I get most of my new music from the radio (regular and Pandora), concerts, and friends posting mp3's. Sometimes I discover new songs/bands poking around on YouTube, too. And I buy used CDs at thrift stores and Half-Price Books.

I used to do a lot of satellite radio too, but both our units broke and we couldn't be arsed to replace them, so we canceled instead.

I do have a lot of storage space both exposed as bookshelf space and hidden as cabinet space currently taken up by cds in cases. And the big problem with doing things my way is the current state of DRM. Like I have all these files sitting on my hard drive that were authorized under Napster, and, oddly, ran for a while under Rhapsody, but now are no good. And Rhapsody, when it nixed all those, also nixed everything else I had imported, which included files I had ripped from CD, but stupidly, had ripped to WMA.

So with the new laptop I'll have a chance to sort out all my DRM. I wish I could just transfer the files authorized under Rhapsody from one machine to the next, but I bet I'll have to redownload those, which means next time I'm in a hotel, because of my bandwidth limitations. But it'll give me a chance to start clean, and I'll probably start reripping all my physical CD's, so I can store those away. Maybe in the attic, but probably not because of heat issues.

Then I have a lot of storage space for old VHS tapes, DVDs. I expect I will start building a Blu-ray collection now. So I would like to rip and store those digitally as well. Initially I was burning everything to DVD, which I could store on a spindle. But at this point, I dunno if that's even the best use of my space.

What do you guys do for digital storage of video? Do you just rip and keep it on a hard drive?

What do you guys do for digital storage of video? Do you just rip and keep it on a hard drive?

All my digital video I purchased from iTunes.

Time Machine automatic backups are a godsend.

I buy albums for classical music when I want a specific recording, which iTunes is particularly bad for. Also, for opera I want the actual CD so I also get the libretto.

It never occurred to me to rate a song in iTunes! Why would I?

I don't rate or use shuffle, I just make lots of playlists.

What I really want is the ability to tailor the genre categories. And no, I don't want to just add new ones, I want to delete the crappy ones that are automatically there.

I'm fairly obsessive about collecting music. If I like something, I need to own it in some form. Thankfully, I have gotten better about being a completist, but I still have some of that tendancy. I have two big industrial storage shelves of vinyl (some of which I probably haven't listened to in a decade). At some point in the last decade, I'm pretty sure my CDs started outnumbering the vinyl, though I haven't done an inventory in at least that long (I'm really overdue). The total combined is probably up near 3K at this point (last inventory totaled at 1900+).

I'm nearly as bad with DVDs which between movies and box sets of series is approaching the 1000 mark.

I won't even venture to estimate on books/comics.

I really wanted to punch the hipster couple in the basement stacks of City Lights who were writing down titles to go order online later.

I would have sent you bail money.

I've been listening to my iPod a lot more since I started going to the gym, although I had to buy different earbuds that would stay in my ears properly. I didn't know about rating songs--I'll have to look into that. But I have a lot of playlists set up, and their organization tends to sync with my moods pretty well.

I don't listen to music nearly enough since I got heavily into podcasts, but when I do, I listen like ita, I think - generally on random, trying to get to all of the unrated/unheard stuff.

I had to buy different earbuds that would stay in my ears properly.

I can't find any. I swear I have the smallest ears ever. Every earbuds I've ever tried are too big and hurt and/or fall out after 3 minutes.

Every earbuds I've ever tried are too big and hurt and/or fall out after 3 minutes.

Yes! It's not just me! They will not stay in! The hip hook-over-the-ear ones hurt too, so I may just go old school and get old-fashioned top of the head earphones--which are a bitch to carry around.

I'm lucky that the over-the-ear ones work pretty well for me, and my glasses keep them from hurting the top of my ears.