Maybe it’s because I spent many of my early years in libraries, or maybe it’s because I’m just wired a certain way, but I find the way iTunes organizes music, out of the box, infuriating. The default way iTunes alphabetizes everything throws me off. Take artist names. I learned from an early age that when dealing with any form of media, you alphabetize based on the last name of the artist. So, if you’re dealing with albums by Elvis Costello and Elvis Presley, you would sort the former under “C” and the latter under “P”. Instead, iTunes sorts both under “E”.

An even more egregious example is bands whose names start with “The”. Definite articles, in any language, are ignored with alphabetizing anything. Otherwise, you have a huge stretch of a music library of just “The” bands: The Beatles, The Clash, The Doors… which makes finding things a pain. Fortunately, iTunes added a feature back in version 7 to make this sane: Sort Tags. It’s possible to now set how you want an artist’s name to sort. By default, iTunes, since version 7, ignores “The” when sorting artists and albums. You can also assign a sort tag to an artist so that it places them last name first. So, the first thing to do if you want your iTunes library organized and sorted properly is to set your sort tags. Any artist known by a first and last name (even a stage name) is assigned a sort tag in my library in the format “Last name, First name”.

A trickier problem comes if you are a fan of any band or artist that’s released material under multiple band names. If you’re a fan of Frank Zappa, you might understand the issue well. Some of his material was released under the band name “The Mothers of Invention”, some as just Frank Zappa, some as “The Mothers”, some as “Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention”, and at least one as “Zappa / Mothers”. Enter the Album Artist tag. You can set different values in these tags, so by assigning Album Artist the value of “Frank Zappa” (sorted as “Zappa, Frank”), and Artist as “The Mothers of Invention”, all my Zappa albums appear together, but the artist value is correct for playback and tracking in Last.fm.

The trickiest of all problems is how to deal with joint albums, say David Byrne’s collaboration with the amazing St. Vincent. I found an easy solution by assigning the joint act’s name to the both Artist and Album Artist fields, and sorting by the last name of the top billed artist. I’m flexible on solutions for this one, but keep in mind that standard alphabetization practice is always based on the name that comes first.

You’re now most of the way to a properly organized and sorted iTunes library. There’s one more change you’ll need to make, however. By default, iTunes not only organizes artists alphabetically, but also albums. This is a no go for me. I organize all my albums by date of original release, and so should you. This one’s easy to fix. Click the drop down at the top-right corner of your iTunes window and set the “Sort by” drop down to “Artist” and the “Then” drop down to “Year”.

You’ll then want to go back through your library to make sure the dates on your albums are set to the correct year—the year of their original release. If you don’t want to do this manually, the free MusicBrainz Picard Mac app is a great solution for cleaning up your tags automatically. Even if you bought all your music from iTunes, it’s worth running it through Picard, because iTunes releases often assign the date to the year it was released on iTunes, and that helps nobody.

That’s all you need to do. Get proper album artwork, either from iTunes or Album Art Exchange, and then you can enjoy your music, organized properly, like a civilized human being. Sort Tags, and Album Artist transfer to iOS devices , so your artist views will be properly organized, though you’ll also need to switch on “Group By Album Artist” in the Music section of settings. Sadly, iOS devices don’t allow you to sort albums by year within an artist view, but my iOS replacement music app of choice, Cesium, does. It’s worth the $1.99 for the peace of mind.

I recently purchased a new record player. It’s new in both that it was a replacement for my old record player—which was part of those all-in-one CD/Radio/Tape Desk/Record Player gizmos—and new from the factory. Vinyl is a thing again, though you probably knew that unless you’re completely detached from the music world. Okay, sales of records, actual records, aren’t moving a whole lot of units, compared to CDs. This chart from Digital Music News shows the breakdown in 2013. [1] Despite their small footprint, records are still taking a growing share of a shrinking market for physical media, and the pressing plants are having trouble keeping up with demand.

