OK, I don't have an iPod. Haven't really figured out why I might need one. As far as I can tell, it's like having a walkman, except it holds billions more songs, yes?

I rarely listen to music at home. I will sometimes listen to music in the car, if I'm not listening to some kind of talk show. I rarely listen to music stations - I have a 6-CD player in the car, so I'll listen to whatever I happen to have in one of those. I don't have a cassette player in the car. I don't listen to music much at work, mostly because I get tired of changing out the CD in my computer and I haven't found an online music station that I like.

I have no idea what iPods cost. I'm sure they have some kind of range, just like anything else. If I decide I want one, the husband will probably have a preference or suggestion as to what I get.

So, what would be the reasons that I should/need to get an iPod? Thanks!

So, what would be the reasons that I should/need to get an iPod? Thanks!

You sound like me - I don't listen to music much at home, I listen to talk shows in my car (although I do have a cassette player.)

My husband bought me a big ipod for my birthday about a year ago - a 60 gig, I think. I think it cost around $300.

On the one hand, I have more music on it than I'll ever need in my life. On the other hand, I really do like it.

1- I have an iHome clock radio in my bedroom now. I can plug my ipod in at night and play a playlist while I go to sleep. I sometimes have trouble sleeping. I've made some mellow playlists. I also have some classical music on the ipod so I can select one of those albums to help me sleep, too.

2- I haven't flown in 7 years. It really was nice on the airplanes this week to have my ipod. Three of my flights didn't have any music available and the one that did, I didn't really want to listen to any of their options (plus there was this pinging thing going on when I turned it on.)

3- I love road trips in our car. We do like to listen to the ipod when we're on the road and can't get our regular LA radio stations. There are other options to make it work on your car radio if you don't have a cassette player in your car.

I like how I can select different genres of music and have the ipod just play those songs shuffled. I use this most often with "80's" classified music, but I've also used it with "Children's Music" to keep the kids happy.

Or I can select a specific artist and play all those songs shuffled. I used this when we went to Solvang with "Weird Al Yankovic."

Or I can hassle my husband about his fandom of a one-hit-wonder that he claims had other hits. I did this when I selected "Big Country" as the artist and then the songs were listed in alphabetical order. He has so many different versions of "In a Big Country" that there was a long list. I played every version that he had. The first one started as we pulled out of Barstow and the last one finished as we were exiting the freeway 2 miles from our house. :eek:

I probably use my ipod less than others do but I use it more than I thought I would and I'm glad I have it.

Adrienne

I thought of another one....

I love itunes now that I use it.

When I saw Hairspray and many people were reporting that the soundtrack was sold out - I bought it on itunes for $11.99.

When I saw Wicked (the first time...) and I came home Defying Gravity, I didn't have to wait to go to the store the next morning, I downloaded the soundtrack that night.

When I was making one of my playlists, I searched itunes for a specific song. It was a bit obscure (it was a religious song,) and not only did I find it, I found it sung by the artist who sand the same song at my wedding. (Seriously.) 99 cents later, the song was mine.

Seminars. I went to a conference in March, purchased some of the seminars on CD, ripped them into my itunes and I can listen to them on my ipod. This week, I ripped a CD from that conference into my ipod before I left my hotel so I could listen to it on the plane if I wanted to.

Adrienne

I use mine for my dance classes mostly. My little Nano goes with me everywhere, literally. It is so small, no bulk, no weight, so I tuck it in a little pocket in my purse and bring it everyplace.

When I fly, I love having music to listen to. I also have a collection of NPR shows, such as "Driveway Moments" and "This American Life", where I ripped my favorite stories to listen to. We also listen to these on the road when me and my girlfriends road trip. You can listen in your car through various apparatus. I have a Belkin TuneCast. You basically find stations that are unused in the area you are in, tune the system to that station, and play your iPod over the car speakers.

I don't listen to music much at work, mostly because I get tired of changing out the CD in my computer and I haven't found an online music station that I like.

AK has already made a lot of good points on the other items, but I'll jump in on this one because I actually primarily listen to digital music at work. I'll note that I actually use my ultra-mobile PC (basically a small laptop...) rather than something like an iPod, but the basic concept is the same.

