iTunes
I think iTunes are locked in to Apple products.
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iTunes does offer DRM-free tracks that will play anywhere at a slightly higher cost (and better bitrate) than the DRM-crippled tracks. Look for the little + sign next to them. Burning iTunes purchased tracks to CD also removes the DRM, but you then have to rip them back in a usable format and in the process there are data losses. The real benefit of iTunes is in its connection with the iPod device, but there are quite a few DRM-free services now and even if you use an iPod you'd be mad to buy DRM-ruined tracks.
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Just make sure they are DRM free an in MP3 format. If you download normal tracks from iTunes they will be locked to the PC (and associated iPod) and no good on this phone. Tesco do DRM free downloads but again make sure it's MP3 and not Windows Media formatted.
Hasn't Nokia released the music phone you mention in a package with music downloads included. Not paid too much attention but Nokia do a download service.
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Thanks for the help.
Burning tracks with DRM to CD then ripping them back (losing the DRM) is definitely an option- I don't think my son even with his young ears would notice the loss of any sound quality over those little headphone things that came with the phone.
But yes- if I can find DRM-less MP3s for a reasonable price then that would be better.
Regarding the Nokia 5310 'comes with music' edition, a quick search shows the cheapest at £137 compared to the just under £60 my son paid (on PAYG). No doubt the 'with music' package would work out cheaper if you made full use of it, but it was just too much extra to pay.
F
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But the comes with music edition could save a lot of money....
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But the comes with music edition could save a lot of money....
My son couldn't afford it, and we weren't prepared to just effectively give him £80; that would be spoiling him. It's much better that he saves up to buy luxuries - it's part of learning about the real world!
He already has a reasonable amount of stuff to put on it in the form of CDs he can rip.
F
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Thanks for the help. Burning tracks with DRM to CD then ripping them back (losing the DRM) is definitely an option- I don't think my son even with his young ears would notice the loss of any sound quality over those little headphone things that came with the phone.
Maybe on dangerous ground here from a site policy point of view..., but it's easier (IMHO anyway) to just play back the DRM'd track and record the input to the sound card in whatever format you want. Somewhat tedious if you're doing whole albums admitedly. See:-
labnol.blogspot.com/2007/03/download-streamings-so...l
For example, same procedure for audio file playback rather than streaming audio.
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>>..and record the input to the sound card.. >>
Via the sound card might be easier...:-)
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Well yeah, what I really mean is record the 'clean' data going into the sound card, rather than the processed output of the soundcard, which may have echo / reverb or whatever added to it by the soundcard itself. I use 'totalrecorder' which cost about 15 bucks for the fully functional version, this includes the option to record at either 'end' of the soundcard, from a signal flow perspective, so to speak.
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Does this method mean you have to record tracks one by one and add the metadata (title, artist etc.) manually, or does it communicate with the media player to pull the data out?
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No, there is no communication; what I've done in the past is record a whole album as one file, then used the automatic file splitting that most audio editing programmes have to create the individual tracks. The final stage is then to use an ID3 tag editing programme to add the data. On a good day, if the automatic track splitting is reasonably accurate compared with the proper track duration, it can automatically add the data for all the files.
It's OK for the odd album but wouldn't want to do loads of tracks this way.
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No there is no communication; what I've done in the past is...
Thanks for the suggestion. I don't know how you rip your CDs, but if it's more difficult than this 'easier' recording method you describe, I'm intrigued :-)
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This isn't aimed at ripping CDs, I don't generally do stuff the difficult way for the sake of it ;-) it's aimed at playing back copy protected music files ( for example) and re-recording them in a non copy protected form.
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it's aimed at playing back copy protected music files
Ah, sorry- got the wrong end of the stick. I had visions of getting a CD player, trying to find a lead to connect it to the PC's sound card, then messing around splitting and IDing tracks. As opposed to just hitting the 'rip' button on Media Player.
I understand now- must read more carefully...
F
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One popular piece of freeware for music editing and recording is Audacity: audacity.sourceforge.net/
Not sure if it will suit your purpose.
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I use audacity to play music with media rights, record same as a cd .wav file, burn as an audio cd, and then rip as an unprotected MP3. During the process you can add the metadata for title artist etc.
I also use audacity to record vynl albums, save as .wav and burn audio cds.
for basic free audio editing its pretty good.
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Presumably Audacity could save the music directly as MP3 rather than going through the CD stage, like I ( poorly) described above? Agreed Audacity is a pretty good audio editor, I tend to use Goldwave, but only because I'm used to it now.
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Fraid not - does not save as .MP3
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Fraid not - does not save as .MP3
It can though. Have you installed LAME and/or told Audacity where to find it? The download link for the Windows binary is on this page.
audacity.sourceforge.net/download/windows
I have it working in Linux.
