I just bought a portable MP3 player, and am now want to download some MP3s that I have been wanting to get (I plan to convert some songs from CDs that I own to MP3s as well). I am not afraid of paying for the MP3s. However, I tried ITunes, and while the thing was easy enough to use, it would not let me convert any of the songs I got to MP3 (kept giving me the "protected" speech; a waste of money as far as I am concerned if I can't get the stupid file into MP3 format).

So, I have a threefold question:
</font>

1. Where is a good, reputable pay site that I can download individual songs in MP3 format for my library?</font>
2. Is there a program that will let me convert the songs I did buy from ITunes into MP3 format? It gave me the songs in AAC format, which I have never seen before in my life. I looked through the instructions for my MP3 player, and it will only play MP3 format. Luckily, I only downloaded 4 songs (so only out around $4.00), but still is a waste of money if I can only play the damn things on my computer.</font>
3. What is the best (prefer freeware) program to convert from WAV to MP3 formats? That way I can convert songs I have on my CDs over to MP3 format and load onto the player.</font>

Any help on this issue would be appreciated, as I would like to get something of a library of legal MP3s together within a few days.

hm....you should be able to convert it with winamp. i think u can play the song on itunes and then configure winamp to output the sound from your soundcard to wav. Not sure how tho

iTunes music will basically only play on your iPod, and that's only if you update your iPods software (a process which deletes all the current stuff on your iPod including your callander and games)

What I do is, because iTunes lets you burn the music you download to CD, is I burn the iTune's song files to CD, then I take the CD to my old Mac which has the ORIGINAL iTunes version 1.0 on it. The original iTunes lets you take music CDs and label the tracks/artists/information and then Convert every track into a real MP3. Of course iTunes doesnt do the mp3 thing any more, because they want people to only buy iPods, which, I should point out, only have an 18 month life-span before you have to get another one, which is cheaper than getting its Lithium battery replaced. Apple is really good and being able to strip you clean of your hard-earned cash, not to bash them or anything, but Come on! Their G5 is no better than a Pentium 4 with an Nvidia GeForce 2. I ran UT2003 on it with the graphics on full, the frame rate was terrible in comparison to my Gateway running with the graphics on full on two screens at the same time, and my computer is over a year-and-a-half old now...

Anyway... Getting to my point: If you need to, burn your iTunes music to CD, otherwise, get Napster. As long as you're in the Continental US, Napster ROCKS, they even let you preview the song before you download it!

If you can't get napster then maybe you should wait for Wal-Mart to launch their music service (Though I guarantee you wont be able to get any non-cencored music tracks from them)

I use iTunes regularly, but I also keep a pack of 150 mini disks at my side to convert the music so that I can put it on my iPod running the old software.

There is a nice review of digital music stores available from BBspot
(I hope it is not one of their silly puns)

[ 01-01-2004, 07:26 AM: Message edited by: Paladin2000 ]

i have a minidisk player and the software i am using is provided by sony and it forces me to convert the music each time into "optomised format" .omj files. It really annoying as it takes time, and nedlessly fills my harddrive. Do you know of any other software i could use for trasfering the files?

and yes i agree i have heard good things about napster.

A good, informative article. Thanks for posting that, it really helps.

However, according to that article, Napster only allows you to download protected .wma files. Can I convert them to MP3s from there? Since it is in protected format, I doubt it. eMusic seems to be the only one that gives you an MP3, but they require a monthy service charge, and I do not plan to add THAT many songs to my library to make a monthy service charge worth it (and I do listen more to mainstream than to independent, which the article states is a downside of eMusic).

Apart from the link, I can offer no further help, sorry. :(

I have never used any of the services and frankly, I don't have THAT many collections of MP3 songs either.

Actually, I downloaded Napster, decided to sacrifice the money hoping that my MP3 player would play .wma files, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that it read them just fine. So, it looks like Napster is the way I'll be going. I ended up burning a CD with 16 songs for $15.84 (unlike a regular CD purchase, which is not much more expensive, I have a CD with 16 songs that I like). Worth it in my opinion.

I *wish* there was a legal way to Download MP3s...but those bloodthirsty music companies will probably crush me like a fly if I even think about downloading an MP3! Those monsters!

[img]graemlins/warrior1.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/monster6.gif[/img]
It's go time, suit-wearing punks!

An additional question, Nerull

someone told me, that downloaded MP3's aren't the same quality than a song on a CD from a shop. Of course, it is better to create own CD's only with songs you like, but if they lose quality ??? I once downloaded some songs from mp3.com
and coverted them into *.WAV ( I have an older CD-player that cannot play *.MP3)
and there was a big loss of quality .

Thanks for the info .

[img]graemlins/monster5.gif[/img]