Music technology

[cjsmith]

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?]

Comments

MP3 info from the LJ Brain Trust

[chiefted]

Well not the cheap way to go but I got an iPod for my birtday and
yes the icon give a hint of what I think of it (I love it!)

I do have the cassette car adapter in the car and I plug it into the iPod
headphone jack. It is easy to use and set up (even on the windows side of things).
My only drawback with it is that the battery life (before recharging) is 8 hours. The
new 4th generation iPods which are just out the battery life is 12 hours. Mine is the 15gb size
and I am not even close to filling it, but to give you an example I have 23 hours worth of
music on it already. I works great for the trip up to and back from Petaluma.

For downloading I use iTunes (which makes it easy to load songs into the iPod) and I
use emusic.com. iTunes you can buy individual songs for 99 cents and with emusic it is
a subscrition (I think it is 8 bucks a month with 50 downloads, its daltong's account that we share).

As far taking music from your tapes that should be easy to do, and is legal. There
is part of the Electronic....and then I can't remember what the name of the law is
that states you can make a "back up copy" of software, music etc. so taking stuff
from one media and converting it to another, as long as you paid for it originally, is
legal.

If you have any other questions let me know

Re: MP3 info from the LJ Brain Trust

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Cool! Do you do backups of your MP3 data? (I figure it wouldn't be long before the contents of an iPod start to represent a sizable investment I wouldn't want to lose.)

You use both iTunes and emusic? Just the guy I need to ask! Why both? Which one is better for what?

Have you ever done the cassette copy? Sounds like a pain, but maybe it's worth it for stuff that's hard to find...

Re: MP3 info from the LJ Brain Trust

[chiefted]

Hey,

Sorry I didn't get back to you till now. I have new kids, plus my weekly session with Christy.

Anywho. All of the MP3 data is backed up on my normal computer back up schedule. Plus I have put most of it on CD that I have burned "just in case". So far it hasn't been too sizeable an investment since I have been taking those one or two songs of my CD and placing it on the iPod.

I use the iTunes music store for the most part due to a larger selection of main stream stuff (and some off the wall stuff like Dick Dale and the Deltones). It has more 80s stuff and more of the sound tracks to movies I like. I use emusic to download those off the wall numbers. Plus there seems to be more of a classical music selection on emusic. So far between the two I have managed to find most of the stuff I tend to look for.

I have done the casset copy and the first couple of times it was a pain but once you get moving it seems to work ok. I do have to admit that if there is only one song of a cassette that I want I usually just buy that one song. 99 cents vs. work of getting one song off the cassette is worth it.

I haven't tried some of the other services yet. I might try legal Napster at some point just to see whats up with that. I also think that Sony has something out now.

I wish I had the article at hand but "Cargo" magazine compared the download services and I think it was in the July/Aug. edition. Will go hunting for it and I can give you the song totals on some of the major services.

If you have anymore question drop me a line.