Before digitizing my music collection, I did keep a stack of CDs at work, but I also got to the point where I just didn't use them that much. Besides getting tired of swapping out discs, I also got tired of hauling discs back and forth from the office to avoid getting tired of a too-small selection. I now have my entire music collection with me without carrying anything that I wouldn't normally be carrying to work anyway. An iPod (or similar) is also typically small enough that it isn't much of a burden to haul it along.

Your comment about not finding an online music station that you like is also something that my digital music collection solved. I pretty regularly now just start the music player on "shuffle all", which just tells it to pick tracks randomly from my entire collection. This essentially means that I have a "radio station" that plays nothing but music that I own. I use this feature probably just about as often as I play albums all the way through now.

There are a few "cons" that you should at least keep in mind as well, though. The first is that, assuming you have a fairly large CD collection, getting all your music into digital form can be a pretty big project. Generally, each CD takes about 5-10 minutes to rip to the computer. In most cases, the software should automatically fill in the track names and other such information, but if you have a fair number of obscure CDs (or you are ripping ones that were just released), you might have to enter some of that data yourself. I've also found that I tend to have to do a fair amount of "tweaking" of the tags as well, particularly the artist and genre tags. Of course, you also have to have enough disk space on the computer to hold all these music files, which could add a bit to the initial purchase price of the music player. You can get a 500GB drive for around $100 now, though, so you aren't talking about an extraordinary cost, but it still should be considered.

Another thing to note is that purchasing of music online for downloads is still a pretty immature business without a lot of standardization. Currently, the majority of music sold online is protected with "digital rights management" technology that puts some limitation on their use. AK mentioned iTunes, but it is important to realize that, other than a limited selection of unprotected tracks that they currently offer through a deal with EMI, the music sold there will only play on PCs or on portable music players sold by Apple. Music from other stores have similar restrictions, although with other brands of portable players. You generally can get around this by burning the music to CD (which they do all allow) and then re-ripping it, but that reduces the sound quality a bit and also is basically a pain. The sound quality of most currently-available downloaded music (including from iTunes) is lower than a purchased CD as well, although you do need a pretty good ear to tell the difference.

The trend does show online music moving away from the protected tracks and towards a more unrestricted model, but that is still going to take some time. The EMI/iTunes deal only just started a couple months ago and a similar deal that Universal Music just announced with several other online music stores (but not iTunes) isn't scheduled to start until January. I suspect by the end of 2008, the vast majority of music sold online will be unprotected, but for now CDs still are generally the best way to buy music.

Finally, one last point that I always like to mention in threads like this is the fact that Apple isn't the only company that makes digital music players. iPods are very good and certainly are an excellent choice for many people, but do make sure you shop around a little and evaluate the various alternatives before making a purchase.

-Jeff

I have an 80 gig and love it. I have alot of downtime at work and also spend alot of time in airports, hotels etc and having 20 or so movies on my IPOD is great, I can hook it up to most tvs or watch the screen, as during a flight.
Zune is another manufacturer that makes video/audio players, i just find the Ipod to my liking, but they do work better with a Mac as opposed to a PC.

One thing to consider re an ipod vs another mp3 player is the 'accessories' some (I'd presume) can be used by any type - but one of my sister's friends ended up getting a ipod to replace her non-brand mp3 because she had issues finding the type of extras (in-home players, etc) that would work with her non-Apple brand.

I personally haven't had any issues with itunes and my PC, and it was REALLY great when I wanted a single song that I don't know if it'll ever been released on CD. (Two bands did the song together, and I really wanted the live version, not some studio verision.)

One thing to consider re an ipod vs another mp3 player is the 'accessories' some (I'd presume) can be used by any type - but one of my sister's friends ended up getting a ipod to replace her non-brand mp3 because she had issues finding the type of extras (in-home players, etc) that would work with her non-Apple brand.

The accessory port on the iPod is proprietary to Apple, which means that a large percentage of accessories will not work with other brands. That is obviously something to consider on both the "pro" and "con" column when making a purchase. On one hand, there generally are more accessories available for iPods than for other brands right now. On the other hand, as with iTunes Music Store purchases, you will no longer be able to use them if you later decide to move to a non-Apple music player at some point in the future.

