this whole IPOD thing

[mistysue]

I have never had an Ipod. Downloading mp3's became illegal at the end of my being in college, so I gave that up and actually buy music. DH is a college professor and EVERYBODY has Ipods on campuses.

So how do people have thousands and thousands of songs on their Ipods?
I looked at the Itunes store and a cd is the same price as it is in the store. I'm sorry, but I don't believe that all these high school and college students have spent tens of thousands of dollars on songs for Ipods. A couple years ago I took an art class and one girl told me she had over a million songs- a girl on financial aid at a community college (so unless she won the lottery under the table somehow, there is no way it came from the itunes store)

Are normal people just illegally downloading things all over the place and I'm just naive? Are there really cheap places to buy songs? How do those of you with Ipods and families of Ipod owners budget this sort of stuff?
How does this work because I wanted an Ipod until I realized that I was going to have to re-buy everything I want to hear. What I don't need is a new way to spend my whole income.

 

[CJMickeyMouse]

Most of the music on my ipod (S) is stuff that I already had the CD. You load it on to your computer, import into itunes and then place on your ipod.
If there is a new song you want, you can buy just the one song rather than forking over money for the whole CD. We are definitely an ipod family!

 

[rockundergirl]

Hmmm the short answer is Yes it is normal for people to illegally download music. I work in the tech field so I deal mostly with nerdy web people, but everyone that I know does it. also anything you have on cd can go write onto your ipod to .. so often people have the cd collection they have been building for 10+ years all uploaded to itunes and thats a big part of it. I'm 29 and i have not purchased a cd in about 8 years, but even from the ones i had from my teen years that could count for around 600 songs...

 

[chiamarie]

I still buy CD's, perhaps I'm oldfashion. And then burn them onto Itunes. I only have a couple of hundred songs. I've never bought anything off itunes; but I do know that you don't have to buy the whole CD you can buy just one song.

I also know that there are sites (limewire) that people still download songs illigally. I don't do this, simply because it's SO easy to get virusus this way. And I am already a pro (somehow, I don't know) at crashing computers w/o using thoes.

My guess, is that these high school/college students still download illigally. But it's just a hunch.

 

[ArielRae]

If you have alot of CDs of your favorite songs you can import them into itunes and put them on your Ipod.

We even sometimes borrow CDs from friends or the library to import into itunes so we can listen to them on our Ipods.

 

[pintamino]

Just because it's illegal doesn't mean people don't do it...

My roommates and I share music now (burn on to a CD then import it in to iTunes on our own computers). Usually if I want something I buy it, though. It adds up over time!

And being on financial aid for college isn't bad. College is expensive and I would never be getting my degree without finaid.

 

[MickeyManiac]

My DS16 gets a lot of Itunes gift cards throughout the year. No one really knows what to buy a 16 y/o so this is an easy gift. He loves them.

 

[vicki_c]

I have very rarely downloaded music illegally. Only a handful of times when iPods first came out. Then I quit - too risky and just wrong anyway.

But I have over 11,000 songs on my computer. The majority of them came from the hundreds of CDs we already owned (I had 20 years worth of CD purchases behind me (and my DH) when we got an iPod). But I have also owned an iPod since early 2004 - so close to 7 years. You can amass a lot of music at .99 each over a 7 year period.

PS - I don't believe that claim above of 1M songs. The storage space for that would be absolutely ridiculous. My 11K worth of songs is more than 50GB of hard drive space. On a linear basis, 1M songs would require something like 5 TB of storage space. Not impossible, I guess - but I think a 5 TB drive itself would run around $700-800. The whole claim just seems dubious to me for a young adult, unless they have a lot of disposable income.

 

[benolathe]

Same here - the majority of the music on my iPod is from CD's that we already owned, and just imported the music into iTunes.

 

[FergieTCat]

You can also borrow CDs from the library.

 

[Soon2B4]

And being on financial aid for college isn't bad. College is expensive and I would never be getting my degree without finaid.

I don't think they were putting down financial aid. It was more of the point that the person isn't loaded to be able to afford to buy all the music from itunes.

