Digital Music

Digital Roots Music

The digital revolution is supposed to herald a new dawn for independent artists and music lovers. As specialist forms of music are increasingly excluded from the mainstream media, the world of MP3's IPOD's, video streaming and the like may offer an alternative. In this issue we talk to a variety of artists about how they are using the new technology and get to grips with some of the jargon.

An MP3 player is a modern version of the Walkman where music is stored on a hard drive similar to the one in your computer. Typically they are about the size of a pack of cigarettes or smaller. The main advantage of MP3's is that they can easily store your whole collection of cds and vinyl.

In addition to being very portable they can also be connected to your hifi or car stereo and deliver almost CD quality sound. There are smaller MP3's that store information on a micro chip rather then a hard disc, these will store only a few songs. The most popular MP3 player by a long way is Apples IPOD. The disadvantage with an IPOD is that you cannot record music directly from your hifi, you need to get your music into your computer first then download tracks into your IPOD from there. This is time consuming but it certainly quicker then recording directly from your hifi and at least you will have a back up should anything happen to your IPOD. You can also transfer music back to your PC from your IPOD, handy if your ex partner decides to delete all your music files out of spite.

Its important to check whether the MP3 you are buying is compatible with your PC. Also some MP3's such as the IPOD are not designed for downloading files from the internet generally as this can be illegal. The IPOD is designed primarily for recording your own CDs etc and using Apples own iTunes website for downloading tracks.

The memory of your player is measured in bytes, without wishing to get too technical a gigabyte (GB) is 1000 megabytes (MB). MP3's differ in the amount of music they can hold a rough rule of thumb is that 1 GB equals about 250 MP3 files. As many players have 40 GB this leaves plenty of room to store pictures, documents, emails etc or anything else you want to back up from you computer. You can fit more songs onto your MP3 if you use a format that gives lower quality sound such as WAV or WMA files. The battery life of your MP3 player is another important feature some can play up to 24 hours before they need recharging. Like mobile phones these rechargeable batteries do eventually expire and will need replacing.

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