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Listening to Music – How Do You Do It?

Posted by Concert List | Posted in live music | Posted on 31-08-2009

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In the world of music, there are unlimited possibilities for creativity in production. But when it comes to sitting down and listening to your favorite artists, what is the best way to do it? Many people don’t think about it, but throughout the course of this article, you will obtain possible life-changing strategies to listen to your favorite music. There are 3 central methods for listening to music; perceptive listening, casual listening, and background listening. Each method will be outlined, and advantages will also be discussed. Now is the time to experiment with all of the ways you could listen to your music!

When in the state of perceptive listening, you are fully aware of your music; that is the lyrics, rhythm, all of the instruments and components of the track. This state can be c hall enging to achieve if you’ve never been a perceptive listener before. It’s the the majority rewarding listening experience, undeniable ing our mind of everything but the pure sound of music. all of us cannot achieve this state If the re are other thoughts racing through our head; your mind must be completely blank, letting the music take you away. How do you know when you are in a perceptive listening state? You will become unaware of your environment (closing your eyes is strongly recommended), focusing on nothing in your life but the music going through your head. Your mood will be directed by the kind of music you are listening to, and some will experience a state of Euphoria. When in perceptive listening mode, always aim to be in a Euphoric state, as it will make the music that much more enjoyable. This could persuade to developing into more relaxed, having less stress, and an overall improvement in life. If you have not given perceptive listening a try, do it right following you finish this article. What have you got to lose?

We invest many time in the Casual listening mode, which is the line right amidst Perceptive and Background listening
. You are fully aware of the lyrics/rhythm, and auditory elements are comprehended. we are a number of times performing some task that distracts us from the full perceptive state, so euphoria cannot be experienced. When listening casually, our mind only donates part of its attention to the music, so only part of us is affected while listening. Our mood does differ along with the music, but it is generally a weaker feeling than perceptive listening. While we listen to music casually for a long period of time, our subconscious processes the information, and tunes have a tendency to get stuck in our heads. Unfortunately, you cannot be fully immersed in the music, and that takes away a key element of enjoyment. Since we invest so much time casually listening to music, we think this is the most involving method of listening. Practice perceptive listening, and you will see the vast difference.

Sometimes, all of us have so many mind-numbing tasks to do, hitting the play button is the only way to keep our sanity. This is called background listening, and it advocates us get through our c club enging days. Casual listening is remarkably common among teenagers who study for tests, and generally people who listen to music while working with their minds. This is when all of us are in the weakest state of music perception, and auditory elements aren’t usually comprehended. You could get so caught up in a task that you forget any music is playing. Because our mind is focused on so many things, our mood will be least affected by music. In fact, this is not how music was intended to be listened to. So what benefits does this bring? Lets look at Johnny: Johnny is studying for his math test, and he is really struggling on a idea. He puts on his headphones on low volume background listening to advocate him relax, and suddenly he is able to comprehend his math problems. On the day of the test, he could actually play back the song in his head, then his subconscious will recall his studying, and that advocates him recall the important math idea s. Johnny gets an A on his test….So you see where this is going; background listening affects the subconscious mind, which leads us to the  last point. Memory. As shown in Johnny’s case, memory may be greater by listening to music in the background. So what are you for? Listen to more background music, boost your memory!

Perceptive Listening, Casual Listening, and Background Listening. Each one has its pros and cons. When possible, try all 3 techniques, and see which one you like the most. If you haven’t experienced the thrill of perceptive listening, you’ve to try it soon. If you haven’t relaxed to some casual listening, you might want to give it a shot. Some individuals, however, aren’t able to have music in the background while working. You know who you are. Give these techniques a shot, you never know what type of amazing improvements might come about in your life. It’s the little things that might make a extensive difference. Rediscover your music, rediscover the way you listen to it!

Country Western (CW) Music?

