good music: remote, local, vinyl

I have a lot of music that I've downloaded or ripped - ALL LEGALLY. A hard drive crash could lose it all. So I store most of those 50 GBs on an external hard drive. But ... what if that were to fail?

Preserving digital music

Oboe Music Locker is an on-line service to which you can sync all of your purchased/ripped mp3s. Your music library is then remotely accessible on any computer via an internet connection.

Oboe is also a virtual storage mechanism; that's what initially caught my interest. If (when) your hard drive ever dumps, you can resync your music library back onto it.

I signed up in February and experienced a lot of problems.

I'm on-line via DSL, and the uploads took a long time, much longer than simply ripping and burning.

More vexing, each time I signed on, the Oboe sync log would revert, in a Sisyphean manner to the first album, re-syncing files that had been already uploaded. I emailed customer service, and they did respond fairly quickly. The company had installed a new client had been installed which, they told me, would prevent this from occurring.

Real life intervened and I didn't attempt to re-upload my library until just now, over the Labor Day weekend. It still is taking a painfully long time, but, so far (fingers crossed) all the music seems to be uploading. The server says there're only 148 more hours to go! [UPDATE: 2007.09.06]

Music blogger muSick in the Head tested Oboe recently. Read his review.

New D.C.-area Radio Station

I grew up listening to classical music. Then in high school I discovered WHFS, which was broadcasting out of Bethesda. (In college came jazz.) Anyone out there remember the good old days of the Psychedeli in Bethesda on Cordell Avenue? The Slickee Boys, Root Boy Slim ...

Getting nostalgic. Gotta stop!

Anyway, WHFS is long gone. But in reading muSick's blog, I found a post about a new DC area music station: WTGB- 94.7 FM, The Globe. Maybe it's not absolute cutting edge indie rock/alternative music - that's what's best via the internet is now - but it's a good, as he puts it, terrestrial choice.

Old (literally, now!) WHFS stalwarts Cerphe and Weasel are DJs at the Globe. The studios are in Silver Spring; the business office is in Lanham.

Digitizing LPs

I own over 5,000 LPs (and have inherited some wonderful original vintage Broadway show records). Most of them are languishing in storage.

When I finally dig out all those LPs (and some 45s and 78s), and my Bang and Olufsen Beogram, I'll begin digitizing the records. But just getting them out of storage ... ugh ... I haven't yet buttoned up the time or courage. I'm thinking Y2008, maybe?

There are some all-in-one units avaialable for digitizing LPs (the turntable has a USB connection into the computer), but they haven't received positive reviews. Instead, I'll use a preamp - ARTcessories USB PhonoPlus - into which I can run an analog cable from a turntable and a USB cable back into a computer.