FAQ: Digital music

By Derek Boiko-Weyrauch

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Part of the joys of having a high-speed Internet connection is the ability to buy and download music from any number of legitimate music sites, or to share music among friends. Once you've mastered locating and navigating through those sites, you'll want to know how you can use your music. Here are some answers to some frequently asked questions about digital music.

Q: I’ve heard the terms ‘ripping’ and ‘burning’ before. What do these mean and is there any difference?
Though they may be similar in their destructive tone, the two terms mean very different things. ‘Ripping’ generally means copying music from a CD or DVD onto your hard drive in a format that allows you to easily play it back. ‘Burning’ refers to transferring music onto a recordable CD or DVD. In general, ripping gets music off a CD, while burning puts it back on.

Q: What is this "library" my digital media player talks about, and why don’t my files show up there automatically?
Different media players use different formats for storing libraries, but the core concept is the same: a catalog of all of your music that is saved on your hard drive and can be easily searched and ordered by different criteria. Libraries make it easy and quick to search and sort through your music collection because you are generally not changing anything about the files themselves, only information associated with them. However, libraries don’t automatically appear; you must first create them. Fortunately, most media players do this for you as soon as you place your files in them. This can take a little while when you first get started, because the program has to create the file, then go through each of your music files and extract the relevant information from them to store it in the library. It’s worth it in the long run, because it makes your music collection a lot easier to organize.

Q: What is a "playlist"?
A playlist is a list of songs that form sort of a "mini-library" and can be burned to a disc, played on their own, synched (see below) or shared with others. Songs on a playlist can be there for any particular reason – whether it is to encapsulate a mood, be played at a party, or just for laughs. Some media player programs automatically generate playlists based on specific things, such as most-played or highest-rated songs.

Q: What does ‘synching’ do?
‘Synching’ – short for synchronization – refers to the ability of some media player programs to automatically update content on a portable device to reflect the content of a selected library or playlist on your hard drive. It can also be done with important information such as contacts, calendars, and notes. With synching enabled, all you have to do is update content or information on your hard drive and your portable player will automatically synchronize itself to the changes when it is plugged in. This can be troublesome at times, as you may not want all songs on your hard drive to transfer to your portable player. Most media player programs allow you disable synching (or come with it disabled by default) to allow you to manually control the contents of your portable music player.

Q: How do I record streaming audio (such as Web radio) so that I can listen to it later?
Web radio is a beautiful thing. Where else can you listen to public radio or talk shows from halfway across the world in real-time? Sometimes you want to listen to it later, though, such as in the case of a live streaming concert. If this is the case, then Total Recorder (www.totalrecorder.com) allows you to capture and save streaming audio from a Windows machine, while WireTap Pro (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/25421) does the same for Mac.

Q: I downloaded this song, but it sounds worse than the radio! Help!
You've discovered the wonderful world of "bitrates." As far as jargon goes, 'bitrate' is refreshingly memorable: it refers to the number of digital bits that are assigned per second of music. Higher bitrates mean higher quality, but also, larger files. Conversely, lower bitrates mean lower quality, but also don't take up as much space. In music, bitrates are generally measured in kilobits per second - that is, thousands of bits used per second of recording. A 96 kilobits-per-second (or 'kbit/s' for short) recording is comparable in quality to something you would hear on the radio. 128 kbit/s is about standard.  Most of the music that you'll run across on the iTunes Music Store and various peer-to-peer file-sharing networks will be approximately 128 kbit/s. There is some quality loss with 128 kbit/s encoding, though it is hardly noticeable if you listen to music in the background or with standard speakers or headphones. If you're a stickler for sound quality or own high-quality stereo equipment, you'll want to go with 192 kbit/s or better, or even look into 'lossless' audio compression formats such as FLAC.

Q: How can I discover new music?
Aside from talking with your friends and swapping mix CDs, the best way to find out about new music is Pandora (www.pandora.com). Pandora is the result of a few music geeks sitting down and listening to millions of songs from thousands of artists, assigning different characteristics to each song, and then creating a Web-based service to suggest music to people. Using the service is simple: Go to the site, type in the name of an artist you like, and then sit back and listen as the service plays similar music and lets you tweak what types of suggestions you get based on your tastes.