Posted by Concert List | Posted in Western Music | Posted on 30-08-2009

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This is a personal opinion and therefore, I don’t want any hate mail from Country Western listeners, which I know are fanatical and omnipresent. I do have my preferred s, from a chauvinistic man’s point of view. I think that Shania Twain and Faith Hill are sexy and I enjoy several of their videos plus some of their songs. But is it because they’re large country western stars? No way. I have a problem listening to most of the Country Western stuff because it all is beginning to sound the same. I cannot tell a Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, Toby Keith or Alan Jackson song apart if my life depended on it.

I grew up on the Jersey shore and many of you may, therefore, think I am unqualified to make such a judgment. But hold on. I have spent the last 30 years in Arizona. Does it get more country or western than that? You know, the home of Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, and where the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ has been filmed.

So I’m a transplant with an attitude. Do not get me wrong, because I’ve given it a try. My late wife has been from West Virginia and, during her mid-life crisis, began playing Country Western (CW) music continuously for five years. we had all the CD’s, radio stations on preset, and even watched the Country Western (CW) awards on television. I might recognize all the extensive names, the latest hits, and who has been new to the scene. Through it all, I really tried to enjoy the sound, for her sake. But, eventually, I wandered back to my classic rock and roll, jazz, or blues.

I play the harmonica and keyboard and have oodles of sheet music. I’ve attempted to play a few of the recent Country Western (CW) popular numbers, but to no avail. I’ve a few of the older Country Western (CW) classics that have crept into mainstream by Johnny Cash and Ernie Ford, but they’re few and far among. The current tunes have become a formula that is fodder for Jeff Foxworthy and his ilk. According to individuals prefer him, it goes prefer this -

You start with a sad premise. You’ve lost your -  (fill in the blank) i.e., girl, dog, select up truck. They were your 1st  -  love, companion, way of freedom. You recall their -  smiles, wagging tail, leather seats. You wish you might, once again, feel their -  hair, fur, gun rack. You really miss their -  smell, smell, smell. You’d do anything to get them back -  tell her you love her, rub her cute little tummy, (or did I’ve those reversed?) hose her engine compartment. While you’re waiting for them to return, you’ll have to -  do your own laundry, fetch your own paper, walk to the liquor store. In other words, it is not a pretty sight.

So that is my gripe with Country Western. They vary the harmony, the lyrics and the tempo, but the message is apparent. I yearn for a total vary of pace where I can get my ‘Satisfaction’ or ‘Light My Fire.’ But I likewise have troubles with Hip-Hop, Rap, and Grunge. Now,let’s say I’ve got issues and be done with it. And,to all you Country Western lovers out there, stick with your music and don’t let a basher like me vary your tune, pardoning the pun. And did I mention the two things I do like about Dolly Parton?

Let the Music Play

Posted by Concert List | Posted in live music | Posted on 29-08-2009

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Good music makes it nearly impossible to believe or comprehend that our country is in such turmoil.

Listening to many performers while browsing the Net and reading about the financial disaster we face, the music soothes my soul and tells me that there’s no way a country that fostered these wonderful performers might be in such dire straits.

The melodies and refrains tell me we are amazing individuals. we have compassion, talent, integrity, spontaneity, and innocence. we prefer to have fun. we can get down and boogie all night, then get up in the morning all significant and go to work. Where did all this complicated, deceitful, financial mess come in? Should we take Congress out for a night on the town, make them dance till they sweat so they may recall how it feels to be human?

Do they contemplate anything but money? could be they need to loosen up, remember that life is for living, not for being owned by an individual, that the big picture is this -  all of us are here. all of us can choose to find pleasure in it, or all of us can choose to try to control every facet of it and anybody involved.

They have forgotten how to live. They exist to feed, to control, to breed their kind, to be superior, to feel supreme.

Yet, the music still plays for me. If our nation is as desperate as it seems, if all hope is gone, then why has not the music died?

I believe it lives because there still exists a large number of humans who haven’t forgotten what hopes and dreams mean. Through all of this turmoil, all of us continue to turn on the music, let our feet move, and sway to the beat of love, of life, of self-expression, and to the beat of our hearts saying all of us are still Americans, all of us are not to be defeated.

Rock and Roll on, Americans. Turn up the volume! They will have to hear us eventually! Let’s make them dance to our tune!

