Replace Napster Legally, I Think!
By Larry Anders, Librarian, Tampa PC Users Group
Larry@AndersNet.com
Well, I will have to admit it, "I was a Napster junkie," and when it effectively went down, so did I. I went into a techno depression the likes of which you have never seen. My withdrawal was so bad I didn’t even want to get near my computer. My wife got really nervous because I was hanging around her so much.
I tried a few of the imitations but to no avail. That’s all they were… Napster want-a-be’s. Then a GOOD friend of mine told me about KaZaA, and I WAS BACK pounding the keyboard!!! But, believe it or not, that is not what this article is all about. I was going to write about KaZaA, but I was afraid someone would read my article and tell the download police and shut it down too. So, I’ll leave you on your own to discover KaZaA. (Suffice it to say, you won’t be sorry.)
When I realized my hard drive was filling up from all the MP3s on my computer, I went looking for a good all around recording program, and, believe me, I tried a bunch of them, but I won’t bore you with those. I settled on MUSICMATCH jukebox 6.1, and got a lot more than I expected. Just some of the things it will do are:
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Make your own CDs from your MP3s
(NOTE THE WORD YOUR .) I’ve heard so much lately about what is legal and what is not, I didn’t really know what was what and what was not. (Whoa! Maybe I’ll try poetry next – maybe not.)
First, let me tell you that what I’m about to tell you next works for me because I have broadband Internet connections both at work and at home. One of the best features about MUSICMATCH to me is the Internet radio stream it feeds to your computer. I have not tried this program on dial-up so I’m not sure of the quality of that feed, but the quality is excellent on cable and DSL. A couple of clicks of the mouse, choose the genre of music you like, and voilą,
you are listening to quality music, without the DJ’s talk interrupting the process.Most of the above is available on the Freeware version of MUSICMATCH, but my gosh, for $19.99 you also get:
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Multi-session CD burning (at up to 24X)That last item above, Radio MX, is a service MUSICMATCH provides for about $30 a year. With it you get additional items such as:
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Artist Match, create stations with up to 25 favorite artistsOkay, okay… so what is all this leading to? Now that I was able to listen to the type of music that I wanted, whenever and wherever I wanted, and at CD-quality, all I needed to do was record this music. So… I did a search on Google.com for "record streaming audio", and I came up with a program called Total Recorder (for $11.95), and there I was.
Now I can choose the type of music, download a particular title, artist, genre or era with MUSICMATCH, and record away with Total Recorder, which gives you several easy ways to save files in different formats. I, of course, have chosen MP3s, and I’m very satisfied with the outcome.
Now, tell me, is this any different from an updated version of taping a song off an old- fashioned analog radio using a cassette recorder? I don’t remember the recording industry telling me that I couldn’t do that, so I guess I’m legal now… or not!
By the way, check back next month and I’ll tell you about some neat stuff to play all these audio files on.
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