music downloads

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by laurieB, May 8, 2006.

  1. laurieB

    laurieB MajorGeek

    o.k. so i know this question has been asked a dozen times, but as everything keeps changing i'm gonna ask again anyway. we used to have kazaa-lite+++, which we were very happy with. when my puter went on the blink i was advised to uninstall it which i did. i was told that the best of the rest was e-mule, which i now have, but its hopeless. so much so that hubby is now saying he will PAY (yee gods) for one that works as well as kazaa used to. soooo.....what do we get? much aloha
     
  2. Lev

    Lev MajorGeek

    I use iTunes...works great. You pay 99c per tune but you can preview first to make sure it is what you want.
     
  3. laurieB

    laurieB MajorGeek


    no, i think he was thinking more of the kind where you pay say $20 and download anything you want....or is that already outdated. 99c a song is a bit steep (a bit lol)
     
  4. QuickSilver

    QuickSilver Corporal

    Actually Napster do both a pay per track service (Napster Lite) and a Infinite download (In the uK £15 a mont - Napster To Go)..

    Heres the rub.

    A lot of the infinite download services don't give you mp3s. They give y ou the music in a DRM protected format, like that now commonly incorporate in MSs WMA format. This allows you to play the music throughout the duration of your subscription, but once you cancel your subscription the music no longer plays.

    The iTunes pay per track, and Napster Light pay per track both give you wma's. You can keep the track forever but to put it on an mp3 player you need one that understands DRM and can autenticate the tracks.

    I'd therefore recommend a pay per track deal - you don''t need to keep shelling out the subscription money just to listen to the songs you downloaded.
     
  5. goldfish

    goldfish Lt. Sushi.DC

    Well, personally anything which is DRM'd I will certainly get around. There is no way I'm going to pay someone for the privilege of listening to some music for a month. That is until it becomes a offense to do so (not that the US would bother extraditing me for removing DRM for personal use - or would they?).

    Anything I get with iTunes I have un-drm'd. SlimServer doesn't understand AAC files so I can't play them on my media devices. And I can't play them on my Linux boxes either. I usually convert them to ogg.
     
  6. ANHEDONIC

    ANHEDONIC Will Title For Food

    I'm looking for a Pay Music Download site that lets you download the songs in mp3 format.... I don't have any Apple products like Ipods and don't want to start using Itunes Music Player, because I <3 Winamp.... I've read there are programs to use to convert the Itunes format songs into mp3's but I'm not interested in that hassle....
     
  7. evilevets

    evilevets Sergeant Major

    The reason that no one wants to sell MP3's is because all of the competing devices have proprietary formats. It's done purposely to make you a slave to them. MP3 is too universal.

    It's a monopoly. They don't want you to have options. They want to own you, and control where, how and when you listen to the music that YOU paid for!

    You basically have to choose something and stick with it. Unless of course you know how to convert it to a more universal format. Or, use alternative download sources to download MP3's which you can do whatever you want with.

    Me, I love music too much to let someone dictate how, when and where I listen too it. I'm also not an idiot who will pay more than once for the same song so that I can listen to it on a different device.


    -evil
     
  8. laurieB

    laurieB MajorGeek

    that is just all sooooo complicated!!!! so much for the age of technology. i do need to be able to put them on mp3. (my son has one). i also need to be able to burn them to CD. hubby and i are celebrating our birthdays with a new sound system. i need something like kazaa-lite that allowes me to download songs from the net, and then put them on other devices. i cannot afford a dollar a song. i cannot even affford 10-20 dollars a month. that is 100-200 odd a year, much more than we would spend on cd's in a year. i was going to get an 'i-pod alternative', as well as a new sound system. now i am just bemused. :(
     
  9. laurieB

    laurieB MajorGeek

    ps. i have nero...i thought that nero converted all that stuff? i really dont understand what i need.
     
  10. evilevets

    evilevets Sergeant Major


    Sounds like you need a BitTorrent client. I like Turbo Torrent, myself. Please note, BitTorrent technology is a completely legal way to download or transfer any type of file, including MP3's.

    Download a BitTorrent client program, and then do some research, as they can be tricky to use, especially if you have a firewall on your router. There is a ton of info on the net on how to do this. Once you get that all set up, there are various websites that you can browse to download specific torrents. Torrents are the safest way to download, as you can usually read comments on specific torrents to make sure that what your getting is what you actually want.

    Please be advised, that downloading MP3's from major-label artists (which unfortunatly are the only kind any of us usually want!) from BitTorrent sites is considered illegal, since there is no DRM. Think about this before you do it.

    I'm not trying to condone it, just letting you know that it is an option.


    -evil
     
  11. evilevets

    evilevets Sergeant Major


    Nero, like a lot of programs can convert WAV to MP3 and vice versa, but WMA is a little tricky. I'm sure though that there are plenty of free apps out there that will do this.

    iTunes, I've never used, so I'm not familiar with their format, but I'm sure they've got some kind of copy/convert protection.


    -evil
     
  12. QuickSilver

    QuickSilver Corporal

    I recently used the Napster-lite service and ended up with the wma files adn not mp3 like I expected. I agree with Goldfish; I'm paying my .79p for a track of music, to hell with a big corporation telling me what I can and can't do with that track. I'm not pirating it, I'm not distributing it, I just want to listen to it, on my cheap and cheerful mp3 player at the gym.

    So I spent an evening messing around with ideas to get the wma's into mp3s, including burning the wma's to CD with nero (actually I wanted to create a CD image on my local disk and mount it with something like daemon tools and then covert to mp3 - no sense wasting a CD, eh?) but the damned DRM crud wouldn't let Nero touch it.

    I've got them converted now, its not tricky.

    I think if someone is going to go down the pay per track download scene iTunes is probably as good-a-choice as any. There seem to be plenty of tools out there to convert the m4p format to mp3. Apparently.

    I honestly don't know how the monthly subscription things work on a file basis - how you download them, or what. Kazaa Lite is less tempting to me as it is as illegal as it gets (I'm happy to class DRM bypassing as a grey area since I ain't pirating and I'm not ripping anyone off, and I am paying for the track) and people using these platforms are increasingly getting targetted by over-zealous organisations like the RIAA.
     

MajorGeeks.Com Menu

Downloads All In One Tweaks \ Android \ Anti-Malware \ Anti-Virus \ Appearance \ Backup \ Browsers \ CD\DVD\Blu-Ray \ Covert Ops \ Drive Utilities \ Drivers \ Graphics \ Internet Tools \ Multimedia \ Networking \ Office Tools \ PC Games \ System Tools \ Mac/Apple/Ipad Downloads

Other News: Top Downloads \ News (Tech) \ Off Base (Other Websites News) \ Way Off Base (Offbeat Stories and Pics)

Social: Facebook \ YouTube \ Twitter \ Tumblr \ Pintrest \ RSS Feeds