Dropbox is a web service that I’ve recently fallen in love with. In the past I’ve used an external hard drive to manually backup my music collection (my most prized possession) about once a month. Then I’d copy all the new files manually over to my laptop to keep things in sync. But no more!
1) I Installed the app on my desktop (PC) and laptop (Mac).
2) I deleted my music collection from my laptop (the lesser up to date version of the two)
3) I setup a shared folder called Music within my Dropbox
4) I moved all my music on my PC into this folder
5) A few days later I had my entire music collection on my PC, Mac, and a copy backed up to the Web!
Best part is there is no more effort after this. When I download a new album from eMusic on my laptop, it instantly copies over to my desktop and visa versa. And the tragic day when both machines die a horrible death, I’ll still have a copy backed up to the web. Viva la Dropbox!
You can try it out with 2GB of storage for free, or pay $10/month for 50GB of storage. To me this is a small price to pay to never have to worry about losing my precious music collection again.
I’d love to hear what you guys think of this or what methods you’ve concocted to keep your treasures safe 🙂
Update: For those who are willing to give up syncing across computers for unlimited storage, check out Backblaze.
I saw them demoing at TC50 and thought that was great. Signed up for a beta but somehow never really checked it out. Meanwhile I heard only good things about it from friends and now you, guess I’ll need to dig into this.
Thanks for the reminder, definitely sounds interesting.
Hope you’re well.
David
December 5, 2008 1:05 pm
Yeah, that’s cool and all, but at the end of the day, digital music is virtually on demand now anyway. I probably listen to Hype Machine (irony!) more than I do my own iTunes collection. When at home, listen to vinyl.
December 5, 2008 1:38 pm
this is totally lame, but since my laptop has sooo little memory, i just copy my ipods entire library onto my laptop every now and then. yes, i know it is impossible to tell which is which due to apple’s random labeling of the songs, but i like to pick and guess. and if i really need a specific track, i come here 🙂 xxx
December 5, 2008 6:51 pm
I use amazon S3 + JungleDisk for my important backups. I use dropbox primarily for, um, ‘sharing’ with friends…
December 6, 2008 5:57 pm
I’ve used Dropbox for some time now and it’s great! I haven’t thought about using it as a backup tool for music, but I’m considering it now… So far my Dropbox has only been used for school related documents, but music would be a bit more exciting, right?
December 7, 2008 3:48 pm
I use MP3 Tunes music locker – only works for music rather than any other kind of files, but it’s great for keeping iTunes in sync at both home and work in an effortless way. It also lets me get to my music collection from my Squeezebox without having to turn on my PC.
December 8, 2008 6:13 am
I use CDs! 🙂
when you think about it, it does seem insane all these people the world over all with their own identical copies of the same mp3s. Would it make more sense to store them in one place and stream as needed?
PS Hanui, if you’re using Windows, there’s a way in Windows Explorer to display the track name and artist. I call it the “Music View” but the only place I’ve seen it is under My Documents/My Music, so you could try copying your folder in there.
December 8, 2008 12:35 pm
I love Dropbox. I recommend it to everyone I know as the easiest and best way to keep files synced between home and work.
That’s a great idea for the music library, but the problem is that Dropbox has a 2 GB limit and my library is at about 140 GB. I tried using Mozy to backup my whole library, but it was taking an extremely long time, so I still don’t have an online backup of my drive. I think I’ll look into Duncan’s recommendation of Amazon S3.
December 10, 2008 9:46 am
I have an old mac so use and old operating system (10.3.9) which by the looks of things is too old for Dropbox. Shame, because I it looks like the best thing out there for what I want to use it for.
Any ideas how to get round my little problem or am I just doomed to use inferior software for the rest of my [computers] life?
If so can anyone recommend a better/as straight forward/as organised way to store music and e-mail people specific tracks?
December 10, 2008 7:17 pm
JungleDisk is a more ‘secure’ and safety ‘long-term option’ compared to Dropbox ONLY if you’re anal about encryption and ensuring your files will always be there on the server.
Dropbox is fantastic, don’t get me wrong. It’s absolutely freaking amazing and its versioning feature, where it saves a different version if the file was changed remotely while you were working on it, is brilliant.
