I-pod help

[Jason R]

Hi could anyone help me. I just bought a 30gb i-pod and i was wondering which music service was the best and easyest to use.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Best and easiest to use are subjective, but I will attempt to help.



Arguably, for the novice user, Apple's iTunes is the easiest to use and the best suited. However, many more techical users scorn that service and it's music format because it is too closed and proprietary, and the application puts a lot of "software menus and user clicks" between you and your music files; while others like Napster and MSN Music provide true MP3 and integrate with man, machine at the file system/folder management level.



Most who have iPods, though (not just other-branded MP3 players) claim that iTunes is the best game in town.



I have a Rio MP3 player and I use MSN Music.



My son has an iPod and he uses iTunes.



TJR

 

[Mark S 3]

Yup, iTunes is the easiest to use for purchasing music when it comes to the iPod. You can also use Real.com, or if you want to do a bit more work, you can use any of the other ones out there that allow you to burn to CD and then re-rip to get rid of the DRM. (Digital Rights Management)



TJR, unless you're talking of the "grey market" mp3 services out there (which can play on any device) every service is proprietary and closed. The only difference is if it is poprietary to Apple (AAC) or to Microsoft (WMA) or to Sony. In my opinion, I try to avoid all of those as I'm not a fan of the DRM that either contains.



Best bet is to buy your music on CD and just rip it yourself.

 

[Deleted deleted]

I've used several music services, and have found that buying CD's and ripping them myself is much easier. No worries about losing licenses if my hard drive crashes.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

>> TJR, unless you're talking of the "grey market" mp3 services out there (which can play on any device) every service is proprietary and closed. The only difference is if it is poprietary to

>> Apple (AAC) or to Microsoft (WMA) or to Sony. In my opinion, I try to avoid all of those as I'm not a fan of the DRM that either contains.



Nope, I am not talking about grey markets, I just assumed some actually allowed you to download MP3 versions (MP3.com, Napster). I know that iTunes uses AAC and Microsoft using WMA, but frankly, of the two, WMA is MORE OPEN in the sense that it is supported by more players (in my observance).



TJR

 

[Thomas Rogers]

MarkS says: "Best bet is to buy your music on CD and just rip it yourself."



Yeah, for those CDs that have mostly hits, sure. But what if a CD has less than 8 good or 9 good tracks on it, then isn't it' cheaper to buy just the tracks you want on iTunes or similar?



And, often, if an album has 8 or more good tracks, you can buy the whole album online cheaper, usually for under $10...isn't that better than paying $13 to $15 for the CD?



TJR

 

[Adam Cat]

The first week a CD is released you can get it at Target for $9.99. I am pretty sure this is true so if you want a CD get it from there the first week it comes out. I get most of my CDs from Target because of this deal.

 

[Mark S 3]

"but frankly, of the two, WMA is MORE OPEN in the sense that it is supported by more players"



Well, that would make it more licenced; Not more open. Since they are both privately owned, they are both closed standards. Neither is more open than the other as you can't develop for either one without purchasing a licence. You're pretty much stuck with mp3 or ogg vorbis if you want a open standard.



Flip the argument around the other way. the iPod has 80% of the mp3 player market. So if you go buy portable music player numbers alone, then AAC is more open than wma.



Agree 100% on the songs thing. If there are only a handful of songs I like, I'll spend the $ to buy off of a internet music site instead of purchasing the whole CD.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

That's why I capped MORE OPEN (should have quoted it). I guess I should have said more prevalent.



And, yes, AAC capable players are more prevalent in the market then NON-AAC because iPods have market dominance. But, since iPods also play WMA (don't they?) and most everyone elses players also plays WMA, but many of the other's don't play AAC then logically WMA capable are more prevalent than AAC capable. And for the same reason MP3 capable players are more prevalent than them all.



J in KC asked about an iPod and wanted easy, I think iTunes would be the way to go, but I just wanted to describe the various alternatives.



Now, which is truely more open...use MP3 by most definition of open standards is more open, but that is only because the Fraunheuf (sp?) codec has been pirated so much that it is pretty much in the public domain now. There was a time where an MP3 enc/decoder was something you had to license (I know, I wrote a transcoder library for transcoding MP3 to WMA for Microsoft in 2000).



But, the rights-managed standards are the more dominent ones today, though they need to be licensed for use, and Microsoft is pushing licensing of WMA/WMV, but Apple seems to want to hold AAC close to their vest.



TJR

 

[Deleted deleted]

iPods will not play Windows WMA files. iPods can play AAC and MP3 files. iTunes has a convertor that will convert your WMA files to AAC so that they can then be downloaded to the iPods.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Oh, then I take that back. AAC is the clear market leading proprietery standard. Actually, it's said that Apple and Microsoft can't get along. Anyone see the movie "The Pirates of Silicon Valley"...NICE.



TJR