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Comment by skrrtww | Hacker News Reader

I've had the same iTunes (now Music.app) library since 2004, with only one botched library migration with an iTunes update in like 2013. It has 40,000 MP3s or so. I still keep it on my boot drive too.

It's a treasure. I understand why most people don't do this, but I will probably forever.

A really significant amount of it isn't otherwise available on streaming services. While I'm an Apple Music subscriber, I still acquire my own mp3s for most of the new music I listen to.

iCloud Music Library is an immense value here as well. Rarely it will sync the wrong version of something in my library, but usually it's on the money. The fact that it doesn't cost anything extra on top of an Apple Music subscription is a huge boon, and it doesn't count against my iCloud data either.

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I’m similar to you. I started ripping my CD collection to mp3s around 2002, and I have them all on my boot disk and synced to both Dropbox and an external drive for backup.

Many of those CDs, which I started buying in 1986, are not available on streaming services. Over the years I have accumulated a lot of other nonstreamed music, including radio programs I’ve recorded, live music downloaded from the Internet Archive, purchased music from Bandcamp and elsewhere, and music I composed and performed myself for my own enjoyment.

It’s a bit obsessive, I admit, and the chances that my heirs will find the files and want to preserve them after I’m gone are slim. But I am happy I have them now.

I'm in the same boat as you, even with a botched migration about 12-14 years ago and am really passionate about this stance. I've lately been getting further enjoyment from thrifting CDs and ripping FLAC upgraded tracks to my library, overwriting old 128kb/s fuzz. Actually have been at this for about 3 years now and around 1200 ripped. I try now to only listen to those albums + bandcamp, etc purchases where possible.

At one point, probably when I got a new computer, I spent a bunch of time cleaning out both music and photo libraries. Things had just gotten into a real mess over time with various merges, software changes, etc. to get the stuff I actually care about in some semblance of order. At some point, I probably need to do another pass but it hasn't been a priority.

I occasionally wonder, if I should just puchase 100-200 mainstream songs that I don't actually own--the money is trivial. But I generally end up at the point that these are not the sort of music I'd likely ever have trouble purchasing if I wanted to.

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