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General discussion

Thinking of switching from iTunes/iPod to Napster

by howiess2000 Jan 16, 2008 12:08PM PST

hello everybody,

ive been using iTunes/iPod for the past 3-4 yrs. however, i'm getting kind of sick of all the hoops I have to jump thru just to share a song with my wife, because of all the copyright stuff. Another reason i'd like to switch is because of all this new technology, such as MP3 phones. I'm thinking of switching to something like napster where you pay monthly or something like iTunes, where you pay per song, but in a MP3 format.

So in YOUR opinion, would this be a good move? if so, what MP3 players do you like (eg. Zune)? Should i just download from an MP3 site and transfer to iTunes?

Please let me hear your two cents worth =D
Thanx

Discussion is locked

6 Posts
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mp3s are a good move
by ktreb Jan 16, 2008 3:27PM PST

I'm in that iPod/iTunes universe myself, but I really have no plans on getting out of that anytime soon. I like my iPods and I've got my podcasts and playlists set up the way I like them. I just got a bunch of iTunes gift cards for Christmas - I'll get the plus tracks whenever I can.

I think there's room to have both kinds of services. I also subscribe to Rhapsody to go to use on my 2GB SanDisk Sansa Clip, which I had gotten for $35 (a steal!) at Best Buy Thanksgiving weekend. I can now listen to entire songs and albums instead of 30 second snippets, which is really too short a time to figure out whether a song/album is worth buying. My Rhapsody account is good on upto 3 computers and 3 devices. I believe that Napster's subscription service works similarly. If I really like a song or album enough to want to keep, I'll buy it from iTunes since I need to use up my credits. When I've used up my credits, I'll probably do a mixture of iTunes and Amazon.com's mp3 downloads. I already have an Amazon account, so why not?

I just got an LG Chocolate phone, which also plays mp3s. Although I've loaded it up with 300 songs, I don't plan on using it as a music player all that much. I like the navigation on my iPod better and I would rather not waste battery life. I'd rather the battery be used on making phone calls.

If I didn't have iPods, I probably would go for the Zune 80GB. I like to have tight podcast integration in both hardware and software. After the iPod, Zune has got it. I think in some future firmware update you can unsubscribe to podcasts right on the Zune, if it hasn't happened already. And it has that large screen. Some people lament the lack of EQ, but it's not something I really use anyway. I don't like the lack of video offerings in the Zune Marketplace, not that I buy video all that much. But I do like to have the option. Every once in a while I'll buy something off of iTunes to view on my iPod Touch.

I had the opportunity to listen to Sony's new players (NWZ-810 series) and they sound great. I wouldn't really want to watch video on them as the screens are too small. They don't have fm tuners (the 610 series does), no expandable memory, and top out at 8GB.

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napster
by thegee77 Jan 17, 2008 11:34AM PST

napster is cool cos even though they don't charge you to stream, they still pay the artists a small royalty just for streaming the 30 second sample. Other than that, they're cool anyway since they started the whole online music boom and have pretty much mastered it. Not sure what the monthly fee is now though

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i agree
by howiess2000 Jan 17, 2008 12:56PM PST

thanx ktreb,

my wife has a mp3 player/phone that came with a napster month trial. i had a chance to mess around with it and found that, it's only really good for downloading music on the wife's phone. however, like you said, i'd rather use the phone's battery to make calls.

currently i have 2400+ songs on itunes and my ipod, 500+ of which were purchased from itunes, so converting would be quite a task. so for the time being i'm going to keep the ipod. however from now on, i'll be purchasing music from amazon.com or something like it. I'm guessing that they dont have all the copyright protection to deal with, and i'd be able to convert the songs to mpeg4 for itunes/ipod.

one last question: is there a program that would convert my itunes purchased music to mp3, that would keep the same sound quality and the music info intact?(eg. song title, album, artist, and cover art)

thanx again

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not really sure on programs
by ktreb Jan 17, 2008 3:41PM PST

Sorry. And unfortunately any mention of how to do this beyond the usual burn to audio cd then rip that cd back onto your computer would probably result in the locking this thread and deleting the offending posting. Probably in order to do what you want it would require a program to break the DRM (the copy protection).

Anyway, I'm in the same boat as you. I have nearly 1000 songs purchased from iTunes. 5000 songs ripped from cds. Hundreds of dollars in iTunes Store credit. I have many more cds but don't feel like ripping them.

You can buy from Amazon.com's mp3 downloads and you don't need to convert them to mpeg4. Just keep them as mp3s - they play fine. All of my songs except for the iTunes store purchases are in mp3. I share my library except for those purchases with 3 other programs - Windows Media Player, Rhapsdody, and Verizon VCast Music Manager. And I can use the unprotected iTunes purchases (the iTunes Plus stuff) in Rhapsody and put them on other players that support AAC. I currently don't have any. The Zune and Creative Zen are among a few that support unprotected AAC.

If you have iTunes Plus content, you can convert them to mp3s within iTunes and keep the information and sound quality intact. You need to change your importing preferences in iTunes. Edit menu, preferences, advanced, importing, change setting to import using mp3 encoder, then select your bitrate settings. iTunes Plus content is 256kbps, so you can make it that. Unfortunately, this doesn't help you for regular iTunes stuff. This also creates a second copy - you'll have the original AAC version as well as the mp3.

You can also upgrade some of your iTunes purchased content to iTunes Plus. Unfortunately, not all songs are available as only EMI and some independent labels have made their content available for iTunes Plus. There might be one other major label, but I'm not sure. And you have to pay 30 cents per song for the privilege. All four major labels and a bunch of independents have agreements with Amazon in hopes of breaking the iTunes stranglehold.

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Why switch?
by mreiher Jan 17, 2008 10:48PM PST

I'm not sure what the problem is you're having. We have several iPods and computers and my girlfriend and I share the same iTunes library on our devices without any problem. I think you just need to dig deeper as to how to do this. I looked into one of the subscription based services, but decided this was not for us. I like to own my music and with Amazon, iTunes and such I can do that and are not strapped with a monthly fee... Plus I'm not sure if one monthly fee from Napster would cover multiple devices??? Maybe someone knows?

Anyway... bottom line is you have a good set up now... I'd take more time to learn how iTunes works and your iPods ... they are great players and you can have it all if you take the time to learn a few tricks.

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thank you
by howiess2000 Jan 18, 2008 12:03PM PST

thanx a lot for your input and advice. a little frustrating about the the copyright protection, but hey what can you do? =D

gonna stick with itunes, but gonna buy my music from amazonmp3.com.

thanx again

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