I do think this lack of standardization, particularly with the current industry leader insisting on sticking with a closed platform, is a serious issue with digital music right now.

-Jeff

2- I haven't flown in 7 years. It really was nice on the airplanes this week to have my ipod. Three of my flights didn't have any music available and the one that did, I didn't really want to listen to any of their options (plus there was this pinging thing going on when I turned it on.)

I have a longish plane trip next month, with stopovers, as well as a four-hour train ride in October. I was figuring on bringing books to read, but having music would be nice as well if I didn't feel like reading.

3- I love road trips in our car. We do like to listen to the ipod when we're on the road and can't get our regular LA radio stations. There are other options to make it work on your car radio if you don't have a cassette player in your car.

I threw in the "don't have a cassette player in my car" comment just to say that I can't listen to cassette tapes, but I didn't know it would actually be relevant to the discussion. So if I wanted to listen to the iPod in the car, how would I make that work? AFAIK, you usually listen to an iPod through headphones, which obviously wouldn't work in the car.

I love itunes now that I use it.

I don't know how much I'd use iTunes. I'm weird about my books and my music. I want an actual book to hold when I'm reading, so online books aren't my thing. Same with music. I need a CD case and liner notes and such, so just buying the music would be weird to me. Plus it would mean I could only listen to it through my iPod as opposed to having the CD to play.

AK has already made a lot of good points on the other items, but I'll jump in on this one because I actually primarily listen to digital music at work. I'll note that I actually use my ultra-mobile PC (basically a small laptop...) rather than something like an iPod, but the basic concept is the same.

Same question as with the car - how would I listen to my iPod at work? Again, headphones aren't an option. Do they have speakers I can buy? Can I plug it into my computer somehow? Both at home and at work, I have PCs, if that makes a difference.

The first is that, assuming you have a fairly large CD collection, getting all your music into digital form can be a pretty big project.

Yeah, I've heard that can be a big hassle. I've actually heard of businesses that have popped up where you give them your iPod and entire collection and they go away and do it all for you for a price. It's a fairly hefty price, as I recall, but some people pay it because they don't want to do it themselves.

I don't know that I'd want to put my entire collection on an iPod anyway. There's a lot of stuff that I own that I don't necessarily listen to anymore. There are some things that I know I would automatically put on. I'm also assuming you don't have to put an entire album on? There are some things where I'd only want a couple of tracks. I would expect that I can choose to just upload those tracks or if I have to upload the entire album, I can just delete the ones I don't want.

I also have some stuff on cassette and even LPs that I'd want added. How does one go about doing that? I'm figuring I need some kind of conversion machine or something.

Finally, one last point that I always like to mention in threads like this is the fact that Apple isn't the only company that makes digital music players. iPods are very good and certainly are an excellent choice for many people, but do make sure you shop around a little and evaluate the various alternatives before making a purchase.

Hmmm, I hadn't thought about that. Guess that would be something the husband has to figure out for me. Any recommendations and pros and cons versus Apple or not-Apple? I read the earlier discussion about accessories and such.


Oh, and one really important question: would I really have to dance and/or pose like all the people in the iPod ads?

Regarding listening without headphones - in the car, I have a 'thing' that plugs into the power outlet (does anybody still use it for it's 'original' use?) and plug the ipod into that, and tune it to a low numbered FM station (there's 4 choices on the thing I have) and it broadcasts over the car stereo. There seem to be lots of choices on this item.

And for at work, you can get the same sort of thing that Adrienne mentioned like she has for going to sleep. I don't know if you can play it over the computer speakers some way, too - though if you install itunes I think you could use your ipod to transfer from one computer to another. HOWEVER, I'm very far from an expert on this stuff (about at the 'very dangerous' stage) and there may be restrictions based on some of the digital copyright rules.

I'm with you on the CDs - but it was really nice for that one/two song purchases. Though I was kind of bummed that an album I wanted to get wasn't available through itunes, so I guess I'm trying to wean myself off of the hard things that I don't need to have. (And I need to go order that album online, too - it's not availble in the normal stores, and I don't feel like going to Tipitina's in this heat!)

There are a lot of ipod accessories available. Drince mentioned the FM radio thing to play it in your car. There's iHome and lots of little speaker kit options that plug into your ipod - I've seen them at Target among other places.

