IF you're a music lover and are looking for a way to cram more great music on your harddrive, then this article is for you!

First, let's take a look at digital music formats. By 'digital' I don't mean electronically produced music, I mean music recorded and saved in a digital method. (The pre recorded CDs that you buy at the store are in 'wave' format.)

Each song is a digital file, and if you were able to view specific track information on your computer, it would say 'songtitle.wav' as the file name. Each audio CD will hold approximately 73 minutes worth of audio, or 700 Megabytes of data. For all intents and purposes, this means that each ONE minute of audio takes up TEN Megabytes of space.

So an average three and a half minute song will take up 35 megabytes of space. By compressing an audio file, you can reduce the amount of space required to store it. There are different methods of compression, such as those used by Real Audio, and Windows Media Player. The most common (and some say best) method is the MP3 format.

I'm not absolutely sure about how the compression works, but I do know the method removes the high and low frequencies that are 'overlooked' by our ears during listening. By using compression the size of the file is reduced from 10 Megabytes per minute, to 1 megabyte per minute.

It is possible to vary the amount of compression used to get better (larger) or not as clear (smaller) files, but the general standard seems to be the 1 megabyte per minute size. This means that a standard size CD can now hold 730 minutes of music, instead of a mere 73 minutes!

Now for the bad news. At this point , most car cd players and home stereos cannot read MP3 disks. Your home computer can read one, most newer DVD players can , and a few 'diskman' type portable players can play them.

You can also get another type of portable player, such as the Diamond Rio, which utilizes internal memory or memory 'sticks' to hold music. So far, these will only hold 30 or 60 minutes of music, which isn't overly impressive. The music must also be downloaded from your computer to the device.

So what good are MP3s to you? Simple, you can have a huge collection of MP3 songs on your computer to listen to while you're slaving away (or playing Solitaire). Invest in a CD burner (under $200.00 for a good one), then you can convert the MP3 files into standard audio Wav files and make your own compilation CDs, which can be played in any standard CD player.

I have almost 400 MP3 files on my computer, and I've made a number of CDs for myself, my husband, and my daughter.

Where can you get MP3 files? Most music labels have some MP3 files free to download on their sites, and there are other legitimate sites that offer free MP3's by major recording artists.

mp3.com is a treasure trove of musical hopefuls that offer downloads of their music to anyone who is interested. Most are unknown artists, and you have to wade through a lot to find the good ones, but they ARE out there.

Then, of course, there are the 'gray' and black market areas like Napster and FTP servers. Because of legal
suits, Napster's selection has dropped drastically. I never cared for Napster myself, because it's incredibly slow and glitchy.

Basically, all Napster users designate a list, or 'library' of MP3 songs they have to offer. When you install the Napster program and log on to the server, you can search for a song and it will return a list of all the users currently connected that have that song in their library.

You choose one, connect to their computer (through Napster's server) and download the song. A good percentage of the time, the person whose song you're downloading will disconnect from the server, leaving you with half a song.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Servers are the best bet, though all the music is technically illegal to download. With FTP, you connect to the website and establish a connection. Then you open an 'account', either a 'leech' or a 'ratio' account.

Both types have downsides. With a leech account, when you connect to the server, you're told you need a password and user name. Then you are sent off to other sites (usually porn sites) and told to scroll through pages and find the 5th paragraph, 4th sentence, and the 1st word is the user name. You then repeat this to find the password. Then you go back to the FTP site and enter the name and password for access to the files.

In a ratio account, you get credits for each song you upload to the server. 3:1 - 5:1 is the norm. Basically, for every song you give them, they'll give you 3-5 songs off their server. I prefer a ratio account myself. It usually takes less time (even with a 56K modem) to upload a song than it does to run all over the net hunting for a password and user name.

MP3 files are legal if you have purchased that song in the past, and they seem to be legal if you use them for 'shopping' purposes and delete them within 48 hours of downloading them.

Most of the ones I have are songs I've owned at some point in the past, on vinyl or cassettes. Many of these songs are the only good ones on the album, and I have no desire to purchase a CD just to be able to listen to that one song in my car. So I download the MP3 file.

MP3 is also a handy way to get those 'one hit wonders' off your own CDs. Just copy the one or two tracks you like onto your hard drive, convert them to MP3 to listen to on your computer, then when you get enough, make your own 'best of' CD.

• Backup -
  mysteries
  revealed
• Finding -
  files fast.
• Organise -
  your PC.
• Build -
  your own
  website

• Design sites
• Learn about scripts
• ...forms or tables
• Meta Tags
• Understand FTP
• Accept payments
• Write good copy
• ..and lots more