Sound #24

*cue theme music*

These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. It's continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilization, to boldly go where no one has gone before!

iHCPL is back and, in true SciFi style, has a new style to it. Fantastic! So without further ado, mp3's.

As I mentioned back in the days of iHCPL 1.0, I have an iPod, fondly referred to as Charlie. I adore Charlie (even if he is so old that he's big in size, light on storage space, and incapable of playing video). I also have a shuffle, lovingly dubbed Colby. He's blue and shiny and clips onto my shirt for an easy, hands-free workout.

I've owned an iPod for several years, so I already feel like a pro at downloading music to it. In fact, just last week I hooked Charlie up to Rodney the MacBook Pro and transferred all of my new music. I believe I've stated this in the past, but Apple owns my soul. It is my goal in life to own one of the spiffy new iPod Touch models. Someday...

Even though I'm a firm believer in the awesome that is iTunes, I explored some of the other sites mentioned - all in the spirit of iHCPL, of course. What annoys me about music downloading sites is that you generally have to set up an account and give out a credit card number to purchase songs. Frankly, I don't want that information stored on three or four different sites when 98% of the time iTunes does the job. Also, Rhapsody, which I've tried to use in the past, operates very slowly on my computer. I'm not sure if it's an operating system issue or just me, but it's not worth the hassle.

I took a peek at music.download.com, and found a few interesting things. For the most part, though, I found the collection limited in scope. It might be interesting to browse through the free downloads list at some point, but it won't be priority.

As for streaming audio, it just isn't my cup of tea. I get easily distracted, particularly if I'm trying to read or write, and having songs with words playing at all times would simply not work. I know so many people who absolutely love Pandora (or something similar), and I've tried so hard to enjoy it...but I just don't. I'd rather listen to some of the 20 gigs of music I already have on my computer.

I did discover that at least one of the radio stations I sometimes listen to, Mix 96.5, has a website with Live Listening. I doubt I'll ever listen to the radio online as I can barely tolerate the radio in the car, but it's handy to know about for when that one song I just can't remember the name of plays.

Yeah, reading back over that it all seems pretty negative. I really do love Charlie the iPod and Colby the Shuffle and iTunes and purchasing songs for 99 cents! Sure, I have to limit my spending to a gift card every now and then, but it all works out in the end!