5 Ways to Enjoy Your Music Files

OK, say you’ve got one thousand of your favorite MP3 songs sitting in your hard disk. What’s the best way to enjoy those files? Most of us probably will use the Windows Media Player to listen to those files. But did you know there are other more innovative and interesting ways playback MP3, WMA and WAV files?

Let’s take a look at the five methods.

Use MusicMatch Jukebox

If you think most that most PC programs for playing digital music look like the built-in Windows Media Player, think again. There are programs out there that go far beyond the Windows Media Player in functionality. One great example is Musicmatch Jukebox from Musicmatch. Musicmatch Jukebox is quite simply the world’s best digital music player. It supports playback of various music formats like audio CDs, MP3s, Internet streams, WMAs, WAV files and more. You also get CD burning, music ripping and music organizing capabilities. The Plus version even allows you to automatically tag your music files with detailed info and album art!

Use a Portable MP3 Player

Portable music players like the Apple iPod, Creative Nomad and Rio Nitrus have taken the market by storm. You don’t have to be confined to your desktop PC or laptop to listen to digital music! The portable music players can allow you to take your music anywhere. The compact size of MP3 and WMA music formats means that you can literally take a jukebox of thousands of songs whereever you go! You may also want to check out my review of the top 5 portable music players here. There are also other portable music options, including handphones with MP3 support.

Note: If you want to listen to iTunes music collection using a portable MP3 player, you need to refer to this tutorial about how to convert DRM protected iTunes M4P to MP3. Or if you want to listen to DRM protected WMA music files with iPod or other music players, you can follow this guide showing how to convert DRM protected WMA to MP3 for iPod.

Use a PDA

The latest Pocket PC or Palm-based personal digital assistants (PDAs) can also act as music players. Pop in a large memory card (e.g. 64 MB) and you can store many MP3 or WMA files. Then hook up a headphone, launch the music software in the PDA and you’re good to go! I personally own a HP iPaq 2210 which effectively keeps track of my appointments and doubles up as a music player.

Use Your Car Stereo

This is my favorite way of listening to my MP3 collection. I recently bought a car stereo that can playback native MP3 songs. This means that I can pop in a data CD containing hundreds of MP3 files and the car stereo will play them! This does not work on conventional car stereos. If you own a conventional car stereo, but still want to listen to your MP3 songs, one way is to create an audio CD from your music files first. The car stereo will then have no problem interpreting and playing back the audio CD. Of course, in this case, you’ll be limited to about 14 to 17 tracks of music only.

Use Your Home Stereo

If you’re a music lover, you probably already have a home stereo. Use it to listen to your MP3 music files! However, take note that Like car stereos, conventional home stereos will not be able to play back native MP3 songs. You will need a newer home stereo set with MP3 playback capability. New models from Kenwood, Panasonic, Pioneer and Sony usually have MP3 support.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many ways to enjoy that digital music collection of yours. My favorite methods of listening to digital audio files is via a portable music player or the car stereo. Of course, you may have your own preference – some people like to listen to music off their desktop PC or laptop. Decide which method(s) is suitable for you and go for it!

About The Author

Gary Hendricks – http://digital-music-guide.com
gary_hendricks@digital-music-guide.com

How to transfer WMAs and iTunes 8 library from Windows to Mac

“My laptop HDD recently failed, so I replaced it with an iMac. Fortunately, my iTunes library was on an external HDD, so I have copied it across to the iMac. However, the songs that I have purchased from iTunes do not seem to be available. They have copied across, but are ‘greyed out’. I have authorised my new computer to play purchases. Is there anything else I am forgetting?”

It is relatively painless to switch over from Windows to Mac as Mac has support for a lot of commonly used files like Microsoft Word documents, Powerpoint slideshows and Adobe PDF files. So, compatibility is hardly an issue. What you do have to take note of however while switching over to Mac are your iTunes library and WMAs. Note: This tutorial was written under the assumption that you are running the latest version of iTunes ( iTunes 8 ) on both your Windows and Mac.

1. Add WMAs to iTunes on Windows

iTunes for Windows is built with Windows Media Audio (WMA) support – it is able to play and convert WMAs. However, because WMA is a proprietary codec, it isn’t available in iTunes for Mac. If you’re not careful, you’ll be left with a lot of WMAs which will be unplayable on your Mac.

