Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with mp3

What's the best way to include album art?

yeahyeahyeahwhoo — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:42:26 -0800

If I'm making an album available on the web, whats the best album art file names and dimensions to include with the download? Is it worth it to include a playlist file?

How to fix broken mp3 screen?

psylosyren — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:18:31 -0800

I purchased a refurb sansa 8g mp3 from woot.com and the inner screen is now broken disrupting the display. I cannot seem to find much help in fixing this problem myself. Any suggestions?

Internet Famous Mp3 - Anyone remember it?

MrHappyGoLucky — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 13:32:09 -0800

Can anyone remember the name of the song, popular on the internet around 1998 or so, if I remember right it centered around a geek and his girlfriend. I only remember the line, "Mulder finally saw his UFO." The line was made in reference to The X-Files movie, which was released in 1998 and is what I'm basing my time frame off of.

I realize this is very little to go off of, but maybe someone remembers?

Whither online media organizing?

droplet — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:05:28 -0800

Are there any sites out there like the late, sort-of-great Guzzlefish? I adored Guzzlefish. Every time I got a new DVD, mp3 or CD, I popped the info in and along with a comprehensive list of my media collection, I'd get all these great statistics about what I had (apparently, I love anything ever on film, vinyl or electrons by Michael Palin). And then one day - ZOOP!- Guzzlefish was gone. I'd like to find something similar if it's out there, and googling has been of no help. DVD Aficionado is meh. Could the hive mind direct me to something better? Thanks.

iTunes woes

stopgap — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:48:09 -0800

After the recent iTunes upgrade, iTunes no longer plays the MP3s for Radiohead's In Rainbows. Nothing happens when I try to play any of the songs, and the play count is not increased (unlike other problems I've had with iTunes not playing songs). At first I thought iTunes had just lost the artwork like it does with so many files because the album art area says "Album Artwork Not Modifiable." These are the original MP3 files downloaded from the Radiohead website when they were released last year. I added album artwork at that time, and had been playing them regularly since then. The files are not set to read-only, and they still play in other players (QuickTime, WMP Classic). I have iTunes set to manage my library for me. When I try to add the MP3s again from a backup location, they are not imported. This is iTunes 7.7.0.43 on Windows Vista.

Best web audio/video players

avocet — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:24:38 -0800

What are the best embedded open source/free audio/video players? I'm looking at finding a flexible media player for an arts related site I'm working on. Although I'm looking for something that will handle an audio playlist (i.e. like the ubiquitous myspace player) bonus if it can also handle flash video as well. I really like Flowplayer but it is $75 for a license and while that is a fair price, I'd rather find something free and open source with an active community around it. I'm looking for something to manage .flv and .mp3 files and would appreciate some more options. Thanks!

Best format for ripping CD's?

davidaugust111 — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:47:51 -0800

Lots of CD's to rip. What format to save them as? Storage no issue, but like compatibility of 320k mp3 with everything/everyone else. Will I notice a loss? I've got a couple of gigs in mp3 format that have been purchased/borrowed/file shared, etc. all at 320k. Some of those have been ripped from CD and later burned back onto a CD and I can't hear the difference when played on a medium-high quality system.

But I have hundreds of CD's to rip (looking forward to a central location) and was reading an earlier thread here where they started getting into formats as well as the hardware the OP was asking about. Didn't wanna hijack that thread.

I know I wouldn't use a proprietary format; too worried about it becoming the next 8-track, but FLAC or wav seems like it would stay around, as well as mp3. I like the portability of mp3 for friends, and putting on a player, soon to be a smart phone.

Keep in mind I'm 50- my listening is fantastic but my hearing ain't getting any better. Even my YOUNG friends are turning 30, so they're not what they used to be either. Can I sleep comfortably with my collection in 320k mp3?

Lightweight MP3 app for OSX?

rathikd — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:09:37 -0800

Looking for a lightweight MP3 app for OS X, any suggestions? I'm looking for something, preferably free, to preview MP3s in OS X in a way they don't automatically get dumped into iTunes. And before you jump on VLC, no. Nothing wrong with VLC, it's just not the droid I'm looking for. While we're at it, anyone know of any good ID3 editors for OSX? Bonus points if these two apps are the same but not necessary.

