It does seem unfair… you paid for those songs and now you can’t play them outside of the iTunes environment, on hardware not supported by Apple, or on operating systems not supported by iTunes.

That’s because the iTunes tracks that you purchase and download are in a “protected” AAC or M4P audio format. Only it’s not YOU that is being protected, it’s Apple, or rather Apple’s bottom line. Apple explains this by saying that their proprietary format gives you superior sound quality, but that’s a smokescreen. It’s all about DRM, and DRM is all about the money.

The ability to make copies of copyrighted materials is seen by the recording industry as a threat to its profitability, and perhaps rightly so. DRM (Digital Rights Management) was created by digital media publishers so they could control the duplication and dissemination of their content. But DRM is actually a misnomer. Because rather than granting rights, DRM actually restricts the consumer from doing perfectly valid and reasonable things with music they own.

MP3 is the standard for digital audio. An MP3 music track can be played on almost ANY player, whether it’s portable or computer-based. You can burn MP3s to a CD and they’ll play just fine on almost any modern CD player.

But Apple’s iTunes software doesn’t create MP3 files when you buy a song. The files are “protected” and cannot be played on a computer which does not have the iTunes software. You CAN copy them to your portable music player, as long as you bought that player from Apple and it says iPod on it. Understandably, this makes Linux users, and the millions of owners of non-iPod music players a little upset.

Converting iTunes to MP3

If you right-click on a music track in iTunes, there is an option to Convert Selection to some other format. Probably it says “Convert Selection to AAC”, which is useless because your iTunes tracks are already in AAC format! So click on Edit / Preferences / Importing then change the Import Using from the default setting to “MP3 Encoder”. Click OK to save this setting. Now when you right-click on a music track, there is an option to Convert Selection to MP3. But just try it… iTunes will tell you that “Protected files cannot be converted to other formats.”

Converting AAC to MP3

Bzzzt! Sorry, thanks for playing. It turns out you can only convert non-protected formats (such as WAV or WMA) to MP3. So what can we do? Fortunately, there are two ways to get around this annoying restriction.

Method 1: Burn the track(s) to a CD, then you can open the CD in iTunes and the Convert Selection to MP3 will do exactly what you want. Just be aware that you’ll have TWO copies of that song in iTunes — one in the original AAC format and one in MP3 format. You can delete the AAC version if you like.

Method 2: If you have lots of music, you might need a big pile of CDs to convert everything with the “burn and rip” method above. That’s where the JHymn software can help. JHymn was created to allow you to exercise your fair-use rights under copyright law, and will free your iTunes music from DRM restrictions with no loss of sound quality. JHymn provides a drag and drop graphical interface for both Mac OSX and Windows users. But currently, JHymn will not work with iTunes Version 6 or higher. If you have an earlier version of iTunes, keep it, or visit http://www.oldapps.com/itunes.htm to search for a backlevel version.

Note that JHymn is not meant to aid music piracy, but it does contradict the iTunes user agreement, and may not be legal in your country. You should be aware of the legalites of DRM circumvention in your country and make your own decision whether using JHymn software is right for you. Then use JHymn only for making archival copies of your own music, for copying tracks to an MP3 player, or for playing your music on a non-Itunes platform. If you decide against using JHymn, you might want to look into TuneBite. The makers of Tunebite claim that it lets you make “totally legal” unprotected copies of copy-protected music files by recording them while they are being played.

Reprinted from: http://www.askbobrankin.com/convert_itunes_to_mp3_format.html

BOB RANKIN… is a tech writer and computer programmer who enjoys exploring the Internet and sharing the fruit of his experience with others. His work has appeared in ComputerWorld, NetGuide, and NY Newsday. Bob is publisher of the Internet TOURBUS newsletter, author of several computer books, and creator of the http://LowfatLinux.com website. Visit Bob Rankin’s website for more helpful articles and free tech support.

• AV DVD Player – Morpher 1.0.56 can convert DVD video and audio and can edit subtitles for movie, record audio, capture images and copy or delete VCD.

• Busker 3.0 can copy a song by dragging chords, symbols and notes and make an exact replica of the songbook. You can choose any instrument or genre and play.

•MagicScore School 4.0 is a specific notation software that can be of great use to music enthusiasts, teachers, students, schools, etc. This program gives the music aficionado a plethora of options, including editing, printing, input, etc.

•Intelliscore Polyphonic MP3 to Ringtone Converter 6.3 IntelliScore can convert MP3 to MIDI, WAV to MIDI and CD to MIDI for live performance. It can make MIDI files, transcribe music and get chord names from polyphonic MP3 and WAVE files.

•Lyrics4You 1.3 is special entertainment software. It can play as well as display karaoke lyrics with audio file formats like MP3, OGG, MIDI, WAV, KAR etc. It is a simple way to record. Lyrics4You 1.3 can also play back voice over the song.

