Music technology
OK, I'm tired of lugging around twenty-year-old cassettes simply because I like one or two of the songs on each of the albums. I don't even listen to cassettes (partially because my car stereo eats them), but I can't bear to throw them all out.
Obviously it would be very expensive to replace every one of them with the analogous CD. I'm a cheapskate. Plus it's a low-density solution: on each CD I would still like just one or two songs. There has to be a better way.
So... what about those MP3 players, for which songs can be purchased one at a time? Question for the LJ brain trust. What do you use? What are the foibles and strengths of the player(s) you've chosen? What's your experience with the various ways to purchase music for them? Does anybody out there have a really wide selection of MP3s for sale, or am I faced with the (quite possibly illegal) prospect of taking a tape like Bobby McFerrin's "The Voice" and hand-recording it? What's your backup technology for your chosen system?
[Edits:
1. The stuff I want (for example, Bobby McFerrin's "The Voice") is not available from iTunes. Is there a bigger site, or at least a weirder site?
2. My car does not have a functional cassette input.
3. Anybody out there doing backups?]
Obviously it would be very expensive to replace every one of them with the analogous CD. I'm a cheapskate. Plus it's a low-density solution: on each CD I would still like just one or two songs. There has to be a better way.
So... what about those MP3 players, for which songs can be purchased one at a time? Question for the LJ brain trust. What do you use? What are the foibles and strengths of the player(s) you've chosen? What's your experience with the various ways to purchase music for them? Does anybody out there have a really wide selection of MP3s for sale, or am I faced with the (quite possibly illegal) prospect of taking a tape like Bobby McFerrin's "The Voice" and hand-recording it? What's your backup technology for your chosen system?
[Edits:
1. The stuff I want (for example, Bobby McFerrin's "The Voice") is not available from iTunes. Is there a bigger site, or at least a weirder site?
2. My car does not have a functional cassette input.
3. Anybody out there doing backups?]
no subject
Everyone--from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil-liberties advocacy group--seems to agree on one point:
"It's perfectly legal for you to make copies of your own music for your own personal use," says Robin Gross, EFF's staff intellectual-property attorney. "It's called 'fair use.' It's your legal right to do so, even if the copyright holder doesn't want you to."
An alternative to the MP3 player -> car audio system hookup is an MP3-CD player - you can put quite a lot more songs on each CD in MP3 format. Can't recommend it since I haven't used one myself, but at least it would bypass the need to plug the portable player into the cassette adapter and fiddle with its separate controls.
no subject