Article: Cloud Music Library Backup

[Dan Gravell]

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[Dan Gravell]

Thanks for posting Chris!

[Dan Gravell]

1 hour ago, jrobbins50 said:

Thanks, @Dan Gravell.  As Chris knows, I have a quite large (over 35 Tb) music collection on my Synology NAS which has fault tolerance for two hard drives to fail simultaneously, but no offsite storage. I’m sure offloading a copy of my library over the cloud would take days if not weeks, but that’s not my real concern. I’m guessing the cost to maintain a cloud-based backup of a library this size must be out of control. How would you approach such a beast?

 

It comes down to your constraints. First of all - if you were to lose the library, or part of it, is that actually an issue? Maybe a strange question to ask, but, if not, there's not necessarily much point in spending money and time on a solution.

 

Backblaze Personal Backup offers unlimited backup storage: https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html. They are a reputable company - no bait and switch here.

[Dan Gravell]

20 minutes ago, hopkins said:

I find using the "sync storage services", without actually "synching" to be a good option for those who have relatively small music libraries (full upload < 1 day) with files that are not constantly being changed (i.e. tags modified). The obvious drawback is that you need to remember to manually add your new files/changed files regularly, the advantage is that you don't risk accidentally replicating file deletions in both your local storage and cloud storage (as you pointed out). For "smallish" libraries, you could regularly do a full backup. For large libraries, especially when files are frequently updated, this options is probably not workable. You can also deactivate "synching" and reactivate it when needed.

 

You have to be careful with that though. If you don't automate this there's a good chance you'll forget, or something else will get in the way. Humans are best at creativity, not routine - we get easily bored - "I'll just skip it this month, it'll be fine". I know, I know, some of us are better than others but...

 

Put another way, it depends on the value of the library.

[Dan Gravell]

1 minute ago, DuckToller said:

During the process of analyzing and planning I have learned how much data our family's digital life has assembled in the last 25 years. There are obviously some parts more than doubled by older incoherent backup strategies, however losing them incidentally would be something great of a drama and imaging that scenario also convinced the treasury that an investment into back up tech is a wise transfer. Far easier to negotiate than buying a new pair of loudspeakers. ... cheaper too ...

 

 

Very much so - when I think of all our family photos and videos... and, of course, the "sync" and "backup" services can be used for non-audio media.

[Dan Gravell]

On 4/16/2021 at 10:13 PM, AudioDoctor said:

How do we address bit rot? Is that something that can be transferred between devices in such a way that the backup file would also be harmed somehow? I have been thinking about this as drives I have are aging to beyond a decade.

This is a fair question. If bit-rot is manifest as a change in the byte stream for any given file then yes, it could be transferred. This is precisely why snapshotting, as supported by the backup services (as opposed to most of the more generic and music focused services) is important. If you can find the last time the file(s) were good, you can roll back to that time. There may be many files affected.

 

In addition, managing the integrity of your files, i.e. detecting bit-rot, is likely to be a separate management task dealt with by separate services.

[Dan Gravell]

On 4/18/2021 at 1:26 AM, bobflood said:

OraStream used to offer a service for this purpose. I haven't kept up with them in recent years but they may still have it. They would also stream your library to you as well.

 

If you mean BRIO, that would be a type of music locker - it's a useful redundant copy, but as I have said it is not a full backup service. Depending on the value of your collection it may or may not be appropriate.

[Dan Gravell]

4 hours ago, agladstone said:

The last I checked, I have about 560 TB’s of music

 

Not sure whether to admire, laugh, cry... 😃

[Dan Gravell]

@Mike27 Yes, this is a thing. I should've linked to some examples actually because as it reads right now it seems like I've just attempted to insert a bit of FUD...

 

Exhibit A: YouTube Music https://www.reddit.com/r/musichoarder/comments/o1purr/recovering_metadata_from_youtube_music_library/

 

Exhibit B: Apple Music (when Match replaces with a lossless version; it appears possible to get the old version back) https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleMusic/comments/nwtyh4/apple_lossless_desktop_follow_up/

[Dan Gravell]

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 Gravell]

On 6/25/2021 at 11:33 PM, agladstone said:

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?  

 

Yep - it is - and I know the author!