I too gave up on downloading music once Napster wasn't free anymore. I get my cds from the library for free unless it's something I really, really want and then I buy it.

 

[mistysue]

I understand building up music for years, I just felt like I must be missing something if it seems like all of these very young people (who haven't been alive 20 years, let along gathering CD's that long) had so much more music than I do.

That's not so bad if you can use the cd's you own.

And being on financial aid for college isn't bad. College is expensive and I would never be getting my degree without finaid.

Oh- that wasn't my point at all. She sat by me a lot, so we talked enough to know she had very little money and her family was not well off either. It was obvious she hadn't purchased anywhere near all the music she had unless there is a 10 songs/1 cent music shop out there. She told me she had over a million songs. I couldn't imagine having that much, but even if it was half that this 18 year old didn't have the money for it.

 

[Desnik]

We did like others have mentioned. Put all our CD's on our computer and then onto our iPod. We rarely buy a whole CD, we buy individual songs on iTunes. Also, my sister and friends of ours have given us their music on a disc for us to load in our computer then onto our iPod. I know we have thousands of songs but have not gone broke buying them. Over the years the library has grown. We had iPods when they first came out and currently have 6! We are an iPod/Apple crazy family!

 

[Swimalie]

My swim coach, who is also does some dj-ing has 16 iPods. Yes, 16! He buys all his songs and occasionally a cd and loads it on there. I have had an iPod for about 3 years now and I just buy a song here and a song there (have never downloaded illegally and never will). A lot of the kids now get gift cards and use those. I know we gave my husband's niece and nephew gift cards for Christmas last year. My parents gave my husband one as well. To me, at $.99-1.29 a song, it's a good bargain.

 

[brergnat]

My sister had a friend who worked for a radio station. This person handed my sister a flash drive containing about 10,000 songs from the early 80's all the way up to about 2005. She let us "borrow" it, so we loaded all those songs into our computer. That plus the CD collection amassed between my DH and I since college makes for a VERY large music collection on our computers...

 

[justbishop]

I just sold my much beloved iBook and upgraded to an iPad, but I refuse to buy an iPod of any sort until Apple jumps on the subscription music bus. I haven't subscribed to a service in a couple of years, but when I did, 1 paid $10-15/mo and could download as much music to my Creative brand mp3 player as I wanted. Yes, all of it went "poof!" when I ended my subscription, but I always had the option of outright buying the songs/albums from the service that I wanted to keep and/or burn to CD, which was fine with me.

 

[benolathe]

My sister had a friend who worked for a radio station. This person handed my sister a flash drive containing about 10,000 songs from the early 80's all the way up to about 2005. She let us "borrow" it, so we loaded all those songs into our computer. That plus the CD collection amassed between my DH and I since college makes for a VERY large music collection on our computers...

Yes, I think a lot of people borrow CDs/MP3s from each other and share on their iPods. And there are also a lot of people (teenagers, especially?) who download torrents of songs online. My understanding is that this is considering pirating music.

 

[Leshaface]

Yup, I too had TONS of CD's growing up and just transferred it all to my computer! About 8,000 songs there, and then my dad, who was in a band back in the 70's and 80's had hundreds of albums that he had and burned them to CD's which he gave to me which brought me up to 10,000..

Plus, every year for my birthday and Christmas I ask for iTunes giftcards which I usually get $60 per occasion which can last me for a year..I LOVE music and have music playing constantly! When I work out, when I cook, clean, wash my car, do the laundry, drive, even when I sleep! I guess you can say i'm obsessed and can't live without it!

 

[Pembo]

We get cd's from the library and upload the songs we like to the I-pod. Is that illegal?

 

[clanmcculloch]

I get some of my music from amazon.com's free music area. I don't always know the artist before hand but I listen to the small sample of the song and if I like I download it. It's free and totally legal.

As far as music from the library goes, I believe you're technically only allowed to keep it on your ipod for the amount of time you're allowed to check it out. After that I think you're supposed to delete it.