Yes, I know I need to buy them, but I want just certain ones, almost never a whole CD, and I want to hear it before I buy it. I’ve heard of iTunes, of course, but there are probably other places, so I’d like help on the best source for me to use with my totally lacking finesse in matters technological. These are certain songs I’d gathered from library CDs and fallen in love with, but a change in computers has caused them to disappear.
You can convert YouTube videos into mp3’s. YouTube has a huge selection of music!
Be aware this isn’t exactly legal to do. Although I own an iPhone I always buy tracks from Amazon. They are usually a little cheaper than iTunes and always in regular MP3 format.
Thank you. I wasn’t aware of that.
Google Play and Rhapsody are also good sources for music.
I’m a fan of Amazon myself. iTunes is petty much the same thing. I started with Amazon many years ago when they were the ones with regular mp3s and iTunes had some crazy rights management stuff.
If you have Amazon prime you can get tons of music for free now (as with Google Play and others) and play it in your browser - any computer form which you can log in to your Amazon account. You can’t download the free stuff and move it to your iPod tho, or make a mixtape to give a friend. But you can always buy a copy of the free-to-stream song for offline use.
I just use iTunes internet radio. There are a bazilion radio stations. and many don’t talk. For example there are over 1,100 world music stations to stream. Have it on all the time.
Google Play Music. A monthly subscription fee that gives you access to their entire library instead of buying individual tracks.
Spotify. If you listen on your computer and not mobile devices, it’s free and they have almost every song I could think of (though certain bands are absent.)
Many thanks to all for your help.
Yeah, the method you use will depend on whether you just want to listen to the songs, or whether you want to own them (i.e. have unlimited perpetual access to them, even when you’re offline)—but you did say you wanted to listen before you buy.
For some songs, it’s possible that the cheapest way of getting a copy is to buy a used CD and rip the songs on your computer.
I prefer to purchase my music from Amazon and then upload it to Google Music for streaming playback where I want. A couple reasons for this:
(1) Amazon allows for downloading my music, track by track, whenever I want
(2) Google Music forces you to download your entire music collection (at least tracks it can’t find on that device) or else each track has a three-download limit.
(3) Google Music has a better app for listening to my music though
(4) If you’re interested in an album, or most of the tracks on an album, you can often get it the same price or cheaper as a CD on Amazon which then often comes with a digital download available immediately. Not always, but worth checking.
(5) If you have Amazon Prime, you can select “No Rush” shipping for non-time sensitive items and get a $1 MP3 credit. Around the holidays, I can easily rack up $10+ worth of free music by buying each item individually (they wind up boxing them all together anyway) and picking “No Rush” for each one, trusting that 3+ weeks is ample time (it always is).
Amazon also has a large library of free MP3s although few big artists are represented and you kind of have to dig around to find something good. Google has a monthly “Antenna” sampler of free new music.