Downloading music ??? Have searched everywhere

Okay I’ve searched not only here but I-tunes, Rhapsody and even sent emails to the labels that produced them etc.  I have several hundred cassettes all original, and I’d love to get that music on my player.  Since I bought the rights to play that music for my own use, can I download it and still be legal???

I’ve never gotten a clear answer on this question,

Any Takers???

Fatman

You don’t have a legal right to download a free digital copy of music you purchased on a physical media.

No, it’s not legal. But why don’t you have all your cassettes digitally converted? Most metropolitan areas have businesses (at least 1) that do this. You probably could even find a way to hook up your own cassette deck to your computer and do it yourself.

@fatman wrote:

Okay I’ve searched not only here but I-tunes, Rhapsody and even sent emails to the labels that produced them etc.  I have several hundred cassettes all original, and I’d love to get that music on my player.  Since I bought the rights to play that music for my own use, can I download it and still be legal???

 

I’ve never gotten a clear answer on this question,

 

Any Takers???

 

Fatman

I feel your pain …

Considering the number of cassettes involved (“several hundred”), buying one of these would probably be much cheaper than paying someone else to do it (and you’ll be the only geek on your block with one :slight_smile: ).

As long as you don’t mind spending countless hours doing it yourself…

Hey, that’s a cool gizmo!  Transcribing your favorite recordings does take a while.  You can use the aux in connection on your PC sound card with a cassette deck as well, try using a program like Audacity to geberate a PCM file, and then this can be “ripped” to MP3, then tagged for your Sansa. Once you build the digital version, you’re good to go.

I have opted for an alternate solution.  I subscribed to Rhapsody, and all of my favorites are a few mouse clicks away.  If I have an original on CD, then Windows Media Player is the simplest method to rip to wma or mp3.  You can also use Media Monkey.

One of these days, I’m going to transfer my collection of rare LPs to FLAC for the Sansa.  Of course, the lossless files can be compressed to ogg/wma/mp3 later depending upon my mood.

It’s so painless to select a copy using Rhapsody, as their online library is huge.  You have a choice of (DRM) wma files, or purchased content is 256kbps mp3.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy:

Cassette deck output plugged into sound card (line in) input.

Download freeware recording program called Audacity

Download the LAME mp3 encoder (also freeware but needs to be downloaded as a separate operation)

Set options in Audacity so that it knows where to go and “find” the LAME encoder (only have to do this once)

Set Audacity for input “What U Hear”

Set record and playback levels.

Turn off all Windows sounds (Control Panel/Sounds)

Push record in Audacity

Push Play on cassette deck.

Recording starts.

You will either need to stop the deck and Audacity at the end of each track…and make a new mp3 at that point, or,

Record the whole side, look at the sound graph as Audacity has been recording and observe the silent (level) spaces inbetween songs, select the length of the first track, and make an mp3 out of that, and then on to track # 2, etc.

You’ll need to let Audacity knwo the bit rate for mp3 files you want to create.  From tape, 192 kbps would probably suffice.

This is time consuming, especially since you’re going to need to subsequently use something like MP3Tag or Media Monkey to properly tag the songs within the album with proper Artist, Album, Genre, Comments, Track #, and imbed album art/photo once they are all ripped to mp3.  Audacity give you some basic tag input when you save to mp3 but not much.  Also, if you save out more than one mp3 from a big file of multiple songs, you will only get the opportunity to add tag data upon saving the first mp3.  Subsequently it assumes the same artis and album and comments as the first one.  Makes things difficult later on.  I’d recomment recording one track, saving it to mp3 and then start up audacity for the next song you plan to record.

Personally I kind of like this work if I’m just hanging around but it is detail-oriented and can’t just “be done all at once”.

Personally I would rethink things with hundreds of casettes on the table.  Dupe the ones that are not replaceable and look elsewhere for the replacement music.  Especially since you will not have, usually, a great recording on that old casette tape to begin with…there’s all that hiss and the audio spectrum ange of a good LP or CD is not present.