Topic: Alternative to iTunes?

[froglets]

Hi All,

I don't have an iPod & have no use for one, but I do want to load music onto my pc, create playlists and burn MP3 cd's for the car.  As iTunes has just binned all the music I transferred from my old pc via memory stick & I've now lost some jazz that it'll take ages to re-borrow the cd's for, I'm in a harrumph.

Is there anything out there you'd reccomend as an alternative?

Ta.

[timelady]

I use Windows Media Player to do all that.  :) Should be pre-installed on your computer although you can see if there's an update.

Tina.

[telboy]

Hi froglets,
Try

www.allofmp3.com

Great site, but don't tell anyone I told you so!

[djbrenton]

I use Foobar for playing music, it's a very low resource playerand can be customised to suit you. For ripping and burning I use Exact Audio Copy with Lame or FLAC. It's the most accurate ripper and burner as it rereads errors in CD's until it's sure it's got an accurate copy. It also uses read and write offset correction for faithful copies. It is a bit techy to learn to use though.
Which jazz CD's did you lose BTW?

[froglets]

Thanks for all the replies.

I have found some of the music I lost from the new pc still on my work provided laptop (oops, bad housekeeping) however it's in M4a & i've tried to export it to cd, but iTunes tells me there's no burning software available, which there is & nothing seems to recognise m4a format.

I may have a naff copy of iTunes, but as I am still annoyed at losing over 300 tracks on the pc with the speakers in the home office, which should be an ok copy, I've bought mp3HQ.  ( well I was on amazon and there were so many books in my basket, what's £15 of software.)  It does what I want and stuff iTunes.

DJB - the cd copies I have now only on m4a are Jazz a' St Germaine & Verve 2004 & 2005.  Probably my own fault for loading them onto my works laptop so it downloaded the track listings for me - all different artists with few titles in english.  I'm trying to expand my knowledge of jazz I like as it's a bit limited and with so much to choose from, was loaned these as a way of sampling a range of artists.

Cheers

[telboy]

but I do want to load music onto my pc,

Lost the plot there. Still, if you found your lost files - no prob?

[froglets]

's ok Telboy, for a very good set of reasons (yeah right) I have 3 pc's of differing ages and capability & software & all differently internet enabled.

The "lost" files turned up on another installation of iTunes, but nothing else seems to recognise the format & I don't want to use iTunes again as that's what binned it in the first place on the target machine.  Probably to do with authentication as I first loaded the cd's onto the works pc & transferred via memory stick to the target pc, from whence they disappeared & are nowhere on disk.

Still with me?

Timelady, fab - the new pc has that with all the bells & whistles, the old pc is steam driven and would probably go into terminal meltdown if I tried to download ( via dial up ) all the in between updates to 2000 to get it to run that version of media player, but using it on new one now you've pointed me in the right direction.

Now just waiting for the new power supply unit for the old machine as it went phut after I relocated it up the ladder into the new home loft office.

Give me UNIX any day.

[fbgrifter]

I thoroughly recommend Napster for downloading tunes for which you pay a sub fee for.  These tunes cannot however be burned unless you purchase each one individually (or as an album).  As a very cheap alternative Mp3-freebie.com is a peer-to-peer system where you can download as much stuff as you like of varying quality.  If you check out the Virgin.net home site their music section reviews different music download sites.

[telboy]

The ability to download for little money is getting thin.
The Russian site is still bril. but you can't pay with visa at the mo.
They say that will be resolved?

[djbrenton]

Far be it for me to recommend illegal downloads but torrenting is still free and far more comprehensive than anything else.

[Mac49]

I still use winmx, along with limewire and bittorrent, all free.