Yes, you can plug it into any computer.

Doc has a huge CD collection. When we got his ipod years ago, he just sat down and ripped it and got done with it. Now we have them all.

Adrienne

Doc has a huge CD collection. When we got his ipod years ago, he just sat down and ripped it and got done with it. Now we have them all.
Same here. We've ripped all of our CDs to high-quality MP3 and put many of them on Jennifer's iPod (a 20GB model, if memory serves me right). We've never made a purchase from iTunes.

We used MP3 instead of Apple's proprietary AAC format so that we could use TiVo Desktop (http://www.tivo.com/redirects/desktop/), Avvenu (http://www.avvenu.com/) and other personal file-sharing tools.

On the other hand, as with iTunes Music Store purchases, you will no longer be able to use them if you later decide to move to a non-Apple music player at some point in the future.

If you believe this, then I have news for you.

First, Apple is now selling most of their songs (and more will be available soon) in a non-proprietary format for .50 more. So you will be able to use them on any player now or in the future, and have full editing capabilities (for anyone who cares about that). BUT, until then...

Just burn your favorite songs off onto a CD...then re-import them into your song library. Tada. Whatever format you have your iTunes set at to import CD's to, you will have it in (I have mine set to MP3--you can change this in iTunes:Settings:Advanced:Importing) I need to edit my music for dance performances, but prefer not to pay extra for iTunes to give it to me in an open format. The degradation in quality is negligible, so this is how I convert all my iTunes songs to MP3.

As for how can you play it in your car, I already mentioned that in my first post. There are lots of items which plug into your car and use your radio to play it over the speakers. Save the receipt, though. Different ones work with varying success. Particularly ones with pre-set radio stations--some cities I drive through it works fine on at least one of the stations, but not in others (particularly larger cities with packed 'waves). I prefer ones which allow you to set the station to whatever works for you. Among those, some have better reception within the car. So you may have to go through a few before you find the one that works best in your car. ;)

Oh one more comment: someone mentioned moving your songs between computers via you iPod. That is not technically allowed. The iPod can be written TO, but cannot uplload songs back off of itself. It is intended to prevent people from music sharing.

That said, there are some third-party programs that will allow you to pull your songs off your iPod. I recommend them for anyone who likes to store more of their music on their iPod. It can become a back-up disk of sorts, where if you want to reload it onto an external hard drive or simply back onto your computer, you can do so.

thanks for educating me too for those that have explained advantages.

i was a hold out for the longest time too but got my DD a $79 shuffle a few months back .... and love it. errr, i mean she loves it.

one question - i'm far from an audiophile - on the scale from (tone deaf = 0 to audiophile=10), i'm bragging if i say i'm a "1". JeffG points out some of the downsides, but isn't one of the downsides if you really have a sharp ear that the digitized music in an iTune contains much less "bits" than one directly from a CD? JeffG or another audiohphile, can you please explain that one for us?

as for having a six CD player in the car, i just got a car Thursday and it has one (my first-ever multi disc CD player!), but it has a thingy i can plug an iPod directly into the car's sound system - so a six CD player is kind of trivial when i can plug an iPod that holds a gazillion songs and my entire CD collection, so i'm likely within the next few months to get one for me too.

And i love iTunes - we bought "Lifted" - the short from the Ratatouille movie from there and watch it many times and still cannot help from laughing so hard each time - so if you have iTunes and haven't seen it, do it now!

Also, i thought i could remove songs from the new iPod Shuffle via iTunes - can't i?? it seems like i have. :confused:

keep the tips coming - a lot of the accessories AdK mentions i'm likely to start looking around at, i'm aware of some of them because of iPod's ubiquitousness, but some are new to me.

A word about ultra-mobile PCs - keep buying them - its the next wave! And also those Apple PCs with Intel chips? Buy those too! (i hear they are cool ;))

I threw in the "don't have a cassette player in my car" comment just to say that I can't listen to cassette tapes, but I didn't know it would actually be relevant to the discussion. So if I wanted to listen to the iPod in the car, how would I make that work? AFAIK, you usually listen to an iPod through headphones, which obviously wouldn't work in the car.

...

