Over To You: What’s The Best Way To Manage Music Across Multiple Systems?

Reader Tim Dorcas writes: “With over 100GB of music/samples in my collection, and the fact that I use three different physical systems in two different OSes (Mac OSX and Windows), it is getting harder and harder for me to manage all of this data. I am looking for ideas on how to manage, organise, and sync my music. My current set-up is an iMac at home (as my primary computer), a Windows 7 laptop, a backup Windows 7 laptop, and a NAS for music and sample storage. I can’t be the only one struggling with this – any ideas?

Digital DJ Tips says:

Well, Tim, we can ‘t offer you a definitive answer to this, so we’ll give you our suggestion then ask any Digital DJ Tips readers who are managing their music across multiple machines to let us know their thoughts too. I don’t know how well it would work for you (for instance, in my experience you need a pretty robust WAN at home for this to work), but I would recommend you investigate the paid-for version of Dropbox. To be quite frank we can’t remember what it was like when we didn’t having it installed across our machines (and phones) here at Digital DJ Tips – we use it daily. You get 2GB for free, but for US$19.95 you get 100GB cloud storage but also seamless synchronisation across multiple machines (not to mention web access from anywhere). Plus it’s really easy to use. (I guess once you’ve done the initial upload – maybe set it running before your summer holiday!)

There are multiple benefits to Dropbox for DJs and producers – for instance, we have seen it successfully used to sync iTunes libraries, and because it is actually a full versioning system under the hood, you can work on music across multiple machines while always having earlier versions to hand – great for remote collaborating. Finally, its public folders let you easily share your own work with others via simple URLs.

However, we’re sure this isn’t the only solution, so as we say if any readers can offer further suggestions or solutions, please do so!

Remember, please join in by telling us how you’ve solved the problem of accessing your music and samples across multiple machines in the comments below.