• Karaoke Jockey 2.10s folksKJ is a MIDI Karaoke player with special features like automatic melody detection for MIDI and KAR files, customized photo albums and display of digital photos.

•Karaoke-to-Text-with-Chords 2.2 can take out lyrics from karaoke files and verify chords for MIDI and Karaoke songs.

Karaoke provides detailed information on Karaoke, Karaoke Machines, Karaoke Music, Karaoke Downloads and more. Karaoke is affiliated with Hip Hop Music.

To recall, for instance, Merlyn Manson, who is among few to follow the style in the US. The trend is popular among modern bands, irrespective of rumours, suggesting that the style suffered no popularity in the USA and Europe. The Visual Kei style is peculiar of the tradition to wear relevant make-up and clothing always and everywhere.

The style is credited to have started in Japan in late 80ies through early 90ies as a result of the gothic style’s influence. The word “visual” originates from English; the “kei” word is what Japanese name for style. The X-Japan and the Buck-Tick are believed to pose as catalysts of the movement. Their followers, including Luna Sea, Melice Mizer, Glay, L’Arc~en~Ciel, Dir en grey, Pierro are engaged in encouraging boom of Visual Kei media culture.

Each band seeks to vary from a similar one through creating gorgeous and insane images. Though a vast majority of the musicians are male, bend members would often give a priority to make-up and clothing, considered as “feminine”, which has nothing to do with their sexual orientation, but a combination of visual gothic elements and Japanese cultural traditions. Which is why Japanese gigs often resemble fascinating theatre performances.

Notably, the ancient Japanese “Kabuki” theatre involved actors, among staff, to play women’s parts. Thus, a j-rocker, wearing a lovely pink dress and having his hair styled into violet locks, wrapped around with numerous fillets should cause no astonishment.

Presently, Visual Kei remains as a diverse, ever growing music culture.

Article source: Visual Kei as a music world vision. Music Babylon is a site which gives you access to huge database of music lyrics, lively music forum

The world of mp3 music is now an extended orchard, ripe and ready for the picking. The industry of downloading music illegally is now noticing that in order to get better quality with less guilt then legal download is the best way to go. The reasons are endless as to why you should opt for downloading mp3 music legally.

It is clear that society is not highly interested in paying much for anything, but often the asking price for legal music download is so little one can actually ridicule it. There are many sites that offer the download of mp3 music legally. These help provide an efficient service for people. The basic concept is that people can get their favorite music instantly by paying a very low fee. This type of fee can be per download or subscription. Besides being able to download the music legally you get the opportunity to read some of the reviews written about your favorite artists which can be quite interesting. Most start from as little as $1 per hit downloads. Sites like mp3.com, emusic.com, musicmatch.com and so forth help make this process as easy as taping a few keys.

With such convenience its no wonder more and more people are entering this music world. The best part is that one can carry their music with them whenever they go, with the little assistance from mobile phones and also mp3 players and such technological gadgets. So the world is all about exploration and the path is paved with legally downloaded mp3 music. Why bother with the hassle of illegal music when you can have your conscious free from the claws of the law.

The appeal with legal mp3 music download is that you know that you will be receiving the same quality as a store bought CD. But something that most music fans seem to understand and appreciate from the services provided by the legal mp3 music downloading sites is that it is a community. This means you are become part of a growing network of music fans. Legally downloading mp3 music is also mainly about appreciating the legal rights of artists. With people lacking so much in the respect for other people’s property it is good that most music downloading websites are doing their part in preserving a sense of honesty.

Rubén Asensi is the webmaster of Mp3 Software where visitors can find resources and information about mp3, multimedia and legal music downloads.

Playing the major scale pitches downwards starting on the 6th degree for an octave (the natural or relative minor) does produce a sad sound but has two serious drawbacks. Firstly, the same scale doesn’t sound quite right when going upwards. The reason for this is our second drawback – the scale does not have a leading-note. This is the note that makes all the difference to the chords at the end of a section or piece (the cadence), when the harmonies move pleasantly to the home or tonic chord by using the familiar sounding 7th note going up a semitone to the 8th note. Since all harmonies (chords) are built using the notes of the scale, without the leading note the cadences just don’t seem to do their job, sounding more like just two unrelated chords. It was decided that this just wasn’t good enough, and the scale must be given a leading note by raising its 7th degree by a semitone, and because we could use this scale going up or down and we built all the harmonies from it, it became known as the Harmonic Minor scale.

So far, so good, but now it was the turn of the vocalists to complain! Singers found it difficult to pitch the gap between the 6th note and the now raised 7th note of the Harmonic Minor scale, this gap now being 3 semitones or a tone and a half. It was decided therefore to adjust the Minor scale so that it was easier to sing but still pleasing to the ear whilst retaining its sad quality. It was also decided that in order to best achieve this, the scale would be made slightly different according to whether the notes were rising or falling. This was the birth of our Melodic Minor scale, named because it was derived from the melody sung, which, compared to the Major scale starting on its 6th degree, had a raised 6th and 7th when ascending but lowered these notes again when falling to revert back to the natural minor scale.

