Okay, I think Ipods are just as cool as the next guy, and I've heard they are supposed to have a great sound (which is important to me). Regardless, I've yet to buy one or any type of mp3 player for that matter. I'm getting to where I want to take the plunge, and to be honest, my decision doesn't have much to do with the players themselves, but rather the fact that places like yahoo! have come out with music services where you can download an unlimited number of songs from their database for a ridiculously low monthly fee. Of course, there are only certain players that are compatible with these given subscription services. Those of you in the know.....what's the best combination of subscription service and player? I'm looking for a large variety of music available and a player that has good sound quality. Is there anything like that right now, or do I need to wait until itunes has an unlimited service?
How many songs do you need it to hold? If you need a larger player that holds 1000 songs or more, Creative has a nice line of hard drive players that work with the unlimited services (yahoo, napster to go). They also have better sound, with a signal-to-noise ratio from 94-98 decibals. I'm not sure about the new iPods, but the last generation were only 86 decibals. Check out the Creative Zen Micro (6 GB, $199), Creative Zen Sleek (20 GB, $249), and Creative Zen Micro photo (8 GB, $249). I believe they may also have come out with a Zen Sleek photo for $299. If you can deal with 250 songs or less, go with a smaller flash player. Creative, Samsung, and iRiver all make good flash players that should work with the services...really can't go wrong with any of those. As far as the service itself, Yahoo is cheap but doesn't have near the catalog that Napster does...so if you don't mind shelling out $15 a month, go with Napster.
You can download unlimited songs from Yahoo, but if you want to put them on your mp3 player it costs 79¢/song. As for an MP3 player I bought a Sony minidisk player a few years ago and I'm still happy with it but I don't know what players are compatible with Yahoo music.
That's not what they are claiming......they say if you have a "compatible" player (Ipods are not), then you can put as many songs as you like on them. If you want to BURN the songs to a CD though, THEN you have to pay 79 cents a song. At least that's the way I read it. I guess it would make sense that Creative would want to make a good sounding player. I'll check them out....as well as Napster.
* Audiovox SMT 5600 Smartphone * Creative Labs Zen Micro * Creative Labs Zen Portable Media Center * Dell DJ 20GB (Gen2) * Dell DJ 30GB * Dell Pocket DJ * iRiver H10 * iRiver H320 * iRiver H340 * iRiver Portable Media Center-120 * RCA Lyra RD2762 * RCA Lyra RD2765 * Samsung YH-999 Portable Media Center -compatable players OK I see where you pay the extra $5.00 a month and you can load up your mp3 player, as long as your subscription is valid.
I just ordered the new I-Pod the 60 Gig. It has not come in yet but I have been experimenting with downloading music free from Limewire. It gets downloaded into WMP form and then I have been copying them and pasting them into my itunes player. It seems to work just fine and I can replay all the songs in itunes but I'm not sure if it will download into the ipod or not. I will keep you posted if it works. In the meantime limewire is great. Its free and they have tons of songs.
You don't need to have purchased songs to put them on an iPod. You can use songs from Limewire or any other service. I've been using iPods for a good while now, and I'm very happy with my latest one, the iPod video (60GB). The videos are awesome.
I used the Imesh but I am unable to upload those songs to my IPOD. It says they are protected. I am using the trial version. Have any suggestions?
I got a video iPod for Xmas and have no idea how they work. What's the cheapest place to download music?
Got the wife a Zen Micro for Xmas. It's awesome so far and comes with a month of free Napster; which I'm very impressed with so far. Well worth it.
If the files you download are WMA files with DRM then you can't load them onto your iPod. Napster's files are like that, not sure about iMesh. I beleive there are programs that can remove the DRM but I'm not sure about that.
I got a Rio Carbon (6 gb) for a little over $100 on Overstock.com. I use it with Rhapsody, and it has been really nice. Unlimited subscription downloads, and a nice selection of tracks.
There is no service besides itunes for the ipod. All of the online music services that allow you to transfer songs for free to a portable device (such as Rhapsody and Yahoo music) use .wma files due to license issues, which happens to be a filetype the ipod doesn't allow.
I got the Creative Zen MicroPhoto 8GB for Christmas. It blows the iPod away with the better sound quality, built-in radio/radio & voice recorder, and sleekness. Creative > Apple