Thanks.

Need Music, man

crapples — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:40:43 -0800

I need a way to purchase music -- what's your favorite method? I have certain things that I look for -- see inside: I used to use allofmp3.com, but now that they are history (and their sister site mp3sparks doesn't allow credit card payments) I am finding myself with no way to purchase music that I'm satisfied with. What are the best options?

Things I really liked about allofmp3: (1) I could choose my bit rate (I like 320 or 192), (2) It was cheap, (3) there was no DRM (this is a requirement for me, so iTunes is out), and (4) the selection was great.

... Not looking for any discussion about the legality of allofmp3, I'm just looking for current music purchasing alternatives. What do you use? Why? Is there any service on earth that can give me the four points that I named above? Thanks.

Redirect images & mp3s to mirror via htaccess

frenetic — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:13:40 -0800

How do I redirect all my website's images and mp3s to another domain via .htaccess? I have a domain (foo.com) that ordinarily serves my website and its images and mp3s. I have a mirror (bar.com) that has a mirror/backup of all those images and mp3s.

In the event of a traffic surge on foo.com, I want to make Apache serve all my images and mp3s from bar.com.

All I can find is examples to stop others from hot-linking my files, which isn't what I want.

(Bonus aside question: Am I not turning up examples of this because it's better done in httpd.conf some way?)

convert vocals only from mp3 to midi for Ultrastar import?

nolnar — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:42:36 -0800

convert vocals only from mp3 to midi for Ultrastar import? Is there today some fairly effective program for converting only the vocals from a mp3 music file (the file contains other instrument so the vocals need to be singled out) to a midi track that can later be imported to the PC Singstar clone Ultrastar?

When searching for "mp3 to midi conversion" in general one finds many negative answers claiming either that it is impossible or that the tools available give poor results ( http://ask.metafilter.com/17312/MP3-to-MIDI ).

But I want to know if things are different when (1) only the vocal track is needed and (2) the purpose of the midi is to be imported into Ultrastar (it may not need to be as exact to work well there as for other midi purposes, I speculate).

How can my friend get the rights to sell mp3s?

racecar — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:41:47 -0800

Who can license music for download/sale? A friend came up with a wicked cool idea for selling music using the internet, but it can't be done through some affiliate mp3 link (like Amazon). We're just a couple of college guys, and we don't know any rockstars or label executives. Are there smaller labels out there who can sell us the rights to offer downloads of their music? Is there typically some money we have to pay up front when signing up to sell a band's music? Will I need a lawyer?

We just want to sell music in this cool, immersive context on the internet, and would be willing to give the label/artist a bigger cut than other people do, because we think we can make money on other things, and even take a loss on song sales. (That's what Apple does with iTunes right? To sell iPods?)

Do we need to sign contracts with our school friends who are pretty good musicians? Or is it just enough to have them send us their mp3s and we give them money. (tax rules?) We can't afford lawyers, and we probably wouldn't want to talk to them.

It'd be good to have hip hop, or other music that specifically teenagers would like, but it'd be even better to have a broad collection.

Googling yields ASCAP, Walmart and other companies that might not talk to little old me.

My parents say that an idea isn't enough, that we have to build the application.

We're free this summer and could probably build something for musicians and record labels to see.

Whatever we do, we want to do it legal, we don't want to be oink or allofmp3 and get shut down.

I know people can't give me official legal advice, but anything at this point is helpful. We thought about just calling the record labels main numbers, but that sounds like a waste of time.

Researching going legit with dubiously sourced music collection

superfurry — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:55:59 -0800

Legitimizing iTunes Library. I have *ahem* a friend. This friend has a reasonably large digital music collection being managed by iTunes on a Mac. He would like to understand the cost of ensuring this collection is 100% legal, having realized that the vast majority of it is not. Purely out of curiosity, this *ahem* friend, has decided that maybe it would be a worthwhile thing to look into the cost of legitimately purchasing all the music in his digital collection. When this friend thinks about the fact that his largely ill-gotten music is being managed by iTunes, and that the iTunes Store probably 'stocks' a large proportion of this music, there might be a cool iTunes plugin that can do some amazing trick to give him a very good idea what the cost would be of purchasing all this music. Seems like a great opportunity for Apple to develop something like this.