But let’s say they, hopefully not, they go out of business. What happens to your files, etc, etc? This is a startup and Amazon’s S3 is run by, yeah, Amazon.
JungleDisk with the S3 service is kinda a safety precaution on that. And your the only one who sees your files, and its encrypted. I’m not sure how that works with Dropbox.
Anyhows, it’s a matter of preference for what you want. But Dropbox is definitely one of my top web apps of 08. I use it everyday and recommend it to all my colleagues.
Just responding to that Jungledisk vs Dropbox comment.
December 11, 2008 4:09 am
@r Dropbox files are stored on Amazon S3 too, but under their account not your own.
December 12, 2008 4:15 am
I love it!!! I was previously using SoundCloud but it turned out to be a pain because you can only upload 5 files per month with the free version (booo!!!) Luckily, I found this post and tried it out the second I saw it. I’m in love…my favorite feature so far is that you can send a link to someone so they can just grab the file…meaning they don’t have to have a drop box account to gain access to your file. Whereas SoundCloud forced users to sign up to gain access. The only thing I loved about soundCloud was that you could leave notes at specific times on a track (very useful feature for producers) but other than that I wasn’t too happy. Anyways….Thank You Drop Box!!!
December 14, 2008 12:54 pm
Sounds neat. What I’ve been using extensively as of late is Microsoft’s Mesh service (www.mesh.com). They’re promising all sorts of neat goodies coming up, and I’m already liking it (not an MS whore by any means – a Mac user here, in fact). They’ve recently released a Mac client too, as promised which is totally unpredictable for MS right there, so it’s looking like a promising start.
December 16, 2008 1:55 pm
um, i have a 250gb external HD i got on black friday for $60. It has a sync option and I sync my music collection with it once a month.
That’s about it. Dropbox should be cheaper if they want to reel me in.
December 16, 2008 4:39 pm
I actually like http://drop.io for sharing music, as it lets you set permissions on who is allowed to view and download the files, as well as giving you a good amount of space per ‘drop’; enough for a whole album, even.
December 19, 2008 8:42 pm
This post reads like an ad, not a real post.
What serious music fan needs a backup for *only* 2 GB of music?
December 23, 2008 2:20 pm
need a lot more than 50gb
January 2, 2009 11:32 am
Interesting… I’ve been looking for something to keep my music collection backed up. — I’ll check this out, asap 🙂
January 3, 2009 12:10 am
@Darren: Yes, but the thing is that with Jungle Disk you can have as much space as you want. So you pay only once.
January 4, 2009 11:52 pm
I use Mozy.com’s service. It’s $6 a month if you prepay and lets you automatically sync/backup all your pictures AND your music. I have 80GB of music (more than the amount allowed on Dropbox) and it sync’s every night without my prompting. If I delete a file by mistake it keeps it on the server anyway for 30 days.
Mac and PC clients are available. The catch I see is that you can’t back up mounted drives (i.e. if you keep all your media on an attached USB drive, it won’t back THAT up).
January 7, 2009 5:37 pm
(sorry, Mozy is actually like $4.95 a month)
January 7, 2009 5:37 pm
I know this isn’t an online backup solution but I’ve got 400 GB of music and all online services are just too expensive for that much space. I realize that it is an absurd amount but if the goal here is to keep your music safe, I’ve found a great external device with RAID. It’s called the Drobo and is so flexible which makes it affordable. Granted, it is still WAY more money upfront, and it is NOT an off-site backup (well, it could be…), It is redundancy and available to me at all times (via the intranet or internet). Just thought I’d mention it in case you weren’t familiar with the Drobo. drobo.com
January 24, 2009 5:01 pm
Great suggestion. Am now using Dropbox across two computers, one mac and one pc, and am thoroughly impressed by the ease-of-use and remarkably simple interface. what a great service. as soon as I reach the limit I will be happy to pay for it.
February 18, 2009 6:07 pm
I use it also it is a great service
February 25, 2009 1:41 pm
I use moozone.com – They give 2GB for free and the rest you can buy for about $1 per gig. The great thing is that there are no monthly fees.
I paid $42 for my 40Gbs like 4 month ago and can use it forever. You can create and embed playlists with your or public tracks. They also support Dropbox files.
December 18, 2009 11:22 am