In Praise of My New iPod
Having now been an ipod shuffle owner for four days, I can definitely report it was well worth the money spent. I easily got it loaded up with songs the first night I brought it home (we already have our CD collection ripped to MP3). It seems to hold about 110-115 songs, which translates into a little over 8 hours of music. That very night I wore it around my neck using the included lanyard cap and listened to music while I printed and folded z37 newsletters at the church building.
Thanks to an input cord Tony already had plugged into our stereo for the purpose of being able to amplify the computer’s sound, I can easily play music on the shuffle and have it come out the speakers in the living room upstairs. Ditto using it to play music in the car, thanks to the fact that we have a cassette-deck stereo in the Neon. The shuffle can easily be used with one of those cassette adapters that are usually used with portable CD players to allow them to be used in the car. So it is truly a go-everywhere music device. So far, the battery life seems great and it is no big deal to just leave it plugged into the usb port on one of the computers to charge it overnight when the battery does get low.
For a variety of reasons I haven’t done much music listening in the past year, so my own music collection seems pretty fresh again. We’re looking forward to getting some new music though. One thing I discovered today is that there are a lot of sources for free, legal MP3s of many lesser-known and independent artists available on the web. Did you know that there are hundreds of free MP3s on amazon.com? I didn’t know that until today! Some of them are even from better-known artists. Grassroots music has several dozen free MP3s from Christian artists available for download. This page on about.com gives tips on finding other sites with legal and free music (just don’t fall for the ads on the page (”sponsored links”)…those take you to places where the music is of questionable legality!!!)
Of course the idea with all of this is to discover new artists you might like, and then purchase their Cd’s or attend their concerts. I am hoping I can find some new favorites while exploring some of these sites! A majority of my music collection is well over five years old, so it could use some updating!