Transferring Music to MP3 Players in Windows XP

Technique

Save Time By
Choosing an MP3 player — what counts, what doesn’t
Copying songs to an MP3 player (or video player) quickly and accurately
Keeping backup copies of your music
Windows Media Player 10 makes it drop-dead simple to copy MP3 and WMA music from your PC to your MP3 player. (If you have AAC music to go in your iPod, stick with Apple’s iTunes, okay?) You have to watch out for a few gotchas, but by and large the entire process goes along with click (and occasional drag) precision. Similarly, copying video onto personal video players rates as drop-dead simple, providing the video player works with Windows Media Player.
CDs are neat, but when it comes to saving time, MP3 players are better. No need to shuffle and scratch those shiny round disks. No need to fumble with all those moving parts. (Tell the truth — when’s the last time you tore the top off a CD player?) And, man, the capacity on the new MP3 players boggles my mind. It’s like you could keep the songs going for a month and never hear the same one twice (or come pretty close).
As far as the mechanics go, copying files to an MP3 player is every bit as easy — and at least twice as fast — as copying to a CD-R or DVD-R drive (see Technique 35).
This technique tells you how to avoid the gotchas, and how to getcha goin’ in no time at all.

Choosing an MP3 Player

People frequently ask me what to look for when they’re shopping for an MP3 player. The answer is simple: If you want cool, get an iPod. If you want functional, don’t worry about the brand, and go for memory.
A song recorded in MP3 format at 128 Kbps (the setting I recommended in Technique 32) takes about 1MB per minute — so a 256MB MP3 player holds about four hours of music. A 640MB CD-based MP3 player makes it up to 10 hours. A 20GB player holds around 300 hours of music.
Figure out how much memory you need — and whether you have to buy memory cards — and make that the controlling factor when you buy a player.


Everything else falls into the bit bucket. All players do the following:

Support ID3 (or WMA) tags, so you can see the name of the songs on the player.
Use USB connections. These connections are good enough, unless you want to transfer a dozen CDs of music every night of your life (in which case, you might want FireWire).
All the players on the market come with their own software that undoubtedly does more than Windows Media Player 10. That said, as long as your music library contains MP3 and/or WMA music files, you’ll undoubtedly want to use Windows Media Player 10 to copy music to your MP3 player. Why? Compatibility — you know that WMP works with Windows XP, but you may not be so lucky with the player’s software. At any rate, all MP3 players are compatible with Windows Media Player.
Before you actually plunk down your credit card, make sure that you can understand the MP3 player’s controls. Some MP3 players have such incredibly inscrutable buttons and on-screen commands that it’s hard to believe they were designed to be used by humans.
iPods break all the rules, and I think that’s great. I love my iPod, although I use my Nomad, too. If you’re going to get an iPod, don’t sweat the small stuff. Stick with Apple all the way: The iTunes player and the Apple Music store work great. You may pay a few pennies more, but you get a first-class ride, all the way.

Copying Files to an MP3 Player

The method for copying songs to an MP3 player is virtually identical to the one in Technique 35 for burning CDs.
You save yourself a lot of headaches if you make sure you try to copy only MP3 files — or WMA files without copy protection — to your MP3 player. Some WMA files won’t copy at all to any MP3 player. Others require a digital license, which is only granted ten times (you can copy the file ten times, but the eleventh time, you can’t copy it). If you download a WMA song from a record company’s Web site — or if you buy a WMA version of a song — the record company determines how, when, or whether you can put the WMA file on your MP3 player. MP3 files have no such limitations. In fact, there aren’t any hooks inside MP3 files to allow anything of the sort. With MP3, what you see is what you get.

To get songs from the Media Library onto your MP3 player:

7. Start Windows Media Player 10.
If you don’t yet have Windows Media Player 10 installed, see Technique 31.
2. Connect your MP3 player and turn it on.
You receive notification from Windows XP, asking what you want to do, as shown in Figure 36-1.
I specifically do not recommend that you go through the manufacturer’s steps to insert a driver CD and install the MP3 player before trying the simple trick in Step 2, to see if Windows XP can set up everything all on its own. Usually it does. If you don’t receive the notification in Figure 36-1, restart your machine. Start WMP and click the Synch button at the top to see if WMP identified your player. If it isn’t there, you have some fun times ahead. Start by following the MP3 manufacturer’s instructions for installing any Windows XP drivers.
If Windows XP recognizes your MP3 player, you get this notification.
• Figure 36-1: If Windows XP recognizes your MP3 player, you get this notification.
3, Click Synchronize Media Files (you may also want to check the Always Perform the Selected Action box, if you never expect to install your MP3 player manufacturer’s software), and then click OK.
Windows Media Player appears, with the Sync button selected and your MP3 player identified in the upper right, as shown in Figure 36-2.
All the songs on the MP3 player appear on the right side.
• Figure 36-2: All the songs on the MP3 player appear on the right side.
4 Click the Library button at the top.
5, Find a bunch of songs that you want to copy to the MP3 player — perhaps by bringing up an album or a playlist.
6, Select songs by clicking them, by Ctrl+clicking individual songs, or by Shift+clicking a group of songs.
7 Right-click the selected songs and choose Add To Sync List (see Figure 36-3).
8, If you have any additional songs you want to copy, click Edit Playlist and use the method described in Technique 35.
9, Check and uncheck the tracks you do or don’t want to copy to the MP3 player. When you have the songs set, click Start Sync (in the upper-left corner).
WMP copies the songs you’ve selected onto your
MP3 player.
Right-click tracks and add them to your Sync List.
• Figure 36-3: Right-click tracks and add them to your Sync List.

Keeping Backups

The MP3 and WMA songs on your computer are files, just like any other files. You can (and should!) back them up. In particular, don’t rely on your MP3 player for backup storage — WMP generally doesn’t let you copy songs from your MP3 player back onto your PC.
Include MP3 and WMA files in your regular backups (see Technique 60).

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