Let me start by saying that I am really behind with the whole music thing, so please forgive me if these seem like simple questions, but I am having trouble finding answers.
My main question is is there a subscription service where I can download mp3 songs that are compatible with this phone? It seems that Napster and Rhapsody have subscription plans, but their files only work with their devices. Thus far, I have been ripping my CDs and transfering those onto mem cards. This is kind of a pain and my collection is woefully out of date, so I am going to need to buy stuff, I just don't want to have to pay per song. Especially for ones I already own. Likewise, I would prefer to not buy/carry another device. Can anybody give me some tips or point me in the right direction? TIA
well - you already answered aprt of your own question. Mp3 is the format used by most. What is hurting you is drm. drm is the copy protection on most DLed music. The good news is that alot of providers (ie walmart) are now drm-free. Yes it is pay per track. You will be hard-pressed to find a subscription type service that is drm-free, but there are some out there - what they lack is selection.
If you want to DL from only legit sources and be DRM free, you are probably looking at a par per song system. good luck.
Let me start by saying that I am really behind with the whole music thing, so please forgive me if these seem like simple questions, but I am having trouble finding answers.
My main question is is there a subscription service where I can download mp3 songs that are compatible with this phone? It seems that Napster and Rhapsody have subscription plans, but their files only work with their devices. Thus far, I have been ripping my CDs and transfering those onto mem cards. This is kind of a pain and my collection is woefully out of date, so I am going to need to buy stuff, I just don't want to have to pay per song. Especially for ones I already own. Likewise, I would prefer to not buy/carry another device. Can anybody give me some tips or point me in the right direction? TIA
I dunno if emusic is protected but I enjoyed their service when I had it. It starts at 9 bucks per month (though you can get better plans) and I believe you get 50 or 100 Downloads with that monthly.
I haven't actually tried, and maybe I should, but reading their websites, their "music to go" subscription plans only work with compatible (read proprietary) devices. But, I don't think you can download the songs to my computer and then transfer the files to a mem card. If I pay per song, then yes, it should work that way.
My mistake...I had assumed that the mobile version of Windows media Player suppported them. There is a program called Pocket Tunes at Pocket Tunes : Palm MP3 Player : Treo MP3 Player : Palm WMA Player that claims to support Napster and Rhapsody subscription services. I have not tried it.
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-Duncan
"If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science, it is opinion" - R. Heinlein
My thought would be too boycott all vendors that use drm. Your music is your music. I would lead you toward either drm-free per song, or a brand specific mp3 player if you insist on sticking with drm content and a subscription service for ease of use and downloads.
DRM is ridiculous as the people who intend to pirate find a way around it almost immediately. All it does effectivey is hassle the rest of us.
No no, Rhapsody and Napster should both work with all Windows Mobile devices. The only catch is that you HAVE to use Windows Media Player on a desktop PC to sync the songs to your mobile so that the DRM information gets transferred.
So, if you have a subscription service like Rhapsody, and you get those freely-downloadable songs, withOUT paying per track, you should be able to sync those to your i730 using Windows Media Player and they should play fine. Ditto with VCAST Music Store tracks, for those of you with Verizon..
I can't find hard info on this, but for example, Napster lists all of AT&T's Windows Mobile phones as being compatible with Napster 2 Go, so I'm thinking they're just using Windows Media Player, not anything special.
All right, just joined Napster To Go with a 7 day trial, and downloaded (NOT bought) a bunch of songs. The Cure's new CD, Katy Perry, what little Nine Inch Nails I didn't already have and could download (for some reason, you can't download The Downward Spiral OR Year Zero-what's up with that?).
Even with connected with Activesync, my i730 did NOT show up as a supported portable device with Napster. However, Napster just dumped my downloaded tracks into my My Music folder as normal WMA files. I added all those new tracks to my Windows Media Player library, and they added fine. I was then able to sync them to my phone using Media Player--it even let me put them on my SD card rather than straight on the phone's main memory, which was pretty cool.
I tried playing them, and they all work! So, YES, you can INDEED use the tracks you get from Napster To Go (and Rhapsody, but I don't know about any other services) on your Windows Mobile phone, so long as you add them to your Windows Media Player library and sync them using that program (which syncs over your licenses for those songs as well).
Of course, non-DRM'd MP3s would be better, but we don't live in a perfect, DRM-free world.
See, they have a scheme that takes care of this, that's what happens.
If you buy a track from Napster or Rhapsody (they both use the same system, or at least they did before Rhapsody went MP3 recently), what you get is a unlocked WMA file. WMAs can be locked or unlocked, and if you buy music outright, you get unlocked ones. With those, you can play them on your machine or anyone else's, you can burn them to CD, you can play them on any MP3 player that supports WMAs, do whatever you want, they're basically unlocked, as far as I understand it.
If you have a subscription, and you download a track without buying it, what you get is a locked WMA file with a time limit on it. Usually that time limit is something like a month or two. The idea is that you pay the subscription fee every month, and every month or so the program automatically updates the licenses for all your downloaded-but-not-purchased music. That way, even if you take your music files off and cancel your subscription without deleting them, they only work for about two more months after that date, unless you do something like convert them to another format.
Now also, with subscription tracks, they are licensed to your machine only. So, even if you have a current subscription, if you try to email or otherwise send your music to someone else's computer, they won't have the correct license, and the file won't play at all. Ditto for supported devices like phones and MP3 players that support locked WMAs.
yikes - the idea of waiting for wm to trf all those files via a sync cable is boring even to imagine. Hope you don't mind only adding media overnite because you are looking @ 30 sec to a min per file. YUCK.
If I was in this situation, I would be looking for an audio file editor (such as Acid or Audacity) that had the capability of doing batch editing, but also could read locked files. That way you could simply convert all the locked WMA's to regular MP3's, without doing them one at a time.
I've only ever done this for like 3 songs from itunes using Audacity
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