Santa's soundtrack, distributed

December 29, 2014 5:58 PM

This is probably a stupid question for you smarties. I'm putting together an epic mp3 mix for all of my friends (tracks will be purchased from Rhapsody) and I don't know how best to deliver the goods to all of the inboxes on my list. First, how can I transfer the purchased tracks to the peeps? And can I do it so it's a package, tracks in order, so that it's easily downloadable to the various devices of my audience? I am thinking and/or hoping that this is an easy thing. I'm trying to avoid burning a stack of cds, and I just know that there is a better way to give the gift of groove to my excellent friends.

I get that this may be very simple/obvious.

posted by lakersfan1222 to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

I'm not sure if you're looking for a more specific/clever method, but this is what I thought of:

After you have all of the tracks saved on your computer as .mp3 files, order them by adding numbers to their names, and then email a zipped folder that has all the files.
posted by wym at 6:12 PM on December 29, 2014

I'm looking for the best method mix delivery possible. If the numbered zip file is the best way, that's the one. Is there a better way, though? I'm open to any and all solutions.
posted by lakersfan1222 at 6:18 PM on December 29, 2014

Pay for a lot of Dropbox and upload there?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:28 PM on December 29, 2014

Dropbox is free for up to 2gb; mp3s aren't that big, so maybe that would work? You can take the files down after people have had a chance to download them. Also, in your zipped folder, you could include an m3u file which a variety of music players can use for playlists.

There are mixtapes sharing sites out there, but last I checked, they seemed mostly geared towards streaming. Also, can you still buy individual songs on Rhapsody? I thought it was all subscriptions now.
posted by bluefly at 7:43 PM on December 29, 2014

I concur. Edit all the files to have the same Album Name tag, then zip a folder of numbered MP3s (perhaps knock together an m3u file with relative addresses, but probably not important), upload to a free dropbox account, generate a public link, and share that via email.
posted by pompomtom at 7:47 PM on December 29, 2014

Zip files is how I've received MP3 mixes before. Works great, Dropbox should be fine. Tag everything well and include a track list.
posted by migurski at 10:29 PM on December 29, 2014

Just numbering the files is by far the most foolproof way. Unfortunately I don't know of an easy way to rename them automatically -- I use MP3 Book Helper for this sort of thing but it's got a bit of a learning curve.
posted by neckro23 at 12:55 PM on December 30, 2014