Article: Cloud Music Library Backup

[agladstone]

On 4/16/2021 at 12:02 PM, The Computer Audiophile said:

Also, the Backblaze B2 service is likely integrated into your NAS @jrobbins50. You can see pricing here for B2.

 

https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage-pricing.html

I have to look into this! 
I’ve been using Google’s business level Google Workplace as Cloud backup in addition to a Synology NAS in Raid 5 with local sync and backup from my Aurender and also local external drives connected to a local desktop for my “core listening collection” and then also having that Synology NAS auto backup to and from my Google Workplace cloud. 
However, I can tell you from my extensive experience of downloading albums and collections from the cloud to my local “core collection”, that it takes a very long time to download from Google cloud and also there are a lot of errors often, so it requires double checking album by album and often re-downloading 2-4 tracks individually to fix these errors. 
I couldn’t begin to fathom what a Herculean task it would be if I ever actually needed to rely on a complete download of my Google cloud backup to my local storage and/or “core collection”, it would be a nightmare! 
Seems like it may be time for me to check out BackBlaze B2! 
I wonder if BackBlaze also has the ability to transfer / backup/ sync with Google (cloud to cloud)? 
I currently use MultCloud to sync and backup to and from Google Drive, MS Onedrive, Apple iCloud, and Dropbox automatically and it works great. 
My music collection is ENORMOUS, so my issues and situation is probably different than most others. 
The last I checked, I have about 560 TB’s of music in my collection and I have tried my best not to add much to that collection for at least the past 1-2 years since it’s become so expensive and time consuming to try and store and manage and tag all of it!! 
I only have about 80+ TB’s of this digital collection at home in my NAS (aka “core collection”) and it’s all backed up (but not on an automated or regular schedule) to a bunch of local external HDD’s. 
One of these days I really need to make an additional backup of it all and bring to a friend or relatives house for an offsite backup).  
Also, as others have mentioned, I have the top level subscriptions to Qobuz and Tidal, and as they’ve continued to get better and better and as my home internet has become Fiber and 1+Gbps, I’ve been listening to more and more HiRes streaming that sounds really good. 
Between these streaming services and the ability to download so many great and high quality recordings for your absolute favorite and best recorded albums from Qobuz, HDTracks, and many other online sources, I think if I suddenly lost my entire collection, I’d be able to “live with it”. 

[agladstone]

On 4/19/2021 at 3:38 PM, AudioDoctor said:

 

Is that in a lossless compressed format such as FLAC, or uncompressed?

I have a lot of DSD, a lot of original vinyl rips in DSD and 24/96 FLAC, a ton of 24 bit digital downloads from Qobuz and HDTracks,etc. and the remainder is mostly 16/44 FLAC. 
Ive gotten to the point where I feel like I basically have almost everything ever recorded!! 
Lots and lots of rare live recordings and bootlegs too. 

[agladstone]

16 hours ago, Mike27 said:

“...some services have been known to wipe tags from music files.”

 

Wait, what?

 

I’m well past the point I should have implemented some rigorous backup process. Swapping hard drives with my brother is one thing, but I’m better at accumulating things than organizing them. Metadata is just one part of the headache. I need revision control. I may have a half dozen versions of, say, an LP dub. Raw, clicks & noise repaired, an archival version and maybe one with a little EQ for general listening. Some random category that applies only to those files, perhaps. I may or may not want to keep all the intermediate versions. Keeping track via tags is difficult enough without something deleting them!

 

Yet I am not really surprised. Having just skimmed this article, I’ll dive in further soon. Thanks!

Google Drive leaves all metadata the same as what is uploaded (what I’m using for cloud backup). 
The only thing is that it does take “forever” to download backed up copies and it’s best to download one album at a time for FLAC/WAV/ ALAC, and I’ve discovered it’s best to download one track at a time for DSD or 24 bit FLAC/ALAC if it’s a large box set or similar. 

[agladstone]

On 6/24/2021 at 5:52 AM, Dan Gravell said:

I suspect the generic storage services will be much better in terms of not overwriting metadata - after all, they should just be storing data, not overwriting it as they see fit.

 

The music lockers, on the other hand, may have more convoluted approaches to managing your library, and this might be where issues creep in. I don't think they should but I find it unsurprising they do... if that makes sense.

Dan:

Curious if you know anything or have any experience with SongKong ? 
I came across them in an article yesterday mentioning that it was being used with great success transferring music library from a server that stored all the meta data in a separate folder, and as a result when transferred to another brand music server it doesn’t bring over any of the metadata or album art. 
Apparently SongKong can scan the entire music library automatically after you transfer or download your music collection to a new server and it will re-tag and add album art automatically? 
Seems like this may actually be another solution to the situation mentioned here?  

[agladstone]

3 hours ago, Dan Gravell said:

 

Yep - it is - and I know the author!

Thanks! Maybe I’ll give it a try! I have about 80 TB’s of downloads on a series of external drives that I suspect are full of duplicates that I’ve been too lazy to attempt to look through for 1+ years now, should be the perfect place to experiment with it! (It apparently can manage duplicates automatically in addition to auto-tagging meta data and auto adding album art).