Music Collections: How Do You Keep His and Hers Separate?

[Damion Chaplin]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.edbott.com/mediacenter/archives/music-collections-how-do-you-keep-his-and-hers-separate/' target='_blank'>http://www.edbott.com/mediacenter/archives/music-collections-how-do-you-keep-his-and-hers-separate/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"I suspect that every couple faces this problem, to one degree or another. So I thought I'd throw it open for comments and suggestions. I like my music. My wife likes hers. There's some subset of tunes that we both enjoy equally, but it's a classic Venn diagram. It's a huge collection - more than 14,000 songs in all, in who knows how many albums. And we can play any track, any album, or any custom playlist throughout the house, thanks to Windows Media Center and a couple Media Center Extenders. Unfortunately, our Media Center setup doesn't support multiple accounts, so there's no "yours, mine, and ours" option. (If you have a Roku SoundBridge or a similar device, you have the same problem.) So how to filter the list? I have a few ideas I've thought of using, all of them a little on the kludgey side..."</i><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/his_her_music.png" /> <br /><span>A Venn diagram</span><br /><br />Ed Bott poses a good question: How <i>do</i> you keep his and her tracks seperate? Personally, I've really never had this problem. My wife and I don't really feel the need to keep our music seperate. Yes it's 60GB of music, but how hard is it to just scroll down to the artist, select an album and hit play? But I know I don't necessarily represent the general population ( :wink: ) , so what about you? Do you have problems keeping you and you're mate's music seperate? What steps, if any, have you taken to deal with it?

[The Yaz]

I only recently ran into this when my family began acquiring mp3 players. I always had wma files of my music for my PocketPC. Since Christmas, my wife, daughter, and I now have ipods. All of a sudden, it was my responsibility to manage the music collection electronically.

The first thing I did was convert all of my music to mp3. Then I set about burnig every album in the house to mp3. I am fortunate that I have multiple computers in the house, so we designated home bases for each person. So my iPod is linked to my desktop in my den, my daughter to her desktop in her room, and my wife uses the family laptop. That meant that each of us can manage their own library.

The final issue was storage and accessability of the files. I originally set up a share drive from my desktop, with directories to segregate the collection (mom's music, dad's music, etc.) and then had a shared music folder for the stuff we all listened to. The only problem was 1)that my computer had to be on all of the time, 2)every time I would open up iTunes, it would try to add music to my library, and 3) I noticed that my computer would bog down and irregular intervals- Presumably from the other computers streaming music from my drive.

This has since been solved by adding a NAS setup to our network. Now each computer has access to the network drive and when anyone in our family buys music (CD or download) we all agree to let the whole family listen to it so we can decide whether it goes into an individual folder or the shared music directory.

I'm quite pleased with it.

I do not know how it works in media center, but I know I can play music within a specificied folder WMP10 so maybe you could do the same with your collection, breaking it up into hsi, hers, &amp; ours?

Hope this suggestion helps.

Steve 8)

[Jason Dunn]

I think Ed's issue may have been that his wife wanted to do an "all songs shuffle" and she didn't want to hear any of his music in the shuffle. I think the problem is more about user behaviour than a technical problem, but I'm not suggest Ed go tell his wife she's taking the wrong approach. ;-)

I think that using the star ratings is one solution, and genres is another. Ultimately this comes down to picking some metatag and using it as a filter. Too bad there isn't some sort of metatag that would help deal with this issue?

[ctmagnus]

This sounds like a case for... categories (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,8034)! ;)

Too bad you can't really apply them to the filesystem yet. :(

[Damion Chaplin]

Here would be my quick and messy solution:
(this one requires equipment not in evidence):
My music on the desktop.
Her music on the laptop.
Our music on the NAS.

Aternatively (if only one computer is available):
My music in \Music - His\
Her music in \Music - Hers\
Our music in \Music - Shared\

Then create 5 playlists:
One with \Music - His\;
one with \Music - Hers\;
one with \Music - Hers\ + \Music - Shared\;
one with \Music - His\ + \Music - Shared\;
one with \Music - His\ + \Music - Hers\ + \Music - Shared\

Then just select the playlist, hit &lt;shuffle> and &lt;play>.

[Neil Enns]

My wife and I have all our music on one share. There's no meta tagging or filtering or anything. We just listen to what we want from the big list, and that's that.

Neil

[Phoenix]

Buy separate computers.

The end.

[edbott]

Phoenix, thanks for your advice, but we already have separate computers.

The issue comes up because the Media Center library is a shared computer that ties into the living room's home entertainment system.

[Kacey Green]

NAS and meta info is the simplest way