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Ah yes, sorry, I recall now trying out Audacity on a home PC and realising I had to download the MP3 codec separately, as Baskerville states.
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Well the issue has been overtaken by events.
Amazon in the uk have just started a download service, 3 million tracks, cheaper than I tunes and all downloads are MP3 with no DRM
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And some new(ish) albums from £3
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Excellent! The Amazon service has been highly praised in the US.
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... And there are even Linux binaries for the downloader application. Well done Amazon.
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Hmmm... although downloads are not DRM protected, they are 'once only'. I bought a single track on Thursday and downloaded it (not using the Amazon downloader because I was in Linux and it isn't available for my distro). But the track was incomplete, and skipped in a few places.
I emailed Amazon, and they let me download it again, which I just did - in Windows this time. (Again, not using the downloader because when I clicked on the download link it just started a 'normal' download - no suggestion to install the downloader.) But it was incomplete again. I used the 'callback' service so they called me (excellent!), and they've refunded my 69p and suggested I try again next week when they've sorted out their 'teething problems'.
F
Edited by Focus {P} on 06/12/2008 at 16:19
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and boy do they have teething problems
Its taken me two hours to download the 645kb "loader" I order two tracks as a tester and in two hours I have had 145kb (0%) delivered to date
cheap it may be - its also rubbish service. they have had years to get this right
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Reading this has just prompted me to download the loader and a song I wanted - it worked very quickly and perfectly, including putting the song in the iTunes folder on a USB HDD.
I have a feeling that, had I not thought to switch the HDD on though, iTunes would have done its annoying trick of switching the library folder to c:\Documents\Music without asking - if anyone knows a way to stop iTunes doing this I'd be grateful.
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I had a couple of false starts with it last night, partly because the web pages don't have clear enough instructions. I kept ending up at the 'install the downloader' page. But once I'd figured out that you need to run the loader first and then 'link' it to the browser it worked fine in Ubuntu. Very unclear how to work it though.
Focus, will the Fedora 9 rpm not work with CentOS? Or is yours an older version?
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well my test download jumped to 8% then stopped again.
I did everything by the book, downloaded and installed the dowloader first,
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Yes I think it's pretty flaky and badly designed. But friends in the US say the Amazon service is the best so I think it will settle. And with a bit of luck it will push the record labels towards allowing non-DRM on iTunes as well. EMI is reporting that there is no extra piracy since they made their catalogue DRM-free.
Incidentally, for classical music I have been using passionato, which offers 320kb drm-free downloads in mp3 and flac:
www.passionato.com/
Edited by Baskerville on 06/12/2008 at 23:17
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Focus will the Fedora 9 rpm not work with CentOS? Or is yours an older version?
I don't know- do you think it should? I'm running CentOS 5. I'll give it a go next time, thanks.
F
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Just downloaded the track I was after from play.com. It cost 1p more (70p), but downloaded at full speed (no downloader). It's MP3, DRM-free, and quality is 320kb/s (13Mb for a 5:45 track).
Actually the 320kb/s is a bit of a worry - I think my son would rather have 160kb/s and twice as many tracks on his phone. Can they be converted, without burning to CD and ripping at the different rate?
F
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Just downloaded the track I was after from play.com.
Tracks on Play have a re-download limit which is set by the label, which is better than Amazon's re-download limit of zero.
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Actually the 320kb/s is a bit of a worry - I think my son would rather have 160kb/s and twice as many tracks on his phone. Can they be converted without burning to CD and ripping at the different rate? F
Yes, just about any of the programs mentioned towards the bottom of Volume 167 of this thread should be able to do that (audacity +mp3 codec, goldwave etc.)
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I don't know- do you think it should? I'm running CentOS 5.
It could well be fine. CentOS is essentially Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the rpms are supposedly interchangeable between equivalent releases) and is normally found on servers. Fedora is the community edition of Red Hat, and is mostly seen on desktops, and used as a development platform for RHEL. What you're using is an esoteric choice for a desktop Linux, but since CentOS 5.2 and RHEL/Fedora 9 are basically the same it is worth a try. The Amazon mp3 downloader has no dependencies as far as I can see, so my bet is it will run.
If it doesn't, it is installed in /usr/bin/amazonmp3 so you can just delete it from there.
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>> I don't know- do you think it should? I'm running CentOS 5. What you're using is an esoteric choice for a desktop Linux but since CentOS 5.2 and RHEL/Fedora 9 are basically the same it is worth a try.
Thanks. It's my work laptop, and CentOS is the IT department's choice - don't know the reasoning behind it.
F
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Stability will be the reason. And your employer probably has CentOS on the servers so having it on the desktops as well makes life easier.
Amazon need to sort themselves out though. play.com offers a very good service, as you've discovered.
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