I recently had some computer problems. I backed up my files to an external hard drive. After I reloaded everything I tried to play my music and it said I didn't have the license and to go to Verizon/Napster or Rhapsody, or iTunes, etc ... I was able to talk all but verizon/rhapsody into helping me restore my music. Verison/rhapsody wouldn't go for it. Is there any way I can make the files work without the license or DRM or whatever it is?
Unfortunatly, you can't. Backing up DRMed music is a waste of time. The music industry would litigate to death a DRM remover that did not require a license to be inforce when the DRM is being removed. It is a bit foolish to buy DRMed music but it is lunacy not to remove it as soon as you get it, play for QA, then back that DRMless version up. Sometimes the DRMs just become un-supported. These actions prove to the courts that DRM removers are needed. You were lucky that the others were smart enough to help you out. They obviously know what side of the bread is buttered.
Thanks for the feedback. I kind of thought that that was the way it was going to be. I did, however, purchase sound taxi so I wont be running into that problem again. I do my best to stay on the up and up but I will say that this is the reason why people download the free stuff. Thanks again.
You will not be caught again. The other reason to download for free is, the quality is often better than the normal sorces. There is high quality indie music sold which is the fastest growing sector of the paid for music.
So I went to the Vault and could not figure out how to download music. However, there are plenty of advertisments for concert dates, and collectables, etc. How do I download music? Oh, and thanks for getting me this far. I don't want to sound like I don't appreciate your time already.
You need to audio capture app. I would purchase one that can capture directly from the sound card. They are the most flexible and possibly the best quality. You can use the to capture FM radio over the internet as well. They are often mentioned in this forum. Free music provided legaly is about 90 CBR or less, itunes and the like are 128 CBR. These are regulated by the music industry. To get higher you have to go indie or unlawful. Then you can get 1300 CBR (lossless). Still, internet capture is infinantly better than recording the radio. FM is 70 CBR then you have quality loss playing and recording and airways loss (static). I fully understand your quandry. To use any of these technologies you need to use several technologies. It is almost impossible to figure them out for yourself.
What software would you suggest for someone like myself who knows nothing about this stuff. Also, a friend of mine turned me on to spiral frog. They don't have everything I want but it's free.
Actually, after I posted the last thread I realized that my main concern, at this time, is to be able to do what I want with my music; for instance, I want to be able to put it on any device I own or make an MP3 CD to play in my car, etc. I would like to capture music also, as I am no longer going to buy it for as long as they are regulating what I am able to do with it. Do you realize how much the music has costed me; add up the amount I have spent on music and how much time I have spent trying to make it work after reformatting my HD and I'm still not there yet. Then buying software that will convert the music. Now when I try to synch windows media player (WMP) with my MP3 player, WMP can't find the file? I make over $21/hour at my job. Use that as a dollar figure when you total up the time I have spent on this project and it adds up to alot of money.
Unfortunatly, digital audio can be time consuming. It is well worth the effort once you do it right. The files do not break or age. Did you know, a high quality mp3 will sound truer than a CD or vinyl record. That is impressive in that the CD holds more than 40 times the data as an mp3 and vinyl has many times more information than the CD. The reality is most of the data on a CD can't be heard by the best ears in the world ( a baby's). A 320 CBR mp3 contains all the hearable information in the tune. The human brain can't even process all of that. You can cut out up to half of that information with out the brain noticing. There are sophisticated lossy compressions that are able to remove music the brain will not process. I did not say that ALL mp3s are better than a CD. How to create a HiFi mp3 is another topic. There are normally large numbers of read errors when you rip a CD. Good ripping software is designed to compensate for the errors if it can and warn you if it can't. Computer DVD burners are infinatly better at reading CDs and DVDs than even very expensive readers. If you think the real time errors picking up a vinyl platter with a needle are less, guess again. Everytime you play the disk you damage it slightly. Digital reads from a hard disk are infinetly more relyable than the reading of a CD. Now to answer your question. You need to get a real audio manager. Media Monkey and WinAmp are the most popular. I use Media Monkey (MM). Both have free versions and are more confusing than either itunes or Media Player because they have so many options. I really like MM's syncing and disk burning functionality. WMP makes too many coasters, plus it is sooooo stupid. You can either select random tagged tunes and 'send them to the burner or burn a play list with MM. It will warn you if it thinks you put 2 of the same tune on the burn list. This is easy to do on mp3 CDs and DVDs. You will never listen to anything else once you get mp3 CDs down. Everything else is crap!
I have to tell you; after I posted my last question I found winamp. OH MY GOSH what a difference. It even auto tags my music. What I had been doing was burning CD's of what I downloaded from itunes and the like so that I could use them however I wanted. This was a pain and it did not transfer the tags. Now I have loaded everything to winamp and figured out the auto tag. Awesome! Also, it doesn't give me any crap about not finding the files when I try to burn something. I can't thank you enough. Prays the Lord. I was really loosing my cool.
When you burn an audio disk, that audio disk format does not support DRMs or tag data. Winamp is supposed to have a better auto tagger than Media Monkey. My untagged music is too rare for either to find any music so I can't comment. Both are 100% worthless to me in that respect. Winamp will allow you to burn I would opt for a audio capture app instead of a DRM removal tool such as Tunebyte. Tunebyte is too limited as to what it can do for my liking. I have never seen a free audio capture application or DRM remover. Some have a demo mode that only put in beeps every now and them. Still tunebyte is a good DRM removal tool that allows some audio capture. Does sound taxi allow some audio capture?
Actually, soundtaxi only converts audio and video, however, it does have a you tube ripper plug in for IE.
