Build an inspired music collection — with your PC

Let your computer help you take your musical enjoyment to new heights

By Marc Saltzman

Music lovers, listen up. The most important piece of equipment in your home is no longer your stereo system.

It's your PC.

What's this, you ask? How can that boring 'ol beige box in the den used for e-mail and the kids' homework help enhance my enjoyment of music?

“Instead of searching for a particular CD, my computer allows me to have all of my music in one place,” says Brandy Tanenbaum, a Richmond Hill, Ont.-based mom and self-professed Neil Diamond fanatic.

"I like to be organized, so I sort all of my downloaded music by artist or genre, and then I can quickly burn a mixed CD for the car or copy songs over to my [portable music player]," she adds. "And I love shuffling songs, too."

But some Canadian music fans are still hesitant to make the switch to their PC to store, organize or play music.

"I just don't have time to start putting music on the computer or downloading new songs," says Teresa Martin of Newmarket, Ont., whose three children enjoy listening to kids' CDs while they play. "But," she concedes, "It would be wonderful if it was already set up for me — it's really just a time issue."

Whether you can relate to the mouse-clicking Tanenbaum or the CD-swapping Martin, the following is a look at all the exciting ways your personal computer can help you easily acquire, organize, play, transfer — and most of all, appreciate — your music in brand new ways, letting it further evoke the wonderful emotions only music can stir in each of us.

Step 1: Let's get it on — storing music on the PC

Take advantage of your computer's huge hard drive and use it as a storage solution for your music. You can easily save tens of thousands of songs on your computer and organize them into searchable folders and custom playlists. If your life was one long movie, consider your computer the perfect platform to play its entire soundtrack.

You can transfer music onto your PC in one of three ways: copy ("rip") music CDs, download new music from the Internet or back up your old records and tapes.

Rip CDs: A program, such as the free Windows Media Player 11, can be used to convert CDs into high-quality WMA (Windows Media Audio) or MP3 files. Simply pop a music CD into your computer’s CD- or DVD-ROM drive and in Windows Media Player, click the Rip tab at the top of the screen to begin the process — it only takes a couple of minutes per CD. If you’re connected to the Internet, the program automatically pulls up the artist, album and track information.

Click here for more Windows Media Player tips.

Download music: Thanks to the Internet, long gone are the days of buying a music CD only to find two good songs out of 18. Now you can shop online 24/7 and preview before buying. There are about a half-dozen online music services in Canada, including Puretracks, Sympatico Music Store, Napster and iTunes. Prices are about $0.99 cents per track, while complete albums usually start at $9.99.

Convert old records and tapes: If you can't part with your old vinyl or cassettes (college mixed tapes anyone?), you can create digital audio files of them. All you need is a stereo system (with a turntable or cassette deck) with a line-out jack and an inexpensive cord referred to as "RCA-to-mini."

Step 2: The immaculate collection — organizing and playing music

Now that you've got all of this great music on your PC, you can use Windows Media Player to easily organize and play songs.

Open Windows Media Player, click the Library tab and select Music. You’ll see all the categories in which your music is listed: by artist, album, songs, genre, year and rating.
See a song title you like? Double-click its name and it'll start playing.
Having all of your music in one place is also handy for when you want to import songs to spice up a photo slide show.
Invest in a decent set of computer speakers and your PC can be your very own jukebox during a house party or casual get together.

Step 3: I like to move it — copying and burning music

Speaking of house parties, consider burning a CD of your favourite songs to play in your family room's DVD player (most can read MP3 or WMA files) if there is no PC handy or when creating the ultimