The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: AugustWest on December 17, 2005, 03:27:06 pm
-
I just got my daughter an MP3 player for Christmas. Now it must be populated with songs. But the variety of music services out there is bewildering, at least to me.
Recommendations? Yahoo Music was looking pretty good to me.
-
How old is she? Elementary school age? Teenager? Is she 'net-savvy enough to handle loading music onto her device with the usually crappy software that the music services make you use?
What kind of player did you get her?
All of the music services pretty much suck. None of them let you own your music - some are subscription services that let you eat all you want, but as soon as you stop paying the monthly bill, you have no music again.
The others are almost as bad, with DRM restrictions on where and how many times you can play the music you "buy."
eMusic has low-ish quality unrestricted MP3s, and they're not very expensive, but the selection tends towards the indie.
It also depends on HOW your daughter listens to music. Does she want just a song or two here and there from Top 40 hits, or does she tend to listen to whole albums? If it's the latter, it's cheaper to buy the CD and rip it. You get better quality that way, and you can sell the CD after ripping to lower the price some more.
So, given that, if you're willing to rent music for your daughter that will be tied to a specific device, then it's important to make sure that the device you bought will play the format of the service you like.
Y! Music is probably the cheapest out there, but the sound quality is like streaming music is. It's about AM radio quality. It's listenable, but not great. Oh, and that $5/month won't let you transfer songs to her MP3 player. That's just a come-on price. It's $119/year to sign up for Yahoo Music ToGo, and then 79 cents a track to "buy" (i.e. rent) the songs that can be copied to a Windows PlaysForSure player. And the list is really short (http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/togo). Is the player you bought for her on that list?
The iPod won't play music from any store but the iTunes Music Store, which is one of the worst out there. Expensive, the quality sucks, and they limit you to moving the songs to 5 PCs, which sounds fine until you realise that's 5 PCs for the rest of your daughter's life. In other words, she'd have to re-buy her music in a few years of upgrade cycles.
You can get legal unrestricted MP3s from various Russian companies, since they have broadcast licensing fees for music over the internet (more like the fees radio stations pay labels, rather than the sales model) and I've used AllOfMP3.com now for over a year with much success. They have a download manager that's actually easier to use than iTunes, and they charge by the megabyte rather than by the song, and let you pick your encoding rate so that you can save money if 128kbps is good enough for your ears (I tend to get everything at 192kbps).
And the tracks you download from them are yours to keep and will play on any mp3 player, can be moved to unlimited devices or computers, you can back them up, you only have to pay once, etc.
Now is a good time to teach your daughter about the unethical practices of the current fair use restrictions placed on consumers. The record labels, aided by the government, want people to shift from buying things to leasing their use (essentially renting content) and they're hoping to indoctrinate your children in this way of unamerican thinking so they can make more money. Please note that the artists make less and less all the time. If you want to support an artist, go to their show and buy a t-shirt while you're there. They make far more profit from that than they do from their records.
-
Jough's question re: your daughter's tech savvy seconded -- is she capable of loading her own MP3 player? Does she have an MP3 collection? If not, can she rip CDs and such? I would be hesitant to load it for her unless I knew exactly what she wanted and that she couldn't do it herself or be taught to.
-
I come for the cartoon cats, I stay for the consumer rights education.
-
She is 12 and fairly computer savvy. I'm not sure she knows how to do it now, but could easily do it if shown how.
So let me get this straight: I pay an annual fee of say $120/year, then I pay 79 cents per song? And then I don't get to keep the song when my $120 year is over?
Fuck that shit.
-
So let me get this straight: I pay an annual fee of say $120/year, then I pay 79 cents per song? And then I don't get to keep the song when my $120 year is over?
Fuck that shit.
My words exactly.
~Paul
-
So what brand or type of device should I get for my wife?
Sounds like an i-Pod locks you into a poor music store and bad music owning policy - what would be a good choice?
-
The iPod won't play music from any store but the iTunes Music Store, which is one of the worst out there.
Not entirely true. The iPod won't play music from any store that uses DRM but the iTunes Music Store. An iPod will play stuff from AllOfMP3 (not actually legal but they claim to be, and nobody's been sued yet) or eMusic. And of course you can always rip and encode CDs that you already own with iTunes or Audiograbber.
-
The record labels, aided by the government, want people to shift from buying things to leasing their use (essentially renting content) and they're hoping to indoctrinate your children in this way of unamerican thinking so they can make more money.
And this is why, despite my desire to do my small part to convince the industry that inexpensive legal online music purchase is a good and feasible model, I continue to pay much, much less for my audio entertainment.
-
August:
No, you can keep the music as long as you continue to pay the $120 a year or whatever it is per month ($12.99 I think). The music will expire on the device if you don't sync it to a PC every 30 days too.
Yeah, fuck that shit is right.
AD:
I have an iPod and have never purchased a single track from the iTunes Music Store (ITMS). I get all of my mp3s from ripping CDs or from AllOfMP3.com and can load them onto my iPod or ANY other MP3 player with no problem at any time. I can give them to a friend if I want. I can back them up onto a CD. I can burn a music mix CD for someone.
They're completely unrestricted mp3s. It's all I'll ever use.
It's hard to recommend something for your wife without knowing how she listens to music, or if she has a massive mp3 collection and wants it all with her, etc.
I have an iPod nano, which is 4Gb, very small and light, easy to use, and cheap for a flash-based player ($250, maybe less online). I'll never go back to a hard drive player, for reasons I mention in the iPod thread.
I was "against" the idea of the trendy iPod for a long time, and have owned several other mp3 players, but damned if the iPod isn't the market leader for a reason. It's a really nice player that does job one well. It plays music and is a joy to use.
The new hard drive iPods also play little videos and tv shows and stuff, which is fun if you're buying the iPod for mainly music, since it's not a very good video player as portable video players go.
Cort:
I mentioned both AllOfMP3.com and eMusic in my post. Music purchased at these two places are just mp3s, plain and simple. You can do whatever the hell you want with them. They're yours to own. You can play them on any PC or portable device you want.
Golf:
The record labels/RIAA just don't get it. They're trying to combat file sharing, but then they only offer poorer quality music with more restrictions for more money. I'm willing to spend a little money for the convenience of knowing I'll get a decent quality recording that isn't any more restrictive of my use than the "free" downloads are - but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay good money to get something that isn't as good as something I can get for free (or for cheap, via AllOfMP3.com).
I was a little wary of AllOfMp3 when I first heard about them (I think there's a thread about them from about a year ago here too) but after reading The Guardian's article about them and finding that they're perfectly legal (albeit due to a loophole in Russian law which could close at any time) I can buy music there without having to worry about The Man coming down on my ass.
-
AllofMp3.com
Now That's what I'm talkin' about!.
-
yeah.
personally, I have an iPod, and I put music on it from my cds.
also, I illegally download music. Because I am a cheap bastard. And, as it is, I spend 80% of my money buying cds/records. So I refuse to spend my money on a cd I haven't heard. Therefore, I download. For free. And I realize that this is morally lax. And being morally lax is against my basic personality. But, it works for now. I buy cds with the vast majority of my money, I ask for cds for every christmas/birthday, and I give cds for any present-giving opportunity. So I really feel no remorse. i would buy far fewer cds if there wasn't a way to listen to them for free beforehand.
Also: I can't find most of the bands I like in any music store anywhere near me. But that's a horrendously weak excuse.
I wish I could convince myself that art should be free. because some part of me does believe that.
But I also know that being able to make a living through art is the greatest thing I can imagine.
So, damn me.
-
Downloading music from the internet is morally justifiable. Leasing mp3's? Paying for radio? I call for a full scale revolution. We must topple this corrupt way of doing business. Steal as much music as you can until they get the message. You want us to buy more music? Stop cramming shit down our throats and let us hear the good shit upfront. Can anyone explain why my (clearchannel dominated) radio landscape has (at least) 4 oldies stations? Don't get me wrong, I love classic rock, I was raised on it, but I don't know how I can possibly squeeze anymore enjoyment out of yet another listening of Wish You Were Here or Stairway to Heaven. The Lone new rock station is no better. Between the latest 6th generation punk or fratboy crap rock they still play Early '90's grunge daily (hourly) as if it were the latest cutting edge.
Fuck the music industry, fuck 'em where it hurts.
~Paul
-
Fuck the music industry, fuck 'em where it hurts.
~Paul
The back of a Volkswagon?
-
The back of a Volkswagen?
Bent over the tailgate of a Ford PU, double barrel shotgun style.
PS-Spellcheck said you misspelled Volkswagen, is this correct?
~Paul
-
The record labels, aided by the government, want people to shift from buying things to leasing their use (essentially renting content)
Similar deal with cell phones. They make your cell phone which is yours (you have to pay for repairing it, etc.). user unfriendly so that it's extremely hard and possibly illegal to manage the content yourself. It really bugs me, although that's not the reason I no longer have a cell phone.
-
I basically agree with Paul here - as long as the music industry continues to give me poor options, I will continue to ignore them. I buy CDs (and they get stolen, sob) and that's about it. I download songs that I have no intention of paying for (First one: Trio - Da Da Da) and songs from new albums I haven't heard yet, and then I buy the music that I really like. Before most of them were stolen, sob, I had roughly 300 CDs, with a much smaller subset of that library in the mp3 format. From now on, they all get ripped first thing, for archives if nothing else.
Oh, actually, that brings up a good point. If you are actually paying for the license to listen to "your" music, and you get it in one of these industry-approved ways, do any of them provide for free re-downloading of content you licensed and lost somehow? I would tend to doubt it, and this is because the music industry is a collection of dicks.
Player-wise, I chose the iRiver hard drive based method. Costs less than the iPod, plays more formats (not that I actually use Ogg, but I could if I wanted to), and doesn't install a service on my PC. Of course, it isn't slick and white, and the interface is somewhat cryptic, and there aren't any accessories for it, and it takes for freaking ever to start up. So.
Oh, and if you don't like paying to access the memory you bought on your phone, consider getting a model with USB cable that is supported by BitPim (http://www.bitpim.org/). It's the reason I can have whatever I choose for my ringtone for totally free.
-
If you are actually paying for the license to listen to "your" music, and you get it in one of these industry-approved ways, do any of them provide for free re-downloading of content you licensed and lost somehow?
Nope. In fact, if your download fails in the middle of downloading a track from iTunes, you have to repurchase it if you still want it. Yeah. They suck hind tit.
Player-wise, I chose the iRiver hard drive based method.
Yeah, I had one of those, and found it convoluted and the font hard to read. It had a lot of nice features, though. I miss being able to record most of all (although there are decent recording optional accessories for the nano now).
Oh, and if you don't like paying to access the memory you bought on your phone, consider getting a model with USB cable that is supported by BitPim (http://www.bitpim.org/). It's the reason I can have whatever I choose for my ringtone for totally free.
My Motorola v360 came with a USB cable that lets you load MP3s, ringtones, photos, java games, etc., onto a tiny TransFlash card that comes with the phone. I connect it to my PC and it shows up as a USB Mass Storage device. No more messing with stupid SEEMS software and other things not meant for consumers like my old phone (moto i730) had.
It doesn't have the mobile iTunes player, but it also launches iTunes on my PC whenever I plug in the phone (I haven't really spent any time to figure out how to stop this behaviour) as it's easier for me just to drag and drop files in Explorer.
So yeah, fuck the music stores, especially the new ones for some cell phones that charge $4 for a song you can't play anywhere but on your phone. Fuck those stores and everyone who actually pays for songs there.
The real problem with online music stores (and spam) is that idiots buy things from them. If they launched and everyone was such as "Um, no." then they'd have to change their evil ways. But no, people are fuck*ng stupid, so there are no viable options outside of these Russian sites (which are quite awesome and work pretty much exactly right.
-
Oh, and if you don't like paying to access the memory you bought on your phone, consider getting a model with USB cable that is supported by BitPim (http://www.bitpim.org/). It's the reason I can have whatever I choose for my ringtone for totally free.
That or just use smash the tones. I just don't like that cell phone companies make it intentionally difficult to manage your own content.
-
(although there are decent recording optional accessories for the nano now).
Uh? There are? I thought that this was a feature disabled on the nano (like the mini). I am in the market for an mp3 player that can record and is cheap....my criteria are something like...
1. Get a clear recording (either with a built-in mic or with one going through a line-in or some other input)--this means apple products that restrict recordings to 8kHz waves may not cut it. The recordings will be of class lectures.
2. Be able to record in mp3 format--ideally a choice between mp3 and wav
3. Have 2 GBs+ of storage (I'm easy in that department)
4. Relatively long battery life
5. Get the whole rig (including microphone and any other required accessories) for under $200...the cheaper, the better.
I'm kind of overwhelmed by the amount of choices. Anyone have any good recommendations?
I got a good deal on a used Ipod mini, but then found out that they don't support recording. Yeargh. It's going back to ebay, soon.