Talking About Pop Music

Posted by Concert List | Posted in Pop Music | Posted on 28-08-2009

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“ tunes go far beyond words in their ability to insert emotion into communication.” Robert Sylwester, A Celebration of Neurons

Filmmakers, If they knew who brain researcher Robert Sylwester was, would agree with him. They frequently integrate familiar songs into their movies. Pop songs are so successful that movie producers will pay exorbitant sums, in some cases as much as $100,000, to acquire the rights for the song.

Sylwester, in his book A Celebration of Neurons, went on to explain -

“The tunes of our adolescent years a lot of the time become the beacons of our adult life because they can endorse us to recall the important developments of our adolescence. we a lot of the time listen to this music to relive the memories in the extended reverie of song. The song slows the simple message so that we can savor all the emotions of the experience.”

In a film composer’s hands, pop tunes are chosen and linked to those memories in a way that adds emotional texture to the film. Films with pop music scores function on two distinct levels. The first level is the application of the song in the film. Every song lyric tells a story and a well placed song’s story will dovetail with the film’s visual.

The second, and deeper, level is the emotional meaning the use of specific songs brings forth within the listener. The songs become metaphors, placing the subject to be taught in the context of the learners prior experiences. When individuals hear songs they know, and have individual memories of, they immediately are drawn back into those memories, and the experience is enhanced. In essence, pop music endorses us relate to the story being related in a deeply individual, highly emotional way.

Three famous films used this technique to achieve success.

American Graffiti (1973), telling the story of a group of early 1960s high schoolers enjoying a last summer before adulthood, has been intentionally designed as a series of pop music vignettes. George Lucas, the film’s director, developed the storyline, and selected the songs to al most simultaneously.

Each scene matched the length of the song accompanying it. By way of example, Bill Haley’s “ Rock Around The Clock,” played during the occasion credits, performance up the film’s innocence of summer theme. The Crests’ “Sixteen Candles” accompanied a young girls sixteenth birthday. “Teen Angel” by Mark Dinning has been played when a character dies in a drag race. The film ends with the Spaniels’ “Goodnight, Well It’s Time to Go.”

The Big Chill tells the story of a group of former 1960s radicals turned 1980s yuppies who gather to mourn the passing of an old companion. prefer American Graffiti, The Big Chill uses pop tunes, although in this case, to add commentary to the on-screen occurrences.

Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” accompanied the actors as they hear about their friend’s passing. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones is played as an ironic commentary on the friend’s death. As the friends discuss relationships, The Young Rascals “Good Lovin’” is performed. Lastly, “Bad Moon Rising’” by Credence Clearwater Revival is played immediately after a former lover proposes that she and her old flame reunite for an evening.

The optimum subconscious music placement occurs in a supermarket amidst the two former lovers who contemplate rekindling their relationship. Although their desire for each other is palpable, both hold back, only conversing about the shopping task at hand as the store’s Muzak system plays Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers In The Night.”

Forest Gump tells the story of a dimwitted man who experiences a series of life adventures over a few decades. Because the film’s extended time frame, the music serves to produce the time and place.

Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” sessions up Gump’s Vietnam tour. to state that Forest’s girlfriend has moved to California, California Dreaming” by the Mamas and Papas is used. “San Francisco” by Scott Mackenzie frames Forest’s 1960s visit to San Francisco. When Forest returns home to Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” is played. These music placements stimulate the films fans comprehend the diverse locations and eras represented in the film.

American Graffiti, The Big Chill, and Forest Gump were all highly successful films, and their pop song application played a large part in creating that success. All three films appealed to people at a deeply personal level.

Pop songs in Learning

In Training With A Beat, I discussed at length the application of pop tunes in the learning environment. In part, I said -

“Concert club s, ballrooms, events, and yes, the class room, may be uncomfortable environments. When people hear a song they’ve listened to in the privacy of their home, they relax. Comfortable music emotionally warms the training room, placing learners in a receptive frame of mind for learning. songs with lyrics, just popular hits of the last 50 years, are extremely useful for this reason. They are old, well worn, welcome friends.”

songs with lyrics also engage learner brains in multiple ways. The words and rhythm of a song are largely processed in the brain’s left hemisphere, where the melody is  largely processed by the right hemisphere. By using songs with lyrics, you help your learners engage both hemispheres. In the process, they secure a deeper meaning than is possible with one hemisphere alone.