The easiest way to dodge this problem is to convert all the WMAs you have while you’re still on your Windows machine. In your iTunes General preferences, under ‘Import settings’, make sure to have AAC or MP3 selected. Configure the bit rate if you like but because you will be converting from one lossy codec to another, there’s bound to be a profound loss in quality.

However, if the WMAs are DRM protected, it will be a little bit difficult. One method of dealing with the DRM protected WMAs is to get an audio converter. Make a simple Google search and you will get a lot of converters that can convert WMA to MP3. However, those that can convert DRM protected WMA to MP3 are rather limited. The one that attracts my attention is TuneClone Audio Converter (fow Windows only), which isn’t free but very well worth a shot if you have lots of DRM protected WMAs ready to be switched to Mac. TuneClone Audio Converter is capable of removing DRM protection from WMA files and convert WMA to iTunes (both Windows and Mac) compatible MP3 format by installing a virtual CD burner. Click here to read the guide.

Apart from that, TuneClone Audio Converter can also be used to convert iTunes M4P (protected AAC) to MP3 for non-Apple MP3 devices. Click here to read the guide.

After getting the protected WMAs converted to MP3, add to your iTunes library the MP3 files, which will be transferred to Mac along with all the music in iTunes library.

2. Backup iTunes library on Windows

In Windows, open iTunes. Consolidate your library from the ‘File -> Library’ menu.

This will move all the music files into the iTunes Music folder and sort them by artist and album.

Navigate to your My Music folder. It’s typically found at C:\Documents and Settings\~username~\My Documents\My Music.

Copy the iTunes folder to the Desktop of your new Mac. Depending on the size of your library and the method of transfer, this could take a while.

3. Organize iTunes on Mac

If you are running iTunes on your Mac for the first time, you’ll be prompted with the initial welcome setup procedure. When it asks to search your drive for music files, make sure to decline. At the end, you’ll be presented with a fresh, empty iTunes library. Now, quit iTunes. By default, it would have already set up its own iTunes Music folder located in ~/Music. Go over to this location and delete the iTunes folder then copy and paste your iTunes Music folder from the desktop into it (the one which you have just brought over from your Windows computer). After all this is done, launch iTunes and you’ll be rewarded with your old, personalized iTunes library.

TuneClone M4P Converter – strip DRM off iTunes M4P music to MP3

TuneClone M4P Converter(http://www.tuneclone.com ) is a very easy to use program that converts iTunes M4P, DRM-laden WMA music files to plain MP3, WAV and unprotected WMA. Via a user-friendly interface, it is very easy to install and very easy to use.

TuneClone M4P Converter doesn’t bypass the DRM. It simulates the burning, ripping and encoding process by installing a virtual CD burner. All you need to do is burn your playlist with your media player software to TuneClone M4P Converter’s virtual CD Burner, and TuneClone M4P Converter will convert music files in the playlist to MP3, WAV or DRM-free WMA files automatically.

Key features of TuneClone M4P Converter: http://www.tuneclone.com

1. Within a few clicks, TuneClone M4P Converter lets you remove DRM protection from purchased music files by applying the virtual CD burning technology. You can play the converted unprotected music files with Media Player or any MP3 players including Zune, PSP, BlackBerry, Creative Zen, iriver, SanDisk Sansa, Walkman, Cell Phone(Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia N-series, Samsung Anycall, LG, etc.) Pocket PC, PDA…

2. TuneClone M4P Converter supports almost all music formats your media player software can play and burn, whether they are DRM protected or not, including WMA, M4P, AAC, MP4, etc. And it can output audio formats such as MP3, WAV and unprotected WMA.

3. TuneClone M4P Converter can easily and quickly convert DRM protected music and movie files and various audio/video files to MP3, Wav and unprotected WMA at very high speed with very nice CD quality.

4. With TuneClone M4P Converter, the converted songs will have NO DRM restriction any more.

5. TuneClone M4P Converter is very easy to install and and very easy to use with a very handy and clear user interface.

6. TuneClone M4P Converter can preserve ID3 tags for artist, album, title names, artworks, etc.

7. TuneClone M4P Converter is specially designed for batch converting large song collections. Compared with using real CD-R or CD-RW disc, TuneClone’s virtual CD burning can use the maximum writing speed so that your music files can be converted at a very high speed.

TuneClone M4P Converter is available at:
http://www.tuneclone.com/tuneclone_setup.exe