It’s odd to think such an antiquated format making a comeback in the age of Spotify and Beats Music. Records are big, fragile, and require an investment to listen to. Not just an investment hardware, but time, too. It’s a tactile, tangible format, one that requires you to flip the darn thing over once every 20 minutes or so, and is ever-so-slightly damaged every time you play it. Digital music has no such problems. [2] So, it’s easy to see vinyl fetishists as trend-chasing hipsters, or deluded audiophiles. Even as someone who owns a turnable and listens to records, I agree with the experts: vinyl doesn’t sound better. (Sorry, Casey Liss) So, why the comeback?

What the resurgence in vinyl, parallel to the rise of streaming, shows is that there are two main types of music consumers. There are those who view music as a a service, and those who view music as a good (in the material object sense). People who value music as a service are those who would, in days gone by, keep a transistor radio in their pocket. To them, music is wallpaper—pleasant noise to listen to during their day. They may have preferences in genres and artists, go see a concert, or buy a shirt, but they don’t make much of a jump from their appreciation of music to wanting to own it, but they might buy a t-shirt at a concert. Those who value music as a physical good, on the other hand, are often those for whom music plays a large role in their identity. Owning a record, whatever the format, is as much an expression of a real connection to the music held within.

These classifications are not hard and fast, of course. You can be someone who keeps an Ikea shelf of vintage and new records and a high-end turntable in your home hooked to a tube amp and high-quality audiophile headphones at home, yet slip on a pair of earbuds and stream from Spotify when you’re on the go. It’s hard to disagree with the convenience of digital music, whether as files on your computer or pulled down by LTE off some streaming server in a Fort Worth data center. Most music consumers are going to exist in the middle of the spectrum: owning some stuff, be it on CD, vinyl, or digital download, streaming the rest. Where that balance falls says a lot about them as a fan of music. And no matter where one falls on that spectrum, there’s nothing wrong with how one chooses to listen to music. Someone with old iPod earbuds listening to 96kbps Spotify streams is getting as much joy as the someone listening to a 180-gram LP thorough a tube amp and fancy headphones.

As for me, when I look at the CD tower by my desk, or at the shelf of records under my turntable, I don’t just see mere physical media. They all represent something more than their contents: a concert I went to, a lucky hunt through the bins at a used music store, a gift from a friend, or just a time in my life where my tastes in music were different. I may not listen to my CDs much, having ripped them all to MP3 over the years, but I do listen to my records, making a conscious choice to focus my time on the act of listening. I get a closer relationship to the music when i listen to it on vinyl. Not everyone desires such a thing, of course, but there’s enough. Go back to the article in The Guardian I linked in the beginning of this essay, specifically this part:

[I]n August, a DJ and producer called Greg Wilson had gathered people to listen to a vinyl copy of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon. He invited other people to do the same thing at the same time – 9pm on a Sunday – and then share their experience online. The idea reflected a key factor in vinyl’s revival: Spotify and iTunes propagated a mode of listening whereby people could flick between tracks on a whim and, for the most part, shut out others with the aid of headphones; vinyl represented the option of really listening to a whole record – often in company.

There’s nothing about listening to a record in company that demands physical media, but there’s something about it that illustrates the difference in how people relate to music. Paying £5 to listen to someone else’s record, even on a high-end sound system, might seem like a waste of money (it does to me—I’ve paid less than that to see and hear live music), but if you’re the sort of person for whom the way you experience music matters, the experience could be worth immeasurably more. That’s the value of physical music in the streaming era: experience, tangibility, and memories and emotions so tied up in the cardboard and plastic that you don’t even need to hear the music to feel them.

I maintain an unhealthy skepticism of anything that gets “buzz.” It makes me suspicious when lots of people suddenly like something, and the more I heard about CHVRCHES the less willing I was to listen, until I heard “The Mother We Share” in a turntable.fm room. At that moment, the scales fell from my eyes, and I could see. I bought all their stuff from iTunes the very same day. Their music is beautiful, powerful, and emotional, and proof that you can make art and make dance music at the same time. In concert, this comes through even stronger, but before I talk about CHVRCHES, I have to discuss the landscape of seeing live music in New York City.

