Got a computer and like music ? There are a few things to know.
If you want to listen to your favourite music on your computer, use your computer to save you having to keep changing CDs in your Hi-Fi or are pondering the joys of iPod, read on.
Truly a wonderful device. Looks good. Simple to operate. What more could you want? Well, with the default settings, all your music gets saved in Apple's AAC format which means you are limited to what you can do with it. Further to that, until recently all the music you bought from the iTunes store was protected using Digital Rights Management (DRM) that meant that you had a limit on how many times you can move or copy the music between different computers. Things are changing though becasue some tracks are released unprotected under "itune plus" which isn't a differnt version of iTunes, just the same songs without all the palava. So I recommend the iPod. I suggest a few other things too:
- Buy a universal dock to save having to plug the fiddly cable in when you dock it
- Build a playlist and put the music you like most into it. Sync the iPod to the playlist.
- BEFORE ripping any CDs, switch to MP3:
Under the Edit menu, choose prefences.
Choose the Import tab and change it as follows:
Stopping your music being iTunes only
One other thing about iPods is that Apple finally allow you to ship your music from one PC to another using it. See this article for details.
What a gem of a site. Enter a band name and get your own private radio station playing music by them and similar bands you may never had heard of.
AllofMP3.com and peer-to-peer file sharing systems
A Russian site that verges on the illeagal. Some would argue it is a better option than the very ileagal peer-ro-peer sites. But it is still very shaky ground. If you have not paid for that copyrighted track you are listening to, you are breaking the law. Don't do it.
AAC, MP3 and OGG
Three competing audio formats.
AAC is Apple's format for copy-protected music. Only good for ipods
MP3 is pretty universal but has not native copy-protection.
OGG (Ogg Vorbis) is better quality than MP3 but isn't widely supported.
