OT - MP3 players and music

[cnjarvis]

I picked up a Philips MP3 player for the wife's birthday and since I'm new at this, I need a little help. Specifically - Where can I download music (services) and what is the compatibility? I-Tunes compatible with platforms other than Apple? etc.

Thanks guys.

[madman4570]

Technically iTunes only works with iPod, but i think with a free program called iTunes Agent you can use iTunes with any mp3 player,Now there are some people that do use limewire, "but dont" because its illegal to do so! I think iTunes is your best bet!

[Rusty]

Or if you have CD's that you already like you can load them on your computer and transfer that to your MP3.

[deerwhacker444]

Check out Rhapsody. I use it. Costs me about $12.00/month and I can listen to all the different channels I want at work or home on my PC. If there's something I hear I like, I can buy the mp3 for $.99 cents.

[Old Ironsights]

"Free" music is hardr to come by on the net tnese days, what with RIAA lawsuits and all.

I agree that, by in large you should be ripping your own stuff.

There is also the Library to consider.

One HUGE factor in the equasion is HOW you plan on using the player.

If you are using it for Jogging or in the Car or some other semi-noisy enviornment, then you can really make hay by ripping your CDs way down into the sub-128 bit range. I go as low as 96 and use Variable Bit recording. You can get a LOT of music on a small player this way.

Sure, the fidelity isn't there, but it IS "FM Radio" quality - which is more than enough for low-fidelity/high noise situations anyway. I have 273 songs on 700mb.

[cnjarvis]

Thanks for the replies.

I managed to corner my company's IT guru and get an answer from him: Amazon.com. Individual songs run 0.59 to 0.99 and are compatible with all mp3 players. Can download audio books there too.

We do have some CD's and I was planning on ripping them but wanted to have the option of purchasing the individual songs as needed.

I wanted to avoid I-tunes - the proprietary nature of the hard and software really pizza's me off.

[rhead]

If she likes some of the older works look at http://www.archive.org/details/audio_music . If she likes audio books in MP3 format try http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search.p ... ion=Search.

Good luck.

[DavidF]

I was going to say Amazon. All DRM free.

[AJMD429]

Technically iTunes only works with iPod, but i think with a free program called iTunes Agent you can use iTunes with any mp3 player,Now there are some people that do use limewire, "but dont" because its illegal to do so! I think iTunes is your best bet!

The thing I HATE about "iTunes" is that I had over 5,000 songs in full-data format (off my own extensive CD collection) on a 500 GB hard drive, and without my permission "iTunes" automatically "sorted" it - and it all went to "unknown author" and "unknown title" - those CD's had taken me all summer to load onto the drive.

I HATE anything "automatic" when it comes to software...

[Gary]

WinAmp is free for download and will play many iTunes file formatted songs.

[Ysabel Kid]

I'm new to this whole thing as well. I have downloaded a few songs and an album or two from Amazon.com. Another source to consider...

[rhead]

Technically iTunes only works with iPod, but i think with a free program called iTunes Agent you can use iTunes with any mp3 player,Now there are some people that do use limewire, "but dont" because its illegal to do so! I think iTunes is your best bet!

The thing I HATE about "iTunes" is that I had over 5,000 songs in full-data format (off my own extensive CD collection) on a 500 GB hard drive, and without my permission "iTunes" automatically "sorted" it - and it all went to "unknown author" and "unknown title" - those CD's had taken me all summer to load onto the drive.

I HATE anything "automatic" when it comes to software...

I have had the same problems. My solution was NO apple software on my computer and NO apple products in my house. It has worked fine so far.