generate a csv file which I store in the cloud for easy access anywhere.

I run an export every time I add a purchase in case I should ever need some supporting evidence for insurance purposes if I suffered a catastrophic loss.

15 minutes ago, church_mouse said:

One of the reasons I keep JRiver as my back-up player is for this purpose:

 

1 I have a smart playlist in JRiver called All My Music.

2 I use the ''export playlist'' option in JRiver to generate a csv file which I store in the cloud for easy access anywhere.

 

I run an export every time I add a purchase in case I should ever need some supporting evidence for insurance purposes if I suffered a catastrophic loss.

Does the playlist contain all the tracks for all the albums? I get that out of MPD, but then I turn the full track list into just artist/album names with a script.

JRiver will allow one to restrict the output to only those fields on display or all fields held. However, I prefer to view the export in Excel and create a second one of Album and AlbumArtist.

I am sure there are better ways, but I have limited skills so I keep it simple to reduce user error!

I use a Whereisit database for all my content, with catalogues separated by content type (music, movies, ebooks). It scans hard drives, data discs, DVDs, etc and imports the content into a searchable database 

https://www.whereisit-soft.com/

So when I search my collection for an album, I get a result if I have it on CD or on files, even with LPs that I have added manually.

The content of a database can be exported to text files, which I keep on my smartphone (to use with a search in text function). But I actually no longer need that, as I've stopped going to physical stores.

The software is no longer being maintained, but it's still the best. There are clones, which are not that great (much slower scanning or searching).

I used Librarian Pro for years but it is no longer able to use Amazon's database.

iTunes is fine anyway.

You could try one of these smartphone apps?

https://www.collectorz.com/music/clz-music

1 hour ago, semente said:

I used Librarian Pro for years but it is no longer able to use Amazon's database.

iTunes is fine anyway.

 

You could try one of these smartphone apps?

 

https://www.collectorz.com/music/clz-music

Much closer! I'd have to spend a few hours scanning the two boxes of CD's I've stored but it would also address  version questions (original vs later performance).

Does have a subscription cost, about $40/year for PC and mobile app

On 3/18/2020 at 6:09 PM, davide256 said:

Reaching the library size where I find myself occasionally buying (used) CD's of material I already have. I'm wondering if there is a good inventory

program out there I could run against my FLAC music library and check against the results on my iPhone when out shopping?

There was at least 1 thread here a year or 2 ago discussing how to set up a database for a music library. I've not been able to find it in the old Computer Audiophile threads so I'll recap. I continue to use iTunes for curating my library as it is mature and meets all my needs. I use the following simple, free process:

1) In iTunes, setup a playlist for all the tracks in the library - for a large library do this for each genre to keep the size manageable.

2) Set up the view options for this playlist so only those required for the database are visible, probably Album and Artist (or Album artist).

3) Click on a row and select all, and copy this.

4) In Excel, open a new worksheet, highlight the first cell and paste the data copied in iTunes.

5) Delete the first column (the track title)

6) Insert a header row before the first music record e.g. Album in col.1 and Artist in col.2 if that's how you copied the data.

7) Select all the records and use the advanced filter command (Data>Filter>Advance Filter) and check the 'Unique records only' box. Click 'OK'. Copy the resulting columns to a new worksheet (as the repeated rows have only been hidden not deleted) and edit this if required.

This database can be used direct or exported to a mobile device. To manage this database I use Tap Forms Mac on an iPhone, iPad and iMac with syncing via dropbox. I also keep a separate list of Album 'wants' in a similar format.

2 hours ago, DavidL said:

 

There was at least 1 thread here a year or 2 ago discussing how to set up a database for a music library. I've not been able to find it in the old Computer Audiophile threads so I'll recap. I continue to use iTunes for curating my library as it is mature and meets all my needs. I use the following simple, free process:

 

1) In iTunes, setup a playlist for all the tracks in the library - for a large library do this for each genre to keep the size manageable.

 

2) Set up the view options for this playlist so only those required for the database are visible, probably Album and Artist (or Album artist).

 

3) Click on a row and select all, and copy this.

 

4) In Excel, open a new worksheet, highlight the first cell and paste the data copied in iTunes.

 

5) Delete the first column (the track title)

 

6) Insert a header row before the first music record e.g. Album in col.1 and Artist in col.2 if that's how you copied the data.

 

7) Select all the records and use the advanced filter command (Data>Filter>Advance Filter) and check the 'Unique records only' box. Click 'OK'. Copy the resulting columns to a new worksheet (as the repeated rows have only been hidden not deleted) and edit this if required.

 

This database can be used direct or exported to a mobile device. To manage this database I use Tap Forms Mac on an iPhone, iPad and iMac with syncing via dropbox. I also keep a separate list of Album 'wants' in a similar format.