So now we can please everyone. Singers have the Melodic Minor scale that is easy to sing upwards and downwards, and instrumentalists have the Harmonic Minor scale with which to form all our harmonies and chords. As a plus, everyone can also borrow from the other just to be different!

Brian Farley has been a worldwide professional Musical Director and pianist since 1974. His duet sheet music website “Easy Duets, Sheet Music for Schools, Musical Instrument Students” provides original musical duets and trios for early level students and some good free “reading musical notation” information.

‘Crazy’ by Gnarls Barkley made history by becoming the Number One song in the United Kingdom’s singles charts without one CD being available in stores. Over 31,000 legal downloads were compiled after the song was featured on BBC’s Radio One.

Among other things, that would rank the song right up there as the ultimate impulse buy.

To be accurate, ‘Crazy’ won this distinction because of a recent amendment to the British music industry’s rule that a song’s download couldn’t count against its sales until it became available in stores. However, the point has been made that, just as digital discs replaced tapes and records in personal music consumption, the torch has now been passed to digital transfers.

PC World noted this eventuality in its January 2006 issue, noting that music download sales tripled in 2005. That accounted for six percent of the music industry’s sales for the year, impressive in that it also signifies a dent in the number of pirated tracks. Figures released by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry — the authoritative source — revealed a tally of $1.1billion in download sales during the year.

Gnarls Barkley’s digital achievement came just over a month after another cyber-landmark was attained. The billionth download in iTunes history occurred in late February 2006, when a Michigan teen ordered Coldplay’s ‘Speed of Sound’ for the sum of 99 cents. That price is yet another reason why singles — almost eradicated by the trend toward albums in the 1970s — are back, and in a big way.

And to think that the music industry spent the early years of the Cyber Era trying to deny, or at least discourage, its existence.

Perhaps finally realizing that such a tactic didn’t work for blacksmiths at the turn of the last century, the recording moguls — albeit grudgingly — sought to learn from the new technology. The key to their success to date is their seeming awareness that their objective is to find their niche in the cybermarket, rather than attempt to dominate it. Granted, it’s a mega-niche, but the industry apparently accepts that it will no longer be the lone gateway between artist and consumer.

Retailers, for example, are beginning to capitalize on the social aspects of music purchases. There will always be teens, and congregating for music is a long-standing trait of theirs. When it’s in the malls or on Main Street, the major chains are preparing to offer kiosks where downloads can be purchased on-site. With their vast inventories of stock, these stores present an ideal means of searching for songs, sampling them and then sharing opinions, which perfectly describes the normal buying habits of both teens and tweens (ie- the 9-to-12 set).

Verizon is on the front lines for the mobile niche of music retailing with its VCast technology. This service transforms the wireless phone into a portable music player by synchronizing music already stored on the user’s PC. It can also be used to buy new songs or albums from the Verizon Wireless music catalog, which is accessed via cellular phone or PC.

Quality of sound for music downloads continues to improve exponentially, which further increases the attractiveness of downloads. FXSound is on the cutting edge in this respect with its critically acclaimed DFX Audio Enhancement package. Compatible with virtually every major music platform, from MP3s to Internet radio, DFX is trumpted as “the first plug-in to make truly professional-quality audio processing available to Internet audio users.” They do this by restoring the full range of frequency harmonics, thus creating the auspices of a high-end home music system. Its effects are amazing.

Where Gnarls Barkley has gone, legions will follow. Cyber-dominance in the music industry is now a hard fact, so the real top has yet to be popped.

Copyright 2006 – The Longer Life Group

J Square Humboldt writes for the Longer Life Group, which provides information designed to improve the quality of living. His page is at http://longerlifegroup.com/cyberiter.html and his observations are published three times per week.

Reed making is a rather long and varied process, and most successful reed makers
would recommend that you do the same thing every time. That way you can slowly
make corrections without losing your point of reference.

But what if you want to try something new?

The spirit of adventure definitely has a place in reed making, as long as you have
the time (and patience) to do some experimenting. There is so much new equipment
available to oboists today that can help (or hurt) your reed making adventures.

There are new kinds of staples coming out all the time, and someone is always
introducing either a new gouging machine or shaper tip to the market.

Sometimes it is possible to borrow these new “toys” from friends to try, and other
times you may be able to try a shaper tip on loan from a double reed company.

Just remember, don’t be afraid to try new things! That’s how you learn.

But here is a tip to make your experimenting as productive and efficient as possible:

Whatever you do, don’t get too caught up in the frenzy and try to change more than
one thing at once.

