Streaming Music

If you’ve been to a concert ever, you know that the memories will be with you for a long time to come; the atmosphere, side shows, beautiful individuals from all walks of life and cultural backgrounds. Not to mention the kaleidoscope of colors and, of course, the quicken pulse that you experience when you are at a live concert. It is al the majority surreal at times. You lose track of time, and indeed, for the majority of us, all inhibitions take leave of us.

Aside from the wonderful feeling that one gets at a music performance, one additionally gets to temporarily su spend all worries and concerns that he or she can dealing with. It is al the majority akin to taking a club ucinogenic drug to escape them. without the side effects associated with. The rewards are similar. all of us all know how the shaky state of the economy is, and how it impacts our livelihood. Yes, your hard earned dollars can only go so far these days. Certainly not as far as it used to. I guess going to a performance will be one way of escaping this feeling of doom and gloom.

It’s why a lot of the world renowned performers are having their shows sold out! Yes. people somehow manage to spare $30 to $50 for a performance in spite of the financial hardships. Such is the magical power of live music. In all actuality, this has a twofold Benefit: It helps our performers (gone are the days of performers making money by having a hit going platinum) since the Web began to enable people to download music, and all of us get entertainment which is therapeutic.

In case you think I’ve forgotten, many relationships, romantic and non-romantic have come about following a meeting at a performance. That indeed is the magical power of performance s. people get groovy and before you know it they get bold enough to approach strangers. Then one thing leads to another. That is how it goes. For those lucky souls to score, the end of a performance does not bring about the sadness which comes with it. You know the reason is they’re in cloud nine. All ecstatic and smitten! Is that not a wonderful thing, or what?

Now there are dos and don’ts of performance going. The dos are:

• Make sure you get your performance ticket or tickets well in wonderful time

• Make sure you get your performance ticket or tickets from a legitimate seller

• Take advantage of the convenience of purchasing from a reputable Online ticket dealer

• Last but not least dress comfortably and grab some blanket and portable chairs

The don’ts are:

• Do not wait until the eminently last day or so to get your performance ticket, or you’ll risk getting scalped L

• Do not be conned into buying your performance ticket from a shady source

• Ladies ought to avoid wearing high heeled shoes, like ably.

Okay, it’s time for me to finally say nice bye to my portable disc player, and join the On-line 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 choices for how to download music, listen to and buy On-line 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 final few weeks trying to determine what is perfect for my lifestyle, my wallet and my PC.
1st thing I realized when searching all of the music services is that things seemed to work a lot smoother with a broadband connection (and most services seem to point that out from the get go). Just like my CD  Walkman, the time had come for me to lose my ancient dial-up connection to the On-line experience. It actually turned out to work in my favor as my cable company gave me a nice deal on high-speed, and furthermore threw in a discount on my current costs for cable TV.
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 On-line 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 spend On-line searching for music.
The guy who sits next to me has a 60 GB iPod, and is complaining that it’s al most full. That is over seven thousand songs. I do not know that I would even live long enough to listen to that a lot of songs. My needs were easy r. I had an MP3 player still in the box from two Christmas’ ago, and it promised to hold over 500 songs. That would be perfect for me, at least in the short term.
Next, what has been 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 has been on my PC? Again, yes. Did I want to trade music with others On-line in a peer-to-peer Napster- like environment? Eh, that one scared me a little, and I decided that occasion up my files to strangers made me feel dirt, so I put that one on hold.
My next prevent 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 Now, iTunes and Rhapsody Music Service ( offer d by Real Networks).
I already had AOL, so I signed up for their Music Now product for $8.99/month ( that is in addition to their monthly fee as an ISP). I has been 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 fee per song. That seemed to be standard across most of the services. Music Now has been a follow up to the original AOL Music Net, which I actually like d better because it ran local/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’re actually in the iTunes application. It is confusing. If I want to move my downloaded songs to my MP3 player, the monthly fee 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 On-line service. Not to mention you’ve to be an current AOL member (more resources per month) in order to even use the product. I am passing on AOL Music Now.
On to iTunes. Okay, so there is no monthly fee for iTunes. Love that. And I could 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’s not the model I would select. I like my MP3 player. If I already had an iPod, this can be the route I would go, but Apple tends be truly inflexible, and I hate to be tied to one offer r, player and format. There’s furthermore a limit to how you could share the songs on your home network. I feel like 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 are the least expensive. $9.99 per month and that is with unlimited access to over 1.3 million songs. I do have to have pay the additional 99 cent fee if I want to burn to CD  or transfer to my MP3, but that is the industry standard for paying the musician s, and the monthly fee is five dollars less per month than AOL. The music comes over in the more expansive ly help ed MP3 format and the songs are mine to rip transfer or share with my other PC’s on my home network. like the other two, I could listen to live radio on my PC, but I like the freedom I get with Rhapsody Music Service. I am 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’ve already burned several CD ’s for my car, albeit with an older man’s twist on today ’s preferred s, and transferred those same songs over to my little antiquated MP3 player for those long weekend walks.