Tag Archives: music

Get your music back from your iPod

You ever had the problem where your computer’s hard drive gives way and you loose all your music, but it’s on the iPod. If only you could get that music back to your computer…

Well, over the last couple of years, lots of companies have come up with software, both freeware and shareware, which will recover music (and possibly videos) from your iPod.

That way, you can recover any music you’ve lost and stick it straight back on your computer.

Have a look at iPodRip, at http://www.ipodrip.com/. It’s not freeware, but it will get all of your music and playlists back. And if you aren’t short of time, have a good browse around as there’s plenty of freeware around if you’ve got the time to look for it.

Have a look, and post any comments if you can find any decent software you’d like to recommend.

Lyricsplugin for Windows Media Player

I discovered this a few weeks ago but have found it extremely useful so I thought I would share it.

Lyricsplugin is a plugin for Windows Media Player that displays lyrics for a song while your playing in the main Now Playing window.

 

Lyricsplugin Image

Lyricsplugin Image

It’s one of those ‘set and forget’ type of programs. You just install it, activate it, and let it show you all the lyrics to your favourite songs.

You can even add lyrics for songs manually it doesn’t recognise in its huge directory as well as configure the plugin to your liking.

It also is available for Winamp if that’s what you use.

I definately recommend you get this, head over to www.lyricsplugin.com and get it for free.

Where do you buy your music from?

In the past, I’ve used many different music download services. 

I used Napster first, which in general was good, but very short lived after I discovered their credit card fraud issues. When I used Napster, I only really used it for buying music to burn to CD but not really for MP3 players because at that time I didn’t own a very decent one.

Then after I closed my account with Napster, I didn’t use any music download service for a while.

When someone bought me an iPod earlier in the year, I started using iTunes. I received a £15 voucher with it so I played around a bit and rented some films as well as downloaded music. I’m not a huge fan of iTunes but the service itself is generally reliable and apart from the fact you have to use an iPod with iTunes, it’s pretty good. Of course there is the problem that iTunes (and Napster) are both DRM sites so you wont get DRM free music.

Then I tried the Orange Music Store (since my phone is with Orange) and that’s slightly more dissapointing but still good enough for most people. The application itself that you have to use to download music is quite buggy and can cause some problems, but I find it useful that if you download the song that you want from your phone, it will automatically send it to your PC (and vice versa). There is still the DRM problem, though.

And finally I recently started using Non-DRM sites. I like 7digital.com because they sell MP3’s that you can buy with SMS payment, although it is £1.50 per song apposed to the average 79p per song in most stores. 

What sites do you use for buying music? Do you like them?

Do you use Last.fm?

I only recently discovered the point in having an account with Last.fm. Before then, I only used it for the odd song I wanted to listen to online. 

But I see why its so good to sign up to now. Basically, when you sign up you get your own page where you can put up a whole load of statistics on what music you like, how much you listen to it, make playlists and “love” songs. It’s really good for anyone who listens to a lot of music.

You may have noticed the widgets I have added to the GEEK! sidebar. They are from last.fm and the top one shows what I have recently listened to to, and the bottom one shows what artists I like.

You can easily install the program that Last.fm provide, which will monitor all the music you are listening to, and what you’ve listened to in the past. It support Windows Media Player, iTunes, and I think Winamp as well as a couple of other music players. You can have the program upload the artists you listen to from one of the players you use, straight to your page.

It’s a great site for any music lover, and it is FREE. I do wish you could add it via FTP to your own domain, that would be awesome, but for now its good anyway.

I will be adding it to the Resources page (soon to be renamed).