It may go without saying, but reed making with any new materials at all is just like a
science experiment. Remember those days back in lab class?

You never change more than one variable at a time when testing something new.
You want to be able to determine just how
the new change affects all areas of the experiment.

Some things you might try:

• change the length you tie the cane on
• try gouging your cane a few millimeters thicker

Try these and many other things! As long as you keep
everything else exactly the same, you will have conducted a successful experiment
and you will learn something.

It is surprising and fun to see how your reeds will change, and sometimes (hopefully
most times) it will be for the better!

Oboist and online entrepreneur Maryn Leister helps beginner and professional
oboists to be more productive and have more fun on the oboe. She publishes the
weekly Oboe:Space newsletter and gives away more FREE oboe reed tips than she
can remember with her Reed Guru service.

Sign-up for the Oboe:Space newsletter and start getting your FREE oboe reed tips
now at http://www.oboespace.com

You have to experience the song without a picture to really understand it. To really appreciate the work of a musical artist you have to experience a song through every mechanism available, through the artist’s voice, through the specific music instruments, through the carefully selected melodies, through the wonderfully written lyrics. Your first experience of a song and its interpretation should be by audio only. You have to be able to capture its meaning before it is corrupted by a visual expression. A song has to be free to speak a personal message and if a song is able to do that it is only because of artistic perfection. A music video takes away an artist’s majestic power of illustration.

Music videos are not all that bad. The nice thing about music videos is that they give you a new approach to the song, another perspective that may not have been experienced during your first interpretations of the song. It opens your mind for new possibilities with a song. A music video is also a good medium that helps you to understand a song if you are not good at interpreting them. Not everyone is a good interpreter of musical literature. Music videos are also a great way of bridging the language gap for fans who enjoy the music of a foreign artist, but don’t understand a word he or she is singing. After exploring a song trough audio only, it is always pleasurable for fans to see all the mechanisms of music combined in a music video, where you can experience the music with your eyes, ears and soul, all at the same time.

A music video should not be your first experience of a song, because that is when the theme of the song is killed. You have to focus on the music and lyrics to really appreciate the abilities of the artist. Not everyone looks good in a music video, but there are many, “not-so-good-looking” artists that produces great music. A music video is only a different medium through which one can experience a song, the music video itself cannot speak to you in a personal way, only the song can. The music video only brings you the central theme of the song, the abstract, theoretical meaning. Therefore it is true that a music video on its own, gives you a very limited perspective and can, at most, be an extension to musical expression, but can’t be the expression itself.

Coenraad de Beer was born on 27 February 1982 in small town called Lichtenburg in the North West (Formerly known as Transvaal) province of South Africa. He graduated High school in 2000 and started doing computer programming on his own for 2 years using the C++ programming language. In 2003 he started a career in Accounting and he is currently studying BCompt at the University of South Africa.

Coenraad is a very dedicated person in whatever he takes on in life and believes that success only comes from hard work and believing in your own abilities, the abilities God gave to you.

Coenraad is also the Webmaster of
LIAFIN – Your one stop Online Shop

You can also visit his homepage at
http://www.cplusplusgenius.wagoo2.com

First of all, there can be a scenario where someone, who wasn’t going to buy the artist’s record, downloads an mp3 for free, he then really starts to like the song from the artist. He goes ahead and buys the album, he loves it. The next thing you know he is buying every album that this artist releases.

What’s important about downloading music for free is that it can be viewed as samples. Personally I’ve bought albums from songs that I’ve downloaded in mp3 format. It’s not that unusual.

Another benefit that can be found when you download a free mp3 file, is that you can discover about new artists and styles of music, music that you would have never have heard otherwise.

The internet is growing fast, and artists are starting to use it to get more exposure everyday. This is where you come in. It’s all about what you do. I feel great when I discover a great artist, the stuff you don’t get on mtv, and then I’m able to track their album and buy it. This wouln’t be possible without free mp3 downloads.

What you need to do when you do download music online, is the following:

1) View it as “sampling music”, it’s just a teaser for when you download mp3’s online, you go ahead and purchase the albums of the artist you really enjoy.

2) Keep the music you download to yourself. Just don’t sell it or be giving it away to everyone and you’ll be safe from any legal issues.

3) Get a good software to download music online. Be warned that there are many people taking advantage of inocent visitors to their sites, that they give you a free mp3 download, but in return they plant a huge virus in your computer. Be sure to get a top download software to avoid these unnecesary troubles.

4) Get a fast connection. This, in the long run, will save you tons of time and make it a smoother process.

Be sure you’re doing all the above stuff and you and the free music downloads will get just fine.

Learn how to Download Music with Charles Cruz CEO of Download Music Online (http://www.systemmastery.com/DownloadMusicOnline.html) Educating people on how to properly Download Mp3 Music