Song lyrics can, as was the case in The Big Chill, speak directly to the learning topic.

The many applications are too numerous to state in this one article, but a few examples ought to prove the point -

Career getting prepared – “All Star” by Smash Mouth

Change management – “Bad Day” by Daniel Powter

Communication – “Hello, Goodbye” by the Beatles

Conflict management – “Shut Up” by the Black Eye Peas

Customer service – “Lean On Me” by Bill Withers

Diversity – “Short people ” by Randy Newman

Finance – “Takin’ Care of Business” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive

Project Management – “One Little Slip” by the Bare Naked Ladies

Sexual harassment – “Respect” by Aretha Franklin

Time management – “Right Place, Wrong Time” by Dr. John

Once you’ve decided on an appropriate song, placement is easy Considering the Randy Newman song “Short people ” for example -

Introduction – play the song as the learners enter. Once the song is over call attention to the tunes lyrics and ask for comments about the meaning conveyed by those lyrics. Use those comments as a transition to your presentation.

Filler – play the song during breaks to add a subliminal message to your content.

Activity – Divide your learners into groups and instruct them to read and discuss the lyrics. Then drive a general discussion to share each group’s observations.

Conclusion – Conclude your session by stating, “We are all short individuals in a person’s eyes.” Then ask the rhetorical question, “If none of us were welcome around here, who would be left to complete our work?” Create the song and thank anybody at all for attending. Your learners will walk out of the classroom with the song and its lyrics firmly implanted in their brains, and you will have closed with a visually convincing learning point.

Given the large number of pop tunes available, the options are limited only by your imagination and the musical preferences of your learners. You too might have your learners, in the words of the old song by “M”, “talkin’ ‘bout pop music.”

Pop Music Uncorked!

Posted by Concert List | Posted in Pop Music | Posted on 27-08-2009

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Pop music is a genre of popular music notable from classical or art music and from folk music. The term indicates specific stylistic qualities, but the type of likewise includes elements of rock, hip-hop, dance, and country, making it a flexible musical form. The definition of pop music is purposefully flexible as the music that’s identified as pop is never ending ly changing.

The expression pop music could additionally be used to refer to particular sub genres (within the pop music genre ) that are referred to as soft rock and pop/rock. The pop music genre additionally oftentimes involves mass marketing and consumer-driven efforts by major record businesses and music labels, which makes it an oftentimes -scorned genre by non-mainstream musicians as they feel that the quality of music suffers.

The average consumer of pop music is a lot of the time identified to be in his or her teenage years, making it an necessary icon of youth culture. Pop music has always been the source of numerous moral panics, especially as a lot of of the styles that influence it trickle up from minority groups (racial, ethnic, sexual or class-based). This is partly because youth culture itself is an object of social trepidation. It is tempting for anybody to confuse pop music with popular music. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, popular music is identified as the music since industrialization in the 1800’s that’s most in line with the tastes and interests of the urban middle class.

This would include an extremely expansive  range of music from vaudeville and minstrel shows to heavy metal.
Pop music, on the other hand, has primarily come into usage to describe music that evolved out of the rock n roll revolution of the mid 1950’s and continues in a definable path to now.

One of the steadiest elements of pop music since the 1950’s is the pop song, which is not oftentimes written, performed and recorded as a symphony, suite, or performance o. The basic form for pop music is the song and oftentimes a song consisting of verse and repeated chorus. They are short in length but there have been notable exceptions though. The Beatles Hey Jude has been an epic 7 minutes in length. Still, in a lot of cases, If the song is abnormally long, an edited version is released for radio airplay such as in the case of Don McLean’s decidedly famous American Pie. It has been edited down from its original 8 1/2 minutes length to just over 4 minutes for radio airplay. While on the other extreme, some hit songs clocked in less than 2 minutes in length.

prefer other art forms that aim to attract a mass audiences (movies, TV, Broadway shows), pop music has been and continues to be a melting pot that borrows and absorb elements and pointers from a broad  range of musical styles. Over the past five decades, pop music has been influenced and in corporate d type ofs of music prefer Rock, Rythm and Blues (R&B) in numerous ways. Many recently, Latin music seems to be impacting pop music more significant ly than at any point in the past.

