Key Post: What's the best (legal) way to buy, store and play music?

I own a normal (non fancy) stero with a 5 disc CD changer. I use this to play, appropriately enough, CDs. In addition I have a portable stereo that I use if I am away from home working. I tend to play music in the car on an In-Car CD player. The normal way I buy music is either to wander into HMV/Virgin, or to but off the web (CDWOW etc.)

I listen to a wide range of pop/rock/classical, but don't particularly need to hear the drummer/violinist/audience member moving in their seat (gold connections and all that).

I store my music CDs on shelfspace in my house (or boot of the car)

My question is this, Is it feasible at this time to buy a wide range of music on line by downloading onto a digital device. What is the best storage method for music? Is it possible to listen to music at home (in different rooms?), away working, and in the car? I hope I am making my request for information clear, and appreciate any help or advice.

Re: What's the best (legal) way to buy, store and play music?

It really depends on what you want. I too have a largish collection of cd's etc. and recently I bought a 20gb iRiver mp3 player to play them on. I have started the laborious process of converting my cd's to mp3's and uploading them onto the mp3 player. I now have about 200 albums on the thing.

I have found that the best thing to store you mp3's on is an external hard drive (like the ones that they are selling in Aldi this week). I have placed my music on this so that it is portable and it frees up space on my home PC.

As for downloading tunes, I have bought a couple of albums and they are fine. The main thing is to get over the physical nature of not having received anything tangible for your money. The quality may not be as good for listening over ordinary speakers rather than headphones.

Re: What's the best (legal) way to buy, store and play music?

Thanks tallpaul

What websites do you use for buying music?

Can you hook up an ipod/iriver/etc. to a normal sized stereo, or at least normal sized stero speakers?

Re: What's the best (legal) way to buy, store and play music?

Imperator said:

Can you hook up an ipod/iriver/etc. to a normal sized stereo, or at least normal sized stero speakers?

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Yes you can - you just need an audio cable.

Or you can go for a fancy wireless solution to link your jukebox (iTunes or whatever) on your PC / Mac such as the Airport Express for iTunes.

There was a good review of the possibilities in last month's What Hi Fi.

Re: What's the best (legal) way to buy, store and play music?

If you check your car CD player, it may support MP3 CDs. You can get 8-9 albums onto one CD in this way, as good as a CD changer in the car.

What can be done if this is the case:
Record CDs onto computer in MP3 format. Copy these to a portable MP3 player, which can go walkies with you. CDs remain at home, where they are safe, and won't get scratched or stolen from your bag etc. You can then record separate MP3 CDs for the car, and they live in the car, again its no bother if they get stolen from the car, they can be re-recorded easily.

As for the legalities of all of this, I'm not sure about it. According to some recent posts, it would appear to be illegal to make more than one copy of content for personal use, but seeing as you can't listen to more than one copy at the same time, I don't see any issue with it. What would be an issue is if you gave the copies to someone else.

Re: What's the best (legal) way to buy, store and play music?

Bootdog said:

According to some recent posts, it would appear to be illegal to make more than one copy of content for personal use

Click to expand...

As far as I know one cannot legitimately make any copies even for personal use! Have to admit that I rip my own CDs for use on MP3 players though. Have to go now - the cops are pulling up outside the hou...