Is there such a thing ? No matter whether it uses the iTunes Store, Amazon, etc.

It should be a plugin for iTunes or some other clever techy thing rather than manually doing an album count and then working it out from there.

Would also be ideal if it were OS X compatible.

External sound card for laptop. Recommendations wanted!

watson415 — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:55:45 -0800

External sound card for laptop. Recommendations wanted! Application: Ripping vinyl records to .WAV and MP3. I have a good (old) turntable. A good (new) RIAA equalized preamp and plugs to go into a sound card. Works great on my desktop, but I want to use it with my Dell/XP laptop. I tried it in the audio in (laptop sound card) but it clipped or...? otherwise sounded like crap. No knobs to tune it either. I'm looking for a moderately priced audio in (from the preamp) to USB that and associated drivers. Two channels are all that are necessary. A mic would be nice, but not req'd.

The main thing that I want to know is how to capture the best signal. These are rare records (1950s jazz) and I'm going to sell them after I rip them. The PolderbiTs software that I use has good pop and crackle filters, but I need to rip at a DVD quality sampling rate for those features to work well. I'll compress later.

Does a USB bus provide the bandwidth to achieve such a throughput? I'd consider a USB turntable, but the one I have is probably better than what I could get for the $40-$80 that I expect to pay for the audio/USB converter (unless convinced otherwise :)

Help me organize my iTunes library!

cosmic osmo — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 13:53:40 -0800

What's the best way to organize and re-tag my enormous MP3 library? (iTunes, Mac 10.5, 20k+ songs) My goals for this project are to have every song in my library properly tagged (artist, album, year, track #, etc.) in a consistent format, with artwork where applicable. I'd also like to be able to distinguish sub-genres of music (i.e., neo-soul vs. new jack swing, or west coast g-funk vs. backpacker rap, or arena rock vs. shoegazer, or...), while still being able to browse by genre at large (r&b, hip hop, rock).

I've tried to do this manually using the allmusic database and infinite amounts of patience, but I have more than 20,000 songs and it's getting impractical. I have no idea what software I should use for a library this size--in the past I've used MPFreaker, but I doubt that's the best option any more.

So my questions:

1. What are some good software options to help me? I'm more than willing to pay a shareware fee to support the developers if it's a good program (again, I'm on Leopard, and I'm not willing to give up iTunes). For the most part the songs I have are already tagged, just not consistently. The songs are also a fair mix of MP3/AAC.

2. How have you tackled the subgenre issue in iTunes? Right now I have in the genre column "Main Genre: Subgenre," but I'm willing to hear other suggestions (I have no classical music to speak of, so the "category" and "grouping" info fields are up for grabs).

3. Practical suggestions about how to go about this? In the past when I've tried to organize my library, I've made one big playlist called "FIX," put the whole library in, and removed songs/albums when I was satisfied with their tags. Is there a better way?

Thanks!

How do I convert a wma file to wav or mp3?

HarryS — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:27:25 -0800

How do I convert a wma file to wav or mp3? I'm running Windows XP. I have a tiny file (30 seconds) that needs to be converted, so I'd like to avoid purchasing software if possible.

Based on a prior metafilter conversation, I downloaded a trial version of something called DMC, but it won't convert the wma file, I get error messages.

Thank you metafilterites.

I want to insert an mp3 file into my blog.

Ahuva — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:46:15 -0800

I'd like to add an Mp3 file to my blogger blog. How do I do it? I started with a .wma file, and I figured out how to convert that to an mp3. Ok, step on accomplished! I also found the html coding to insert the mp3, but obviously I have to have the mp3 loaded to some website first so I can use the location to insert the link. Is that making sense? Is there a place I could put the Mp3 file so that it's "out there" on the internets, and then I can code it into the blog?

The Future of Zune?

jaronson — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:53:56 -0800

What should I tell my 13-year old niece about the future of her Zune? She has been disappointed in her choice of mp3 player (30 gb) since she bought it 2 years ago. If I recall, the Zune had a promising future, but those promises don't seem to have panned out.