I actually get the list of my albums out of MPD on Linux. But I've just been playing with some AppleScript to extract albums from an iTunes collection in a text file. This a script called 'extract_albums.applescript':

#!/usr/bin/osascript

tell application "iTunes"
  activate
  set results to (every file track of playlist "Library")
  repeat with aTrack in results
    log "Artist: " &(get artist of aTrack) & " Album: " & (get album of aTrack)
  end repeat
end tell

Open the terminal app, run the script on the command line like this:

# Make the script executable
$ chmod +x extract_albums.applescript

# Write the sorted list of artists and their albums to stdout
$ ./extract_albums.applescript 2>&1 | sort -u

# Write the list of albums to a text file that you can upload to your phone
$ ./extract_albums.applescript 2>&1 | sort -u > my_albums.txt

I've been using a program called CATraxx (Windows only) to catalog all CDs, LPs, downloads.  I mail myself a pdf periodically so I have it with me when I shopping at stores, flea markets, etc.

The developer stopped updating it many years ago so am hoping that the last version continues working in future versions of Windows!

Not sure what I'll do once it does.  I don't have the technical skills to convert the numerous tables and links into an even simple version of relational database on Access.

On 3/19/2020 at 1:17 AM, davide256 said:

mmm, don't think Roon does this.

The Roon website says somewhere that it’s in development for future implementation.  I also use JRiver for remote streaming, both via JRemote and Panel, depending on which mobile device is handy at the time.  
 

The only problem with relying on my file lists to know if I already have something is that about 1% of my thousands of rips didn’t end up detectable by JRiver (or Roon) because of tag or typo issues.  I’ve found and fixed some, but others ended up as “track X” etc in folders with weird names like “-“.  So I know I have some rips that haven’t yet made it to prime time.

This one is easy. I stopped buying CD's😉

Now that I have Roon with Qobuz I have a world of new music that I will never,ever work through in my lifetime. I still have close to 1000 albums in Roon itself but I now mostly explore Qobuz rather than just replaying my very small handful of favorite CD's for the 100th time. After looking through all of my physical CDs and verifying my several backups in multiple locations I tossed them. I did not sell them or donate them since I still have the files. I do still need to arrange for an off-site backup.

This was a very freeing experience.

Paul who is "Aging in Place"

On 3/26/2020 at 2:43 AM, stefano_mbp said:

Maybe not the most “clean” solution but ...

if you could read your music library with an UPNP server like MinimServer then you could use Lumïn app on your iPhone or iPad to search for you your music even if you are outside.

Afaik Lumïn app is the only one app that use an internal db and this allow to search by artist, album, composer, last added,genre. The navigation by “folder” (actually by tags) is the only one that needs a reachable server to work.

In the attached screenshot you can see my server offline but I can search for composers (the nib icon selected)

... and you don’t need to scan your cds and it is all free

This is what I do with my Synology NAS.  Can access files from my phone anywhere with a signal. 

On 3/18/2020 at 7:09 PM, davide256 said:

Reaching the library size where I find myself occasionally buying (used) CD's of material I already have. I'm wondering if there is a good inventory

program out there I could run against my FLAC music library and check against the results on my iPhone when out shopping?

One simple solution is to synchronize your music folders to a cloud storage, but without the tracks (if you don't want to pay for all the storage). 

I use Google Drive, and can easily search for albums based on the folder name. Google Drive also automatically applies OCR to images and pdfs, extending search possibilities. 

Another simple solution is to use a music tagging application to export  information to a file. You can then sync that (or those) file to cloud storage. You'll find plenty of tagging apps that can generate a descriptive text file (I use MP3Tag on Windows). 

On 3/18/2020 at 2:09 PM, davide256 said:

Reaching the library size where I find myself occasionally buying (used) CD's of material I already have. I'm wondering if there is a good inventory

program out there I could run against my FLAC music library and check against the results on my iPhone when out shopping?

I know, I'm a little late in responding. 

You can create your CD inventory in Discogs (or Musicbrainz).  Then you can access it on your phone assuming you have a data or wi-fi connection.

3 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

I know, I'm a little late in responding. 

 

You can create your CD inventory in Discogs (or Musicbrainz).  Then you can access it on your phone assuming you have a data or wi-fi connection.

Appreciate the thought, think I have my vinyl catalogued there already. With 900 CD’s, I wonder if Discogs supports a bar code scanner for CD info capture?

1 hour ago, davide256 said:

I wonder if Discogs supports a bar code scanner for CD info capture?

You could probably download a barcode scan app like barcodetopc to your phone and use a code search like barcodelookup.com to populate your list. Then you could just look at your list on your phone to see if you already have whatever you’ve found before buying it.

1 hour ago, bluesman said:

You could probably download a barcode scan app like barcodetopc to your phone and use a code search like barcodelookup.com to populate your list. Then you could just look at your list on your phone to see if you already have whatever you’ve found before buying it.

Thanks! Its amazing how many re-releases there are with classical, they can fool you if you don't have complete info at hand.

The Discogs app does allow you to scan the barcode.  It’s very easy to use.

15 hours ago, jarrod2750 said:

The Discogs app does allow you to scan the barcode.  It’s very easy to use.

Thanks! Just tested after downloading the iOS app, all I had to do was say yes for camera permission when first clicking the barcode icon

in search window and it recognized the CD. Now I just have to spend time scanning my stored CD's

Discogs delivers what I needed!!!

+1 for Discogs. If you buy stuff through Discogs, I believe this is an option to auto add it to your list.