Thursday, October 11, 2018

Sean Needs Music Help

I’m writing this blog post in 2018, not 2008 or even 2000. When it comes to music, I am a dinosaur. No, I’m not talking about the music I listen to regularly. Actually, maybe it is. I tend to listen to the radio as background noise at work. I’m not in the car much, but when I’m by myself (meaning not long family car trips where we play Magic School Bus and Curious George episodes for the kids), I generally listen to podcasts or, again, the radio.

You may have noticed that I haven’t written anything about my phone or computer. I got out of college before Napster got big and everyone downloaded music. I missed that wave. I never had an iPod and don’t have music on my phone or computer.* I’ve never paid to download any songs. Sure I have tapes and CDs, but I don’t think I’ve purchased a CD for myself this decade. I’m not sure I even know how to create a digital music collection. How do you get music from a CD to my phone?

(This is not a photo of me. I typed "confused" into Google Images and this iStock photo was one of the results.)

This is where I need your help. I am years behind the digital music revolution. If I save songs to my computer (which I’m not exactly sure how to do), where can I save them as a backup? Basically, where do I even start?


* Actually, I have a total of one song on my phone. The Foo Fighters released five songs available to download for free several years ago. I still have a song named Sean. What a great title for a song!

3 comments:

Booferson J McGrugen said...

1st off are you an iPhone or Android guy? If you're on iPhone and enjoy fighting jumping through all of Apple's hoops to do everything their confusing, inefficient way, then you'll need to learn iTunes. Either someone at the Apple store, or your local college hipster, can walk you through that.

Or you can use Google Music. All you need is a Google account and the app on your phone, either iPhone or Android. You'll need a program to rip your CDs, just Google "free CD rip program or something similar and put all your music on your computer. Then go to play.google.com, click on music, then My Music, then the menu icon in the upper left, then on Upload Music. It'll make you download a small program, you log in with your Google Account point it to where all the music is on your computer, and Boom! Within minutes you'll start to see your music appear in the Google Music app, and in the website! So now potentially anything that has internet and web access, you have access to your entire library of songs.

Sean said...

This is quite helpful. I may have to try Google Music since I'm not taking any trips the Apple store and I don't know any college hipsters.

Liz said...

I have a Spotify premium membership now. It’s 9.99/month. I can save songs I like, make my own playlists, and discover new songs/artists. It’s proven especially beneficial for car rides with my 2 year old. They have a TON of children songs that i never thought I’d be able to find anywhere. It’s made him quite happy.

For my old, extensive CD collection, I went the iTunes route and like the pp said, it was confusing and inefficient. Also incredibly time consuming. I gave up. If there’s something I miss, I’ll just add it to my Spotify songs at this point.