downloading music

[Jason R]

Which web site is the best deal for downloading music? thinking about a mp3 player. Also what is the mp3 out there? user freindly?

 

[George Doogle]

Depends on if you want to pay for the songs.

 

[TomT]

I don't know how legit this site is but I've been using them for a year without any problems. The reason I like it is because most of my music that I download, I burn to a cd so I only download high quality mp3's (320 kbps). At this site your charged more for the higher quality but even the best quality is still cheap. The reason I quit using the free sites like limeware is it's very hard to find any music over 128k which sounds like crap on a decent stereo system.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Hhhhhm.



This one comes up all the time.



I personally like the 1GB SanDisk player I got my wife. It plays WMA and MP3 files, and easily stores over 300 songs (close to 15 to 20 hours of music). For many people, that's enough. I also like this because it's easy to use, looks like just another drive on my computer when plugged in, and that makes copying files to it easy for me, because I am used to the Windows folder explorer interface.



Some say that iPods are the only way to go, and for novice PC users, the iTunes interface does seem to handhold the user a little more. This is the same reason why some people dislike the iPods, though.



So, the choice of player is often a personal one.



The choice of the website to use may depend on the player as well; as iPods users seem to prefer iTunes.



Napster has an interesting model wherein you subscribe to hours of music each month instead of paying per title.



As for "depends on if you want to pay for the songs", well that shouldn't really be an issue. People ask about recommendations for products and services all the time on this website, and it seems only when it comes to downloading music is it even considered sage advice to recommended "NOT PAYING" for the product or service.



TJR

 

[Mark S 3]

For me, the best music site is still to just go out and buy the CD and then rip it myself. That way I can choose the format & size.



As for best mp3 player? That's entering into holy war territory for a lot of people, so I'll just give you a list of things to consider:



1) Do you want a built in battery or a player that uses replaceable AA batteries?

2) Do you want a hard drive based player, or flash based?

3) How many songs do you want to hold? Less than a hundred? More than a thousand?

4) What file types do you want to play? All of them will play mp3, but what about wav, aac, wma, audible, ogg vorbis and so on.

5) Take a look at accesories available. How easily will it plug into your truck? What about arm bands, cases, speakers, fm transmitors and so on.

6) Do you need any of the extra features? fm radio? pictures? video? outlook synchronization?

7) What about size of the device? Would you be happy with burning mp3 files to a CD rom and using a CD player to listen to them, or do you want something smalller like an iPod Nano?





Hope that helps...

-Mark

 

[Frank Marano]

well if you dont have morals and are pure evil and love to steal and are such a baaaaaad person like myself, then try Limewire. I am going to hell....

 

[Tabjo]

I'm currently subscribing to Napster and using it on a SanDisk Sansa player.



The Napster interface is easy to use and for only $9.95 a month for the music subcription + $5.00 more if you want the songs playable on an portable device, you get a very wide selection of music. If you want to burn a song to CD or if you want to keep after your subscription runs out however, you have to purchase it for $.99 a song. I'm able to find most artists and songs, however there are few remixes and singles that I haven't been able to find, so their catalog of music is far from complete.



While subscribed its nice, it's like having the biggest music collection in the world. Unfortunately they only download in WMA format. I'll probably give up Napster in the next month which means my collection of DRM infected WMA files will be unplayable after that. I might try iTunes or Walmart as well.

 

[Johnny O]

LimeWire as long as you have a good antivirus program.

 

[Gavin Allan]

So which is best (if paying)?



Which is best if not paying?

 

[Thomas Rogers]

I like MSN Music as it's integrated with Windows Media Player on my PC (stuff goes into the Media Library), and because its easy to copy files from the Media Library to my thumb drive and/or wife's SanDisk player using Explorer. 99¢ a song and around $10 for an entire album.

 

[Mark S 3]

The "Best" is going to depend on what brand of music player you have.



iPod = iTunes or Real

Sony = Sony's branded store

Microsoft 'plays for sure' branded players = Walmart, napster, msn music...



If you're asking which is the best store simply by numbers, As of a week ago, iTunes has about 83% of the market. (google for "itunes 83% of market") Real, Yahoo, MSN, napster and the rest make up the remainder.

 

[Kevin Long]

Newsgroups!

 

[gd sheehan]

i've used etomi for some time now for downloading songs, etc., basically the same as limewire. i originally paid about $4 to access the site but i've heard prices went up. beware of free/cheap sites tho', there's a lot of stuff on it that isn't healthy for you or your computer!

as far as players go i decided against the i-pod for the simple reason that just about everyone has it.:blink:

at the time the ipod had some battery issues and poor support, too. i went with a korean product called i-river and couldn't be happier! i would suggest going to a website called pricegrabber.com to research products and to get the best price. hope that helps.