Oh? Really? They’re handing out iPods for free now? (OK, or any other MP3 player that actually holds more than the contents of one CD.)
If you have to pay $300 for the MP3 player, you’re sure as hell not getting your music for free. (The MP3 rip software isn’t free either, if one gets it legally, but we won’t go there.) How much satellite service can you buy for $300 these days?
Besides, the good music from the 50s and 60s mostly isn’t available on CD, and radio stations like Real Oldies (1270 AM in LA) are few and far between. Clear Channel and Infinity ought to pay US to listen to the 25 drivel songs on their playlists.
I’m a Sirius subscriber and I heartily endorse it.
Others have already mentioned the 3 day free trial of sirius.com online streaming, so I’ll mention ItsOnSIRIUS, which tells you what’s playing on each stream at the moment. You can also search for artist or song names to see which streams play them, and how often.
And hey, if you spend a lot of time listening at sirius.com, check out the ItsOnSIRIUS Radio app. It lets you see what’s on each stream before you switch, like a real Sirius receiver. You can also mark your favorite songs so it’ll automatically switch when they come on any stream, just like S-Seek, but it’s even better because you can use partial names - tune in any TMBG song when it comes on, etc. (It has a blacklist mode that will tune away from the current stream if a song you hate comes on, but the blacklist isn’t working in this version.)
As for whether to get an MP3 player or satellite radio… I have both. The trouble with only having an MP3 player is you have to keep finding new music to put on it, unless you just want to hear the same stuff over and over. And what better place to hear about new music than satellite radio, where people are paid to find new music in your favorite genres?
IFMOM: I know “good” is in the ear of the beholder, but I’ve got hundreds of CD’s with songs/singers from the '50’s, built up over the last 10 or so years.Legally. Many of them are in Sony 400-disc carousels, ganged together for random access, etc.
Places to buy them are getting scarcer. Four cd stores in my town of 100,000 have closed in the last 2 years thanks to downloading piracy, but Barnes & Noble just expanded and has a very large cd (and classic dvd movie inventory). I checked the Sirius website and except for the limited '50s & '60s and the classical section, there is NOTHING I would listen to for free, let alone pay a monthly fee for.
What software are you talking about? iTunes is free, and it will rip CDs to AAC or MP3. CDex is a free, open source program that can rip into MP3 or other formats.