How to cheaply and easily encode 3,500 CDs to MP3s?

tundro — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:04:51 -0800

i have about 3,500 CDs. I want to rip them to MP3. I'm too lazy to do it one at a time on my computer and too cheap to pay a service like MusicShifter. Any other options? So I'm a bit of a music nut. Managed to collect about 3,500 CDs. The new ones I get I tend to rip to MP3 right away, but I have a serious backlog. In fact, some are obscure and require manually adding in song and album information which adds to it being a pain in the butt.

I'm entirely too lazy to do this one by one on my computer, and way too cheap to spend $2,500 - $3,500 on paying a service to do it for me. Any other options? I'm looking for encoding at no less than 192 VBR joint stereo.

Bonus question: i also have about 1,000 cassettes and 500 - 700 vinyl records (in various sizes from 7" to 10" to 12"). Would love to get them to MP3s too. All ideas for how to accommodate my laziness and cheapness are appreciated.

Selling MP3 Downloads

krunk — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:25:43 -0800

What's the best way to sell mp3 downloads? I run a website for an indie musician who'd like to setup a shop for his tunes. This question has been asked a couple times, but that was almost 2 years ago and I hope that things have improved since then.

I'm currently using 1-2-3 Music Store, but it is buggy, barely functional, has a horrible user interface, and isn't very customizable.

I've seen some shops for digital sales, but I'd like to be able to organize things specifically for music, with tracks grouped by album, for example.

Lazy guy doeasnt want to drag each file separately into burning software

buggzzee23 — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:09:07 -0800

I need some help choosing the correct software to burn DVDs of my 40GB mp3 collection. WHat I would like to find is an app which would allow me to just drag the entire directory into the app and it would take care of filtering out the occasional file other than mp3 and would split the directory into DVD sized portions for easy burning. Does such an app exist?

Need Vista Compatible .wav to .mp3 converter software

Ironmouth — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:08:21 -0800

I need a Vista-compatable, cheap or freeware audio interface that can convert a .wav file to .mp3. I just got a nice 8-track hard disk recorder which outputs to a computer in a .wav format. The guy at [gulp] guitar center said that there are no good audio programs that work with Vista. Since I automatically don't believe anything that anyone who works at guitar center says, I'm here asking about it.

I'm planning on doing all of my mixdowns on the platform, not on the computer, so I'm not concerned with a program that does much more than convert the .wav files to .mp3 so I can put them up on the band's webpage and/or send around to the rest of the band.

Looking for the quick and dirty solution here and I'm not going to be using the software to do any real work, so no need for recommendations for a complete recording set up.

What song is this?

brownbat — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:29:04 -0800

What song is this? Ethereal and moody vocals (not quite spy, not quite gothic, but leaning ecletic), jazz rock background, sounds a bit like early Goldfrapp, or Morphine, or maybe even Darling Violetta. (All pretty approximate.) Very rough lyrics: I call you Tracy, You get along, You lovely... sing me your song. I call you darling, I know it's strong. I bet... ...and on. Show goes on. Show goes on. I call you ... ... I call you Liza B. I wish I could see That maybe it's only my dream. It's only my dream. Show goes on. Show goes on. I miss... ...queen of bees (beasts?). That honey Suzie, bewitched by me. I think you're... what else can be? ... ... Be my promise breaker, ... delusion maker, ... I wish I could see, It's only my dream. Show goes on, The show goes on.

Archos 605 in-store?

viama — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:47:19 -0800

Where can I buy an Archos 605 in-store in San Francisco or Las Vegas? I'm looking to buy one of these players whilst I'm on holiday, but only the smaller capacity units seem to be available in-store in the usual places.

mp3 Fiesta - who's getting ripped off?

mooza — Sat, 24 May 2008 18:17:34 -0800

mp3 Fiesta - what's the catch? A friend told me about mp3fiesta.com. How are they able to sell music so cheaply and how does it affect the artists in terms of royalties etc? If mp3 fiesta can do it for so little, why not iTunes? I mean, it's just so CHEAP! What's the catch?