If you want a more social environment, check out last.fm (www.last.fm), a social music service that tracks what you listened to, recommends new music, and shows you other people who listen to similar music. It also has a handy feature of recommending shows in your area based on what you've listened to.

Q: Where can I find out more about my favorite artists?
Music tastes best with information. AllMusic (www.allmusic.com) provides excellent background information on hundreds of thousands of artists, while Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is a good source of links to articles about your favorite artists. Pandora and last.fm also provide you with information on the artists you are currently listening to.

Q: I’ve heard rumors about lawsuits from music companies. Will I get sued if I download music?
If you download music from a reputable, legitimate site, the answer is no. Most – but not all -- of these sites require payment per song downloaded. If you share tunes among a few friends, there is the small chance of getting sued; it is a real risk and the only way to prevent it is not to do it. But digital rights, copy infringement, online file-sharing and the lawsuits that love them is a mercurial legal arena at best, and constantly being tested, changed, and improved on as new technology arises and new precedents are set. If you want more information on the changing nature of copyright and the internet, check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s website at www.eff.org, or – on the other side of the spectrum – the RIAA’s Web site at www.riaa.com.

Q: Why can't I play this song that I bought online on my portable music player?
One of the great things about the world of portable music players is the freedom of choice. But with that freedom of choice comes the lack of a single standard for digital rights management (DRM). Each of the major portable players has its own store associated with it, which employs its own way of preventing unauthorized duplications of the songs that it sells. This has been the subject of some controversy recently, and the winds of change may be blowing towards more compatible DRM mechanisms, but you're probably wondering how you can get those songs you bought on the iTunes store to play on your Zune. The classic way of freeing your music has been to burn it to a CD and then rip that CD back to MP3, which removes the DRM protection from the files and allows you to use it with any music player on the market. Utilities like DRM Dumpster (for Mac) (www.burningthumb.com/drmdumpster.html) help automate this process, which can be useful if you have a lot of files to move.

Q: Is there a place where I can download copyright-free music free of charge?
As people learn more and more about the vagaries of copyright and all of the hands involved in that cookie jar, there has been an increasing trend to release works of art under alternate licenses such as the Creative Commons.  Jamendo (www.jamendo.com) offers free music – both free as in price and free as in freedom – and you can support artists you like directly. The Creative Commons audio page (http://creativecommons.org/audio/) also lists artists who publish their music copyright-free – some of whom you may already know – and also provides links to other copyright-free music sites.

Q: What is a 'Podcast'? Do I need an iPod to listen to one?
Despite the name, podcasts do not actually require an iPod to be listened to. A podcast is kind of like the audio equivalent of a blog, and like a blog it can involve just about anything - from news, to editorials, to random variety shows, to even language learning courses. It's basically like ham radio gone nuts, with some really interesting results. The iTunes store makes podcasts available for download, or you can check out a podcast directory like podcast.net (www.podcast.net) (or even a directory of podcast directories, such as Podcast 411 (http://www.podcast411.com/page2.html) to browse and download podcasts that pique your interest. And chances are, some of your favorite sites have podcasts associated with them, so next time you're browsing the Web, keep an eye out for podcast links. Once you’ve tracked down a few podcasts to listen to, you’ll need something to play the audio files and subscribe to the podcast. iTunes is capable of subscribing to and playing podcasts, or you can get a specialized podcast player like the cross-platform Juice (http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/).

Q: How do I podcast?
Great tomes could be written about this. But at the barest minimum, all you really need to set up a podcast is a microphone, a computer, audio editing software (Apple’s GarageBand or the cross-platform Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) will work just fine), an Internet connection, an idea, and a voice. More things can be added, but at its core, podcasting requires the above things to function correctly. From there, you need somewhere to host the podcast and syndicate it to your listeners. A blog is the easiest way to get your podcast known to the listeners, since it’s generally free and is capable of syndicating your show so that listeners can keep up to date with it. If you want to learn more about podcasts, a great and easy-to-understand tutorial for aspiring podcasters can be found here (http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/).

Q: Where can I get audio books for my mobile device?                              
There are many places to buy audio books online. The iTunes Music Store sells audio books, as do sites like Audible (www.audible.com). If you want free audio books, you can check out LibriVox (www.librivox.org), which enlists volunteers to read books that are in the public domain. Or you can always go to the bookstore – or library - and pick up some books on CD, then rip them onto your computer.

