Tone said:
Please, tell me something. What exactly is so good about this program?
I've tried it, and I simply cannot find whatever makes people praise it so.
Did you try the search feature, all tabs?
What exactly can you *do* with MAC that is so fantastic? I just
don't get it. What does people need it for? Maybe I simply have
radically different needs than everyone else when it comes to
organizing music?
Well I have a collection of 15,000+ files on 60GB, spread over two hard disks
and 70-some data CDs. Some of it dates from the days of Napster and AG. MAC
allows me to stay on top of it, to find what I want easily, to keep it up to
date, etc.
Perhaps I'll describe what I use it for: I consider myself as an ignoramus in
music. Or rather, someone who knows some tiny islands in an immense world of
diversity, and who is also very picky in what he likes.
I am discovering new artists all the time ("new" to me, that is. In fact many
are from the 50s and 60s). The vast majority of what I discover I dislike more
or less strongly, prolly up to 99%. But then within the remaining 1% there are
some very nice songs, and a minuscule proportion of gems that give me immense
pleasure.
I use MAC for 2 main purposes:
- to keep track of what I have liked or disliked and to remember if I want to
d/l more of the same artist/band in the future,
- to keep tabs on what I liked and organize it by genre, language, etc. To be
able to find what I want for the mood of the moment, and to actually locate
it on the disk subdirs or CDs.
With MAC, and with my volume-naming "system" of sorts, I know exactly what I
have, what I liked (and where it is), what I disliked and will avoid, and which
artists to look out for.
And of course, to top it all, I like the interface of MAC. It is clear, simple,
effective, efficient. Works the way I expect it to.
Now, I am not necessarily the average music fan. My taste is primarily in folk,
folklore, classical and jazz. If I were a kid trying to keep up with the latest
fad hit of the week, MAC might not work as well.
I am still struggling a little bit with the organization of the Jazz part of the
collection, because I don't know well enough the sub-genres. Ofc no tool is
going to supply this understanding in my stead.
The rest of the tools I use are Winamp for playing, MP3tagStudio for the tagging
(OT here, adware/$ware), and 1-4a Rename. I enjoy the mp3s either directly on my
home PC, or in the living room off a 20-GB Archos Jukebox mp3-player.
I am happy with this set-up. YMMV.
BTW, I believe that the key to enjoying MP3s is a good organization system that
matches one's own taste and ways of thinking. Only then can software tools be
really helpful to support it. They can not replace our "knowing what we want".
How did I write such a long post? Oh well.
HTH,
DAN