Although pop music continues to be a melting pot of styles, there is a type of pop music that claims to be pop music in its purest form. This music, a number of times called pure pop or power pop, typically consists of relatively brief (not over 3 1/2 minutes) tunes played on the standard electric guitar, bass and drums with vocals that have a wonderfully strong catchy chorus, or hook.

In the 2000s, hip-hop blended in with pop music, is paving the way for the multi platinum successes of musicians prefer Nelly, Eminem, 50 Cent, Ludacris, Ciara, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado, Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani and only Britney Spears. musicians such as Mariah Carey and pop queen, Madonna, presented comeback albums that continued to make them rule the music charts and keep their titles.

For the past 50 years the the majority successful musical styles on the pop charts have continually differ d and evolved and times will tell as how much more popular they become in future.

Music and You

Posted by Concert List | Posted in live music | Posted on 26-08-2009

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Music is always the part of our lives ever since the stone age.

There are a lot of categories of instruments which make their own sounds as well as certain pieces of junk. The stringed section allows one to make sound by using the strings like on guitars, and violins. The strings are tightened at a certain length for notes high and low. Wind instruments, such as wood and brass, make soft sounds and loud sounds with air flow and valves to control the notes. Symbols and bells of all kinds and sizes can be heard when tapped on and drums are the same way but with beating sounds. Computers and easy objects have their own sounds which can be used for music.

many famous names now and in history dedicated their lives for music and wrote many famous numbers that are forever recall ed in all fountains of information. As known, tribal music came 1st with primitive drums and other simple instruments. Classical has been next in line with more sophisticated instruments making it loud and lively. After classical, many kinds came to existence like early rock and roll, modern rock, and hip hop. There’s reggae, jazz, rhythm and blues, barber shop style singing, and cultural music.  A lot of individuals who love music so much that they can want to make a career out of it to be famous and/or just for fun.

It keeps us entertained even if all of us feel down in the dumps.  A lot of kinds of music were invented from many cultures around the world past and present. Voices and instruments make this activity come to life in many ways.

Music – Voice of the Soul

Posted by Concert List | Posted in online music | Posted on 25-08-2009

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Shakespeare has well said “If music be the food of soul, then performance on”. Surely, music puts a balm on all your worries and it sooths and relaxes your mind. And music has been regarded as the voice of the soul too. From generations and centuries, music has given enough entertainment to the mankind. Come to the contemporary times and you would witness a sort of revolution in the music industry. Owing to the popular trends like cinema and Web, there is an emergence of many genres like pop music, jazz, country, Blues, rock and so on. And the Web is flooded with a plethora of Online music web sites that have added a new dimension in the popularity of music.

The Internet music stores are employing new strategies in order to attract more and more users towards them. This includes affiliating with the various social networking web sites and provide ing competitive prices to the users, thereby baiting them for wonderful. Other methods that these Internet players employ might be giving away several albums or songs for free as a start up initiative to increase the traffic and clientèle, in terms of music downloads. It might also provide some amazing incentives to the early buyers.

There is another way to popularise the On-line music by giving a referral incentive to anybody at all who refer his/her acquaintances to a specific web site. By such means you may buy music on a discount, else you win some freebies or loyalty points for your next purchase… Then, these web sites likewise trust viral marketing to propagate their music store amidst the netizens. likewise there are certain web sites that sell Digital Rights Management (DRM) free MP3s and thus they can be used on any music player  profoundly conveniently.

