Digital Music Diva ;)

This past Christmas, David's mom (my MIL) Mimi gave me a gift that would be more exciting to me than she would have ever imagined.

The gift was an iTunes page-a-day calendar. Every day, I read a new page about a new song and/or artist that I may or may not have ever heard about. I am more and more easily bored by the 2-3 chord progressions in the typical over-processed "pop-in-a-blender" stuff that seems to be running rampant on the radio these days, so discovering new music (or music that may be new to me) is a huge deal for me. I am LOVING it!!

So what I do is this. If the song for the day seems interesting, I save the sheet. Once I have a collection of about 10-20 songs, I take them to the computer and listen to them online. The digital music program that came with our Dell computer, MusicMatch, has some of these songs. But others can only be found on the biggest and best online digital music source on the planet: iTunes.

So I downloaded the free iTunes program. And I want to let you know what an amazing difference it makes. MusicMatch's music browser was okay, but I found tons of music I'd never been able to find before on iTunes. It's amazing! For instance, I would have never thought of listening to Ziggy Marley's "Tomorrow People", U2's "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" which is amazing because I'm a huge U2 fan, Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek", or Jack's Mannequin's "The Mixed Tape".

I also discovered another incredible group worth listening to, probably my favorite so far, called Panic! At The Disco. I recommend their songs "The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage", "I Constantly Thank God For Esteban", and "I Write Sins Not Tragedies". You should totally check out their sound if you're into alternative rock. Sort of a more edgy Maroon 5, if you liked them. All amazing songs, and I'd never even heard of most of those artists before!!

The only problem I'm finding, is that my Phillips mp3 player, shown below (actual size), does not play the download format from iTunes.

As frustrating as this is, I'll admit that it's a pretty smart move on Apple/Mac's part. It ensures the sales of their iPods, the only digital music players that will play the iTunes downloaded songs' format (AAC). I wish I had known this before I bought mine! But then, I hadn't discovered iTunes yet.

So what I'm going to have to do is either buy an iPod - you can get one for about $70 if you look in the right places - or just burn the iTunes tracks to CD and not be able to listen to them on my current MP3 player. I think what I will also do from now on is to search for new music with iTunes, and then see if I can download it from MusicMatch (those files are compatible with my portable audio player).

I'm also having a horrible time syncing the songs from my computer onto this damned mp3 player. Sometimes it syncs, and sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't go into the right folder or if it isn't sorted correctly, it isn't accessible even though it's taking up memory space on the thing. I just have to figure it out...and it's worth it. You can carry around up to 7 hours of music on this tiny little device, without the disc changing or skipping of CD's. It's worth it, to take long walks with sort of your own private radio station with only your favorite songs!!

More later, I'm determined to figure this out so I can go on a long walk with my favorite tunes in my ears...

~Darcy