The Ultimate Digital Music Guide: The Best Way to Store, Organize, and Play Digital Music

Description

This is the Rough Cut version of the printed book.

Your hard-core, up-to-the-minute, how-to guide

Download, rip, store, organize, play, stream–anything, anywhere

Seriously into digital music? Best-selling how-to author, serious audiophile, and eclectic music-lover Michael Miller will help you get all the digital tunes you want, whenever and wherever you want them! Miller guides you through today’s best new options, from iTunes to Spotify…helps you make the most of social music, Internet radio, and cloud music services…even shows how to transform your home into a digital music paradise. This book is packed with practical answers, easy step-by-step instructions, insider tips, great ideas, and new music sources you never knew existed!

For everyone who’s passionate about music!

      •     Discover brand-new digital music services, sites, and devices that fit your lifestyle

      •     Find great new music on iTunes, Amazon, and sites you’ve never heard of

      •     Get the truth about piracy, file sharing, and copyright

      •     Find huge amounts of legally free music

      •     Rip, store, and organize: Build your perfect music library

      •     Determine the best audio file format and compression rate for your collection

      •     Create simply amazing playlists

      •     Stream songs anywhere, with Spotify, Pandora, Internet radio, and the cloud

      •     Get great sound from your iPod or iPhone on your home audio system

      •     Build a whole-house digital audio system, the easy way

      •     Choose your best next media player (Apple or otherwise)

      •     Find and share tunes on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and beyond

Sample Content

Table of Contents

Introduction     1

Part I: Understanding Digital Music

1 The History of Music Distribution—From Piano Rolls to iTunes     11

How Do You Collect Music When There’s No Music to Collect?     12

Between the Sheets    13

Going on Record     14

The Rise of Radio     15

It’s a Long-Playing World     16

The Singles Life     18

The Tale of the Tape     19

Say Hello to My Little Friend, the Compact Disc     21

Going Digital     22

What’s Next     24

2 Exploring the Different Ways to Listen to Music Today     29

Going Old School with Compact Discs     29

Ripping Digital Tracks from CD     31

Downloading Digital Tracks—Legally     32

Downloading Digital Tracks—Not So Legally     34

Getting All You Can Eat from a Subscription Service     35

Listening Anywhere on Any Device from the Cloud     36

Listening to Internet Radio     37

3 How Digital Music Works     39

The Way We Were: Remembering Analog Audio     39

The New Wave: Understanding Digital Audio     41

Making a Digital Recording     41

Storing and Playing Digital Audio     43

Dealing with Digital Compression     43

The Benefits of Digital Music     44

Quality     45

Easier Storage     45

Easier Organization     45

Streaming     46

4 Understanding Digital Audio File Formats     49

Evaluating File Formats     50

Uncompressed Formats     50

Lossy Compressed Formats     51

Lossless Compressed Formats     53

Comparing Formats, in a Nutshell     54

Considering Bitrate     55

Comparing the Major Digital Music Ecosystems     56

The MP3 Ecosystem     56

The Apple Ecosystem     57

The Windows Media Ecosystem     59

Choosing the Right File Format     59

What Works with What     60

Choosing an Ecosystem     61

Choosing a Bitrate     62

5 Understanding Copyright, Piracy, and Other Le

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