Were you lucky enough to get a shiny new Creative Zen or an iPod Nano for the holidays? Before you get your groove on, here are three things you should know about digital music.
Tip 1: Know your music files
Tip 2: Keep your music organised with ID3 tags
Tip 3: Back up your digital music
Tip 1: Know your music files
Even though we call them MP3 players, most digital music players can play more than MP3 files, and you may have multiple formats on your player.
Other digital music formats include WMA, ATRAC3, OGG, and AAC. Some digital music players and music software favour a particular format when you purchase music to download. For instance, when you buy songs from the iTunes store, it's an AAC (not an MP3) file. It's good to know what types of music files your digital music player will play.
Tip 2: Keep your music organised with ID3 tags
In the '70s, you spent all night rearranging albums alphabetically, then by genre, and then back again. In the '80s, you painstakingly recorded songs from albums into ultimate mix cassette tapes for road trips.
Today is no different. Digital music just makes the whole process a lot easier with ID3 tags. ID3 tags allow you to store data along with your MP3 files, such as title, artist, album, and track number.
You can edit your MP3 ID3 tags using Windows XP or your music software (such as iTunes or Musicmatch Jukebox), or you can batch edit them with an ID3 editor. To edit your MP3 ID3 tags in Windows XP, go to My Music and right-click any of your music files. Click Summary, and you can edit the ID3 fields.
Tip 3: Back up your digital music
A year or two after you've bought a digital music player, you have hundreds of tunes taking up space your PC's hard drive. What happens when your computer crashes, and you lose all those songs you bought from the iTunes store? Despite some rumours, we couldn't find any information on iTunes that says it allows you to redownload your purchased files.
Don't take any chances: Make sure you have all your important files backed up onto an external hard drive and/or DVDs. Of course, you could opt not to purchase downloadable songs and instead use a subscription service like Yahoo Music. If you choose the latter, don't forget to pay your monthly subscription fees or else you'll be listening to the sounds of silence.
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