How to manage a large digital media collection

How to manage a large digital media collection
Play media. This is where things can get rough for large collections. Some players just don't know what to do with more than 10,000-20,000 files, and others just slow down to a crawl when searching or browsing. My favorite player is the free, open-source, cross-platform XBMC, though Songbird and foobar2000 are both popular choices. Be warned, though--your first scan with any new program is going to take several hours. You are much better off tagging files first (see above), because once they're all tagged, you'll just have to go through that long, painful scan again.Play media with XBMC.Stream media. Streaming your media might be the best answer for your immense collection, though once again, tagging is key here. If you want a portable music solution that can work on mobile devices and computers far from your home network, consider Audiogalaxy. It's free, but it does require you to keep a computer on at all times, or at least when you want to play your music. It takes a while to assess your library, and is limited to 200,000 songs (not much of a limit unless you're part of the 1 percent), but you can then find and play them easily from any computer, Android, or iOS device.Stream music with Audiogalaxy.