Posted by Broadway Blue on 03/19/07 02:17

Hal wrote:
> On 16 Mar 2007 19:23:05 -0700, davidia8@hotmail.com wrote:
>
>> Complete novice questions
>>
>>
>> I have never owned a MP3 player but am interested in buying two,
>> one for myself and the other for my 82 yr old mother, but I know
>> nothing about them.
>>
>> Questions
>>
>> 1- Am I limited to using the website of the brand type player that
>> I purchase for downloading music selections to the player or for
>> instance can I download music from iTunes to a Sandisk player?
>>
>> 2- Is there a decent size selection of 40's + 50"s music available
>> for downloading to my mothers player?
>
> I won't tackle part 1, I use a Walkman and it requires a program
> supplied by Sony that doesn't seem to be popular here, but works
> fine for my listening pleasure.

My daughter has a Sony MP3 player, and I do find Sonic Stage a pain in
the arse! But if it works for you, that's great. (My daughter finds it
okay too, so it might just be me?!)

> There was a group of people who swapped files according to a
> Whitburn list of music played over the radio and it had expanded
> somewhat when I was collecting the songs I enjoyed in my younger
> days. They uploaded files in MP3 format to
> alt.binaries.sounds.1940s.mp3 and
> alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.1940s. There are other years, but that is
> one decade back farther than I wanted to go and the beginning of the
> Whitburn files, I think. The later years were of more interest to
> me.
>
> I haven't looked lately, but you might find a search through the
> alt.binaries groups worthwhile.
>
> The suggestion to burn purchased downloads to a CD and rip back to
> MP3
> format is a good one. I use CDex to rip, it is quick and easy. I
> purchased several tunes from Walmart at $.88 each and found the
> licensing of the tunes a real pain because if you move the files
> they lose the license. It is much easier to simply burn them to CD
> and then rip to MP3 and you can deal with them as you like.

Try and avoid anything that is DRM protected, is my advice to anyone
buying online, be it WMA, AAC or anything. Downloading from the MP3
binary newsgroups, buying in the MP3 format online or just getting a
CD and ripping to MP3 (at whatever bit rate suits), is so much easier
in the long run. - As the tracks aren't just locked in to one brand
of player and have no licenses to expire!!

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