Same question as with the car - how would I listen to my iPod at work? Again, headphones aren't an option. Do they have speakers I can buy? Can I plug it into my computer somehow? Both at home and at work, I have PCs, if that makes a difference.

The headphone jack on an iPod (or other portable music player) can be used much the same as the audio out jack on any other audio device. You can easily pick up a converter cable (for around $5) pretty much anywhere that will let you plug it into the audio-in or Aux jack on pretty much any amplifier (such as if you have a boom box or something similar). There are also a ton of external, amplified speakers available that you could use. In fact, if you have external speakers for your computer, you likely could just unplug them from the computer and plug them directly into an iPod. If you need to buy speakers, you can find them ranging in price from $10 or so all the way up to $100s of dollars, depending on how picky you are about the audio quality.

There are three common ways to hook a portable music player up to your car's stereo. If the car is new enough, there might be an "aux" jack on the front panel of the stereo. If that is the case, you would just need to pick up a cable (the same $5 or so one that I mentioned above) and plug it right in. If it doesn't have an Aux jack, you would probably need an FM transmitter like others have mentioned. You can get ones that are specifically for an iPod (plugging into the proprietary connector) or you can get more generic ones that just plug into the headphone jack. The third option would be to use a cassette adapter, but you already stated that you don't have a cassette deck. :)

Same with music. I need a CD case and liner notes and such, so just buying the music would be weird to me. Plus it would mean I could only listen to it through my iPod as opposed to having the CD to play.

I'm kind of with you on that and I still mostly buy CDs (although physical storage space has started to become a problem there...) It is worth noting, though, that iTunes and most other online music stores does let you burn any purchased tracks to a regular audio CD, so you wouldn't be strictly limited to playback through the iPod.

I'm also assuming you don't have to put an entire album on? There are some things where I'd only want a couple of tracks. I would expect that I can choose to just upload those tracks or if I have to upload the entire album, I can just delete the ones I don't want.

That is correct. You can easily pick and choose whatever tracks from a CD that you want to include. You also have the option of ripping the entire album onto the computer (so you have it stored there) and then only copying a subset of tracks to the portable player. You can also create and save off "playlists" allowing you to easily mix-and-match tracks from different albums.

I also have some stuff on cassette and even LPs that I'd want added. How does one go about doing that? I'm figuring I need some kind of conversion machine or something.

You would likely only need a cable (most likely, you'd run it from the "record out" jack on your stereo to the "audio in" on the computer), but the process for ripping tracks from an LP or tape is a bit more complicated than with a CD. With a CD, the computer will automatically know when tracks start and stop and, in most cases, it can automatically fill in the track names and other data. With an LP or tape, all that would be much more manual.

Hmmm, I hadn't thought about that. Guess that would be something the husband has to figure out for me. Any recommendations and pros and cons versus Apple or not-Apple? I read the earlier discussion about accessories and such.

As I said, I currently don't use a portable player myself, instead using a laptop for much the same purpose. The main non-Apple brands that I would recommend looking at are Microsoft (the "Zune" line), Sandisk (the "Sansa" line), and the various players from Creative Labs. Generally speaking, the main advantages of the Apple players tend to be that they are easier to use (although that gap has been closing quite a bit lately), a bit more visually appealing, and there are more accessories available. Other brands tend to have more features, cost less, and have somewhat wider compatibility when it comes to directly playing downloaded music.

Oh, and one really important question: would I really have to dance and/or pose like all the people in the iPod ads?

Yes. You also have to make a video of it and share it with your friends...

First, Apple is now selling most of their songs (and more will be available soon) in a non-proprietary format for .50 more. So you will be able to use them on any player now or in the future, and have full editing capabilities (for anyone who cares about that). BUT, until then...

I talked about that in my first post in this thread. Currently, this is limited to a select set of tracks from one label (EMI). Universal Music just announced a similar deal with several online music distributors, but iTunes is not one of them.

As I said, I suspect that pretty much all tracks sold through iTunes (and other online stores) will be unprotected within a year or so. For now, though, the vast majority of tracks sold through iTunes are still protected. Even when that does change, you will likely have to pay to upgrade previous purchases to the unprotected tracks.

Just burn your favorite songs off onto a CD...then re-import them into your song library.