There’s a dearth of of decent, large music venues in New York City. There are tons of small clubs, but most two to four-thousand capacity venues are theaters, not rock clubs. Because of this, too many bands, CHVRCHES included, are forced to perform at Terminal 5, on the West Side of Manhattan. Terminal 5 is a terrible venue. Before the venue doors open, fans are forced to wait in line crossing the active service entrance of a car dealership—mitigated slightly in warmer months when the venue lets people in to wait at their roof deck bar. Terminal 5’s sound is also notorious—it’s a three floor box converted from a warehouse, so everything echoes and becomes mud. For CHVRCHES, it was worse than usual: the low end was cranked up, often drowning out the backing vocals and more delicate keyboard parts.

To make matters worse, the crowd was terrible, too: a mix of drunk yuppies and kids who looked like they post on 4chan’s music board. The opening band was an awful DJ act, The Range, who at least tried to make a DJ set as visually appealing as possible, but failed. More than few people in the crowd mentally checked out, and spent his set staring down at their phones, or drunkenly arguing with their friends, depending on which group they were in. One positive moment between sets came when the sound person played “Someone Great” by LCD Soundsystem, and about twenty or so people around me sang along.

Once CHVRCHES hit the stage at 9:20, I forgot all about the terrible venue and the terrible crowd—except for one brief moment. Starting with “We Sink,” they tore through almost every song on The Bones of What You Believe, skipping only “Broken Bones.” The intensity was fierce, underscored by a simple, yet gorgeous light show. Being an electronic group, CHVRCHES don’t move a great deal behind their keyboards, though when Iain and Marten switched to guitar or bass, they did move around a bit more. Marten also got a moment to shine in the spotlight, taking the lead both on “Under The Tide” and “You Caught the Light”, and dancing like a madman.

The only moment during the show where I was taken out of my rapture came early, as a wag in the crowd yelled about how attracted he was to Lauren. Aside from being an incredibly rude thing to yell to a performer, it’s more obnoxious coming after Lauren’s piece in The Guardian about the sexual harassment she has suffered from “fans” online. It seemed that Lauren didn’t hear it, thankfully, and the show continued apace…

…and before I realized it, it was over. CHVRCHES is the latest in a number of recent too-short shows. This will happen when you only have one album to promote, and you’re a headliner. When I saw Icona Pop, their show was over in about an hour. Savages, who also played Terminal 5 (with less sound trouble) played longer, though by adding in a cover song, a new song, and some extended live versions—not that I was complaining. Nor was I complaining about CHVRCHES, who, even when playing the weaker songs of their album, put on an impressive show, and clearly enjoying themselves. How many bands would take time between encore songs to recite the opening monologue from Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Only one, by my reckoning.

When the house lights rose, I felt wonderful. The terrible DJ, the awful people in the crowd, the overpriced beer, it all went away… Until I realized that I had to join 3000 people being crushed through two narrow hallways, and past the merch table. Terminal 5’s awfulness reasserted itself in the end. I’ve yet to reach the point where a terrible venue will overcome my desire to see an artist, and CHVRCHES are worth the hassle.

Saturday, April 19th, was Record Store Day, the annual celebration of all forms of audio pressed on to vinyl platters and sold in physical stores. It’s a day which sees the release of a metric crap-ton of limited edition vinyl releases and re-releases (along with some CDs and cassettes). The collectors, obsessives, and completists come out in droves on Record Store Day, and I’ve done my share of waiting in line to buy limited edition releases in years past. My Record Store Day experience has always been low-key: get up reasonably early, head to my reliable local indie record store (AKA Music on North 2nd Street in Philadelphia), get what I want, return home, give it a spin, and then relax.

This past Record Store Day wasn’t quite as simple. First, I now live in New York City, a town with a large population of music fans, and a large selection of indie record stores. Second, Record Store Day has become a huge thing, with way more limited releases, and way more people chasing after them. Also, way more people flipping their purchases on eBay. I was unprepared for just how insane it would be, but I knew it would be insane, and had built a plan of attack. First, I would hit Rough Trade NYC, in Brooklyn. I’d called ahead the day before to see if they had what I wanted, and figured if I got up at six, I could make it there by eight. My plan was stymied by a broken down E Train, but even if I’d made it there at eight, there were people waiting since 3:30 that morning. After waiting an hour, I got into the store to find my quarry sold out. I purchased a consolation split 7", and a couple regular CD releases I’d wanted, and made my way into the city in a frantic search.