Q: Is there any way to skip to a specific chapter in an audio book?
It depends on the format that the audio book is in. Sometimes audio books will be broken up into separate files for each chapter. Skipping to a specific chapter in these books is as simple as pressing the skip button on your portable device or selecting the chapter in your audio player. Other audio books are just one big file. In some cases, these big audio files are divided up with separate chapter marks, allowing you to easily skip ahead in a portable device or audio player. Doing this on a portable player varies from device to device, and audio book download locations typically have instructions on how to make it work with your particular player. For iPods, pressing the center button will allow you to skip ahead to the next chapter in an audio file that contains chapter marks. If the big audio book doesn’t have chapter marks, you’re not out of luck (yet): you can download Apple’s ChapterTool, which allows you to mark chapters in your audio book which can then be skipped normally. The ChapterTool is command-line based, so it may just be easier to manually fast-forward to the chapter you want. Or better yet, be aware of the audio book chapter division before you download or purchase it.

Q: Is there any way to listen to music in every room of my house without sacrificing my major organs?
Only a few years ago, getting music in every room of your house was an expensive and sticky affair involving speakers, wires, amplifiers, mixers, and much more. It’s gotten much easier –and a fair bit cheaper – with the advent of the Sonos Digital Music System (www.sonos.com). This system allows you to wirelessly stream music from any computer in your house to up to 32 different rooms, playing the same song in every room or different songs in different rooms. The basic bundle will cost you a little under $1000 for two ZonePlayers (to connect to your network and a speaker to play music) and one Controller (to allow you to fine tune what is being played where), but this is a fair bit cheaper and more efficient than running wires everywhere. Plus your pet won’t chew through it!

Q: I can't find the music I've moved to my portable music player, though I could see it just fine in my file manager. What happened?
Sounds like a problem with the music’s tags. Portable music players make use of tags to categorize and allow individual music files to be browsed. Tags contain information on things like song title, artist name, album, and more, and can be edited with most media player programs or with specialized applications such as Mp3Tag (www.mp3tag.de/en/). Generally, music that you rip from CDs is automatically tagged based on information from a CD information database, but sometimes (such as when the album information server is not accessible or if the album is not in the server) this information does not make it into the files and they appear simply as something like ‘Track 1’ by ‘Artist’. If this is the case, just locate the mistagged files with your media player or tagging application and enter in all of the important information manually. You can change the artist and album tags for multiple files at once to speed things up, though you’ll want to enter in each track name individually.

Q: I ripped a bunch of my CDs with Windows Media Player, but I can't get them onto my iPod. What’s the problem?
Windows Media Player rips CDs in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format by default. However, the iPod can’t play WMA files. You can easily convert your WMA files to a format that your iPod can understand by first importing them into your iTunes library. iTunes will recognize that they are WMA files, and will ask you if you would like to convert them. Click on the ‘Convert’ button and sit back and relax as your songs are magically transformed before your very eyes. If you want more precise control over exactly what they are converted to, you can change the file type and bitrate through the ‘Advanced’ tab in the ‘Preferences’ menu in iTunes.

Q: I have a bunch of old vinyls (remember those?) that I want to digitize. How in the world can I do that?
To digitize your old vinyls, you used to have to go through a complex process of hooking your old record player up to an amplifier, running it through a sound board, reading the arcane verses, casting bones, opening the seventh seal, and finally editing the resulting sound files on your computer. But Ion Audio has come up with a simple solution to the problem: the iTTUSB (http://www.ion-audio.com/ionttusb05), a turntable with a USB connection that hooks right into your computer and lets you rip your vinyls straight from the source, whether they are 33s, 45s, or even 78s. And the best part is you can get it for less than $200, saving you the $9.99 per album it would cost you if you were to purchase your entire collection again. There are many other brands, too.

Q: Which portable music player is right for me?
That is a question only you can answer. What are you looking for in a player? Price? Performance? The kitchen sink? There are many portable players out there that are good for different purposes and different people, and I would strongly advise you to consider all your options before committing to purchase one. iPods are great for a lot of people, but some users want more features and functionality. Conversely, even though Microsoft’s new Zune player has debuted to less-than-stellar reviews, it still is not without its backers. But whatever you do, don’t take advertising at face value. Dig deeper, read reviews, talk to friends, and approach the purchase from every angle before you commit to anything.