I noted this in my first post as well. As I noted in that message, though, this reduces the sound quality of the music tracks. Considering that the tracks sold by iTunes are sub-CD quality already, this can make a pretty big difference. The process is also something of a pain...

Just burn your favorite songs off onto a CD...then re-import them into your song library. Tada.
...
I need to edit my music for dance performances, but prefer not to pay extra for iTunes to give it to me in an open format. The degradation in quality is negligible, so this is how I convert all my iTunes songs to MP3.
You can also use Hymn (http://www.hymn-project.org/) to remove the DRM from Apple's AAC files, then use any of a large number of format converters to go from AAC to MP3. This avoids the annoying step of burning to CD and the resultant digital-analog-digital quality loss.

You can also use Hymn (http://www.hymn-project.org/) to remove the DRM from Apple's AAC files, then use any of a large number of format converters to go from AAC to MP3. This avoids the annoying step of burning to CD and the resultant digital-analog-digital quality loss.

Hymn hasn't worked for quite a while. Apple changed the protection scheme enough times that the creators of that project finally gave up on trying to keep up with it...

-Jeff

Hymn hasn't worked for quite a while. Apple changed the protection scheme enough times that the creators of that project finally gave up on trying to keep up with it...
Doh! Well, I'm sure someone will get it working again.

...You generally can get around this by burning the music to CD (which they do all allow) and then re-ripping it, but that reduces the sound quality a bit and also is basically a pain. The sound quality of most currently-available downloaded music (including from iTunes) is lower than a purchased CD as well, although you do need a pretty good ear to tell the difference.
-Jeffoops i missed this, which is one of my questions - can you tell more detail about this? My understanding the sound quality is about half as good, but again, i have the type of ear that can't tell the difference anyways like you mention.

There's an application that lets you download music off your ipod. Senuti. Get it? It's itunes spelled backwards. That's the only way I can remember its name.

I thought Doc said that they had a new program to decode the itunes music, but he's asleep right now so I can't ask him.

Adrienne

We have three ipods. We started out with a shuffle (the older one that's the size of a pack of gum) and love it except it has no screen so you can't really pick what you're listening too. I still use it for the gym as it's so light.

Then I got the munchkin a Nano for Christmas last year. You can also store photos etc on it. And it has the screen so you can see what you're listening to.

So then I dedcided I needed the video one. LOVE IT. Not only can I play music but I can also download movies and tv shows. We did a big trip this summer and it was perfect on the plane. The screen is really clear. Perfect time waster when you're stuck somewhere.

We've also got the home dock and I got a thingie (I'm sure that's the technical term) attached to my car stereo so I can dock it directly to a cable in the glove compartment. This also charges it at the same time. This has been great because I can just leave it in there instead of having to mess with the aux cables and taking it with me every time.

Apple also just started a program where say you download a single song from an album. Then you decided hey I really like that, I should get the whole album. I think it's within 30 days they'll credit you for the single you dowloaded toward the price of the whole album. Which is kind of nice.

There are also tons of podcasts on just about every subject which are fun to listen to. There are also free downloads of songs and tv shows (usually pilot episodes). I keep some of these on there for when I'm stuck somewhere and need to kill some time.

OK, so there's different *kinds* of iPods too? I think my head is going to explode.

Maybe I'll just settle for humming to myself...

OK, so there's different *kinds* of iPods too? I think my head is going to explode.

The Shuffle is small and has no screen so you just hear the song it picks for you.

The Nano is bigger and has a screen but it's still really thin and small. M's grandma and auntie bought him one for his bday last year and it's full. If he wants more music on it, he'll have to take something off of it to make room. I think they run 4 gigs +/- 1 gig.

The "Video" ipod is what I have. Doc has an older version - I don't know if it can hold video. His is 40 gigs. Mine is either 60 or 80 gigs. I don't remember anymore.

Personally, I don't care if it's small. I don't want to worry about how much room I have left on it.

Adrienne

The Shuffle is small and has no screen so you just hear the song it picks for you.just to clarify (or confuse you), there is an "old" Shuffle, which is larger and a "new" Shuffle.

The "new" Shuffle ($79) is about the size of a match box, and you have the option of shuffling the songs at random, or you can play them in the order they are on it.