For Christmas, both my wife and I got iPod classic 80 gig models. After we got our son the iPod Nano for his birthday in October, we thought they were very cool and wanted ones for ourselves. Now we have them.
Now, to be fair, I have been preparing for this for a few months now. A number of years back I had already made CDs with MP3 files of songs from 1972 to 1983 (one CD per year with songs burned from my CD collection in radio-quality format allowing for a couple hundred per CD). So, I had a nice start to building my iTune library on my laptop computer.
The next step took a bit longer - which was going through all the rest of the CDs in the house and importing those as well. This included a number of years worth of free music CDs that came as part of a magazine called CMJ New Music Monthly which I had subscribed to since January of 1995; each issue came with a CD sampler with 20 or so songs on it of various types.
So, I've now brought in songs ranging from 1960 to today, for a grand total of over 6000 songs. Whew! The artists range from Aaliyah to ZZ Top with many varied performers inbetween. Genres from rock to pop, R&B to country, jazz to ska are represented. I even have holiday tunes, separated to their own play-list for easy access next year.
Needless to say, I love my iPod. Being able to listen to music at night just before bed takes me back to my youth - of lying in the dark with the headphones on listening to the radio. I put the iPod on shuffle and it's just like the radio days gone by. Only difference - the headphones aren't those giant clucky ones that looked like two Princess Leia hair-buns on your ears. LOL.
I love being able to carry my music wherever I go too. For a gift, I also got a car-converter that allows me to tune into my radio and play my iPod while it charges. That'll come in handy for long car trips.
Yeah! Welcome to the club, dude! And here I was feeling all spiffy with my 4-gig Nano. Sheesh! All your prep work has paid off. Can you IMAGINE someone telling us this back in high school...that you can carry your entire music collections(and those of several friends or strangers) with you in one little device?! Crazy! I keep mine mixed with both music and my educational/motivational CD stuff, so I can either chill or learn wherever I go.
ReplyDeleteFunny how you mentioned that memory of listening to the radio at night as a kid. That brought back a memory for me, of probably 7th or 8th grade, of having one of those old clunky mono tape recorders and a single earpiece, and laying in bed listening to ELO's Greatest Hits tape in the dark (and in one ear). Time does change.
Welcome to iLife sir! If you're anything like me, you're going to start hearing songs on the radio (if you bother with the radio) and jot them down to run home and grab off the iTunes store later. This whole thing has really gotten me back into music. Thanks, Steve Jobs!
Mike, yeah really. It just blows my mind that I can have all these albums in one box (whose hard drive is as big as my laptop computer!) and pick and chose whatever I want. Or, I can make playlists for the ultimate mix tapes with some clicks of the mouse. Insane!
ReplyDeleteI haven't downloaded music from iTunes yet. I actually went and signed up on emusic.com which doesn't have the big name artists but does have a real affordable pricing model (I'll blog about emusic in a day or so). I've used that to fill some of those one-off holes and such.
Terri does use iTunes a lot - mostly for downloading TV shows onto hers for viewing. She's been catching up on "The Unit" and "Grey's Anatomy" that way.