Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Clean Up Your Music Collection


Tips for Tuesday


This may be aging myself, but how many of you have vinyl albums, 8-track tapes, cassette tapes or CDs full of music in your home?  You've purchased some and you've made your own mixes.  Some are duplicates on different media, but others are unique.  How do you decide what to keep and what to get rid of? 

The first question to ask is whether or not you have the right player for the music.  Do you still have a turntable for your albums?  Do you have a working cassette player?  If not, then donate the music, or take them to a used book store like Half Price Books where you may get some money for them. 

Next, look at what you have left.  Do you have the same albums on different media?  Keep only one copy.  Then look at the artists and titles.  Are there any duplicates in the same medium?  Do you have all of the albums by one artist, and also their "Greatest Hits" album?  Why do you need both, since they have the same songs?  This goes for "Live" recordings, too.  You probably have all those songs on other albums.

Once you have sorted everything you are going to keep, convert them into MP3 files.  Even if you don't have an MP3 player, chances are your phone or computer can hold these files and act as a player.  You can then sort your music into playlists—holiday, genre, tempo, etc.  You may like certain songs to play while walking or exercising.    Keep these in a separate playlists. 

Make backup copies of all your files.  You can then donate or sell the original media, freeing up space in your home.

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