Despite the difficulty and frantic nature of trying to find a limited edition needle in the haystack of New York City record stores, buying in person had the benefit of a social element that you don’t get with your Spotifys or your Last.fms. In fact, a chat in the (slow, almost stationary) line outside Other Music on 4th Street, a guy said he’d found a stack of one release I was searching for at Academy Records on 18th. I ran, and snagged a copy of DEVO – Live at Max’s Kansas City, November 15th, 1977 for $20 (after tax) and was content with that. [1]

There are plenty of reasons to hate on Record Store Day, and I experienced some of them directly. However, the fundamental principle of RSD is sound: it gets music fans out of the house, and into the stores. It gets us buying real, physical product with packaging, liner notes. It supports the artists we love, keeps music nerds employed, and has us interacting with our fellow fans. There’s ample opportunity to bond over our shared loves, the shared success of finding that one rare gem, or the used disc we need to complete our collection. It’s a chance to just to pick up a disc out of curiosity and give it a try. It’s how we used to buy music, pre-iTunes. Okay, yes, there’s also surly record store clerks judging your every purchase, but screw ’em. There’s gotta be someone else in line who shares your love.

As long as we can stop the bastards flipping the limited edition stuff on eBay, I’ll be happy. And if we can stop by the record stores more than one day a year, they’ll be happy.

Since writing my last piece on music streaming services, I decided give it a second chance. After trying out Spotify, and being disappointed, I switched to Rdio—[The Sweet Setup’s choice for best music streaming service][sweetsetup]. I also downloaded Beats music, but didn’t try it after discovering it lacked a desktop or iPad version. After a week of occasional use, I sprung for Rdio’s $9.99 a month [1] membership plan, largely so I could listen to an album’s worth of music uninterrupted. Rdio’s library is large vast, and I actually have discovered a couple bands worth checking out through its standard radio feature. I’ve just been too lazy to follow up and buy any albums.

Though the Rdio experience is good, some of my old complaints still are relevant, and I have new ones. Rdio’s discovery algorithms are still very hit or miss. I either hear a bunch of music that I already like and know, or new artists that are often not what I like at all. I also do most of my music listening at work, and I’m in a corner of the office with spotty wifi coverage. This means that I will lose my wifi connection on my phone at least once a day, sometimes more. Rdio, by default, switches over to my cellular data connection to keep streaming, and then I’m eating up my 3GB of data very, very fast. When it works, though, it works, and the audio quality is just fine to my damaged ears.

Because of the discovery algorithm sucks, Rdio has become little more than a source for playing music I already own, but don’t have on my iPhone. I don’t know if that’s worth $9.99 a month. This is music that I’ve largely paid for already, but lacked the presence of mind (or storage) to put on my phone ahead of time. That’s $120 a year to listen to stuff I’ve already paid for. iTunes Match would only be $30—if only I’d bought all my music from iTunes. There’s also Google Play Music, but that has a limit of 20,000 files. My music library is… significantly larger than that. (But, I am an outlier.)

As I write this, Record Store Day is fast approaching. The $9.99 I spent to join Rdio premium could be going to add something new to my library. [2] Plus, I’ll actually own the music—and the liner notes, and the sleeves, and all of it. It’s clearer to me Rdio just doesn’t work how I work, and I doubt any of the other streaming options are going to be an improvement. I might as well just use iTunes Radio. It’s built into the OS, and I can listen to NPR when I get tired of music. Streaming music is still an interesting space, and if the costs and rights issues can be sorted out with the labels, I might give it another try in the future. Or, perhaps, iTunes will lift the limit on how many non-iTunes purchased songs can go on Match. Either way, there’s a future where I can have all my music at my fingertips wherever there’s a data connection. I’ll just have to sit with my 100+GB media library and wait..