You could have come across several websites which wouldn’t charge anything for listening music but as soon as you try downloading these tracks, they’d start charging money on it. But there are a lot of free and legal music download websites have cropped up too, and they have found their target customers as well. So,you could work out on both the options. Accordingly, the voice of your soul (music) has become a famous business which is catching up prefer a wildfire along with the other Web companies and is likewise minting nice money out of it.

Web Music – Choice Of Youth

Posted by Concert List | Posted in web music | Posted on 24-08-2009

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They say that music never betrays the heart that loves it. True indeed, music has always made our lives better and it has soothed our senses since time immemorial. The 21st century has seen a revolution in the form of Computers that have proved to be instrumental in making our lives better and much convenient as compared to the others. And most definitely it has change d the way you listen to your music.

Contemporary times have witnessed a tremendous upsurge in the Internet marketing which has made music really popular amongst the music freaks all around the world. The users may now listen to the music through the Internet. There are a few web sites that deal with providing the Web music to the music lovers. With an increase in the stiff competition and many players going Web, a few lucrative offers have cropped up in the recent past. Now the listener is free to download the music of his choice, from a specific web site, which is purely legalised. So,all of your famous and lesser known tracks are getting revamped in the Web arena. All you have to do is to download them at the earliest.

Don’t forget all those overtly insignificant songs that were once anthems for you? If you think that those have been withered away in an eternal limbo, you could quickly find all of them lingering in the cyberspace. It certainly ejaculates our senses, even to consider discovering those long lost tracks. In fact, the Internet has particularly been endorse ful in reviving all the long lost numbers, back in action and going popular all over again.

You may freely download these tracks into your cellular phone  and MP3 music players and listen to them whenever you feel like.
Now,you may freely pep up your life with the music of your choice. Secondly, these web sites likewise give you many interesting offers and cashbacks for your downloads. Therefore it adds on to the profitability of your deals and makes them look more attractive.

So,do not miss your opening  of locating the best Web music… because the Web is undoubtedly going to make you find your type of music!

Internet Music – Simply The Best

Posted by Concert List | Posted in online music | Posted on 23-08-2009

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Music without any doubt may be termed as food for life. It undoubtedly has lots of advantages and is a heal er of many discomforts. It additionally is a excellent motivator. A good song and music can fill the soldiers with vigor and enthusiasm to take on the can of the enemy and overcome the the majority trying circumstances.

Music furthermore performances up the mood for any opening . A good number might make anybody dance to its tunes. A good music might enliven an evening. Similarly a prayer accompanied by light music might make the entire opening  turn  surprisingly solemn.

Music, it can be said, is for every opening  and is all over the place. The wind flowing or the water trickling down from mountain in the form of a stream additionally carry their own distinctive music with them. Similar is the case with a cuckoo that so moistens the entire atmosphere in its melancholic voice or that of the leaves that so breathes life into a dull atmosphere with its flutter in the wind.

This passion for good music is likewise being understood and encased by mobile manufacturers who install such features that allow individuals to download songs and music of their choice from Internet in addition to the already programmed music in the gadget.

Internet has grown in a incredibly ample way over the years and has truly become one popular prevent for music lovers across the world.
As Internet casts its net far and broad, Online music has also gained popularity throughout the world. The central reason for the popularity of Online music is the fact that one gets an access to the music of entire world cutting across the barriers of language, culture and country.

The music of entire world is scattered in front of you and you just have to pick whether you want to download mp3 tunes of the latest Hollywood movies or the hits of an era gone by. The best thing about Web music is the fact that one can free download music of one’s option. No wonder then that Web music is one of the most happening things in the world now.

Selecting The Optimum Online Music Service

Posted by Concert List | Posted in online music | Posted on 22-08-2009

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Okay, it’s time for me to finally say nice bye to my portable disc player, and join the Web and portable music revolution. Okay, the revolution isn’t so new any more, nor is my PC, but as I wade through the sea of options for how to download music, listen to and buy Web tracks, I grow more eager to get my feet wet and eventually suit up to take the plunge. But I happen to be a bit more practical than that. So,I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the last few weeks trying to determine what’s optimum for my lifestyle, my wallet and my PC.

first thing I realized when searching all of the music services is that things seemed to work a lot smoother with a cable connection (and the majority services seem to point that out from the get go). Just like my compact disc  Walkman, the time had come for me to lose my ancient dial-up connection to the Online experience. It actually turned out to work in my favor as my cable company gave me a good deal on high-speed, and likewise threw in a discount on my existing expenses for cable television.

Now that I has been “connected” at an acceptable speed to the World Wide Web, I had to determine, what I has been trying to get out of the Online music experience. After some intense melodious soul searching, I realized that the only thing the separated me from the perpetually hip is perhaps the types of music I has been searching for, and the amount of time I wanted to invest Online searching for music.

The guy who sits next to me has a 60 GB iPod, and is complaining that it’s al the majority full. That is over seven thousand tunes. I don’t know that I would even live long enough to listen to that many tunes. My needs were simple r. I had an MP3 player still in the box from two Christmas’ ago, and it promised to hold over 500 tunes. That would be perfect for me, at least in the short term.

Next, what was I looking for in my new On-line music experience? Did I want to listen to music on my PC, in my car or on my MP3 player? Yes to all three. Did I want to listen to the radio while I was on my PC? Do not forget, yes. Did I want to trade music with others On-line in a peer-to-peer Napster- prefer environment? Eh, that one scared me a little, and I decided that opening  up my files to strangers made me feel dirt, so I put that one on hold.

My next prohibit in determining how I would “music On-line ” has been price. I searched dozens of websites and services, but narrowed my sights to three of the large guys -  AOL Music At this point, iTunes and Rhapsody Music Service ( provide d by Real Networks).

I already had AOL, so I signed up for their Music Now product for $8.99/month ( that’s in addition to their monthly cost as an ISP). I was able to download songs, listen to them while “offline” and burn them to CD  or move them over to my MP3 player for an additional cost per song. That seemed to be standard across the majority of the services. Music Now was a follow up to the original AOL Music Net, which I actually prefer d better because it ran Regional ly on machine and the new Web-based Music Now takes much longer. AOL furthermore has a partnership with iTunes, so you can be on AOL, but iTunes will launch and then you are actually in the iTunes application. It is confusing. If I want to move my downloaded songs to my MP3 player, the monthly cost jumps to $14.95 per month, and if I want to put them on a CD, I pay and additional 99 cents per track. This is too much resources for me. I typically buy one or two CD’s a month, and that would be cheaper than this Web service. Not to mention you’ve to be an existing AOL member (more resources per month) in order to even use the product. I’m passing on AOL Music Now.

On to iTunes. Okay, so there is no monthly cost for iTunes. Love that. And I may purchase songs for 99 cents per track. Love that too. But wait. I do not have an iPod, and iTunes has songs in their proprietary MP4 format. Ugh. The cheapest iPod out there is around $99 (so much for no monthly fee), and it is not the model I would select. I prefer my MP3 player. If I already had an iPod, this can be the route I would go, but Apple tends be particularly inflexible, and I hate to be tied to one provide r, player and format. There’s likewise a limit to how you may share the songs on your home network. I feel prefer even though I own the song, I am being watched on what I do with it. Good bye large brother.

Rhapsody Music Service from Real Networks. So far they’re the least expensive. $9.99 per month and that is with unlimited access to over 1.3 million tunes. I do have to have pay the additional 99 cent fee if I want to burn to compact disc  or transfer to my MP3, but that is the industry standard for paying the artists, and the monthly fee is five dollars less per month than AOL. The music comes over in the more broadly aid ed MP3 format and the tunes are mine to rip transfer or share with my other PC’s on my home network. like the other two, I can listen to live radio on my PC, but I like the freedom I get with Rhapsody Music Service. I’m not being watched, and the music is mine.

Now that I know how to download music and have chosen Rhapsody Music Service, I am on my way to joining the new world of portable digital music. I have already burned several compact disc’s for my car, albeit with an older man’s twist on today’s preferred s, and transferred those same tunes over to my little antiquated MP3 player for those long weekend walks.