question about mp3s

[oldsoldier]

Ok, i am brand new to mp3s. I just bought a player, and I want to download some songs. What sites should I check for them? free songs are what I am looking for. Also, How do I download them? To a player on my pc, then from there? I am really ignorant when it comes to this (read:retarded)kind of stuff. Help me out folks, I know there are some of you out there that live for this!!!

[MagMan5446]

Download Kazaa.

http://www.kazaa.com

You can download everything.

[MantisMag]

did you buy it new? it should come with software to get files from your pc to the player. if not then i don't know what to tell you.

[Exodus]

id say kazza.com. beware, in the contract that you have to agree to you say that they can use spare hard drive space and cpu time!! they will start this in a few weeks. untill then your safe. i will also suggest WinMX. dont get morpheus. it blows. my 2 bits.

[Restola]

yeah kazaa installs crap on your computer. id suggest getting a no-name player that connects into the same network as morpheus and kazaa.

http://www.zeropaid.com/

[FordPrefect]

I like anything Gnutella. I use Bearshare for Gnutella.

[Hasty8]

I figured I would post this lengthy reply since I didn't really see any answers to the questions that you were looking for.

Let's start at the very begining. Go to www.real.com and download their free player and install it. You can use this program to not only play mp3's that you download from the net but to also convert your current cd collection to mp3 format. I currently have over 2000 songs on my comp.

Now, you can pay a membership to Real Networks, I think it is 9 or 10 dollars a month. IT might be more. This membership allows you to download music from their site.

If you want to go the free route then you want to download either Kazaa or Morpheus or Bearshare. These are all FILE SHARING, not just music file sharing, programs so read the next paragraph very carefully.

When you set up these programs and it asks you to select what types of files to share make sure you tell the program to only share music and video files. Make sure it does not share ".doc" or the like files. These are word documents that may contain information that you don't want people knowing. I've read quite a few news articles about people who got access to other people bank accounts and credit cards because they downloaded it from the web with a file sharing program.

The last choice is portability and here you have three choices.

The first is cd burning which I favor the least. It is cumbersome and boring, however the cds can be used just about anywhere. The cd's are limited to a max of about 74 minuntes however I believe that you can store much more on a dvd but there are no portable dvd players that I know of that just play music. <the reason for this is that cd players cannot read mp3 encoded files so the mp3s have to be reconverted into .wav files which can be read by cd players.>

The second is minidisc which I currently use. I have the Sony MZ-R500 MiniDisc player which allows me to record directly from my comp to the player. The only draw back to this is that unlike the cd burner which allows me to record the disc in a fraction of the actual playing time the MD player forces me to record the music at real time speed. Long story short, each minidisc takes me 74 minutes to make.

The third choice is one I am leaning towards more and more every day. These are the Digital players. You can transfer your mp3's from your comp directly to these via a cable, much faster than burning a cd.

The digital players range in size. Sony has one that is as thin as a pen and then Creative Labs produces the Nomad Jukebox line which is about the same size as a modern cd walkman. The smaller they are the less they can hold. Most average players have anywhere from 32 to 64 megs of memory which will give you about an hour or so of music. The Nomad however has up to 10 gigs of storage. Just as a yard stick for you to guage this by, 609 songs in one of my folders equals 2.25 gigs of memory. As you can see, one Nomad can house a very respectable music collection.

Get the Nomad and the tape deck adapter and now you can take probably 2000 songs from your favorite artist on the road with you.

Their website is http://www.americas.creative.com/pro...maincategory=2

Also, in case you wanted to do your own research on the topic I recommend www.google.com for a search engine. IT really is the best out there.

Hope this helps. Feel free to send me back any questions if you have any.

[oldsoldier]

thanks hasty. I have an mp3 player...but that info really helped me out. Thanks for taking the time to help me with this...cuz my next quesation wouldve been how to record a cd onto my pc..then onto mp3s. Thats what I was trying to do...but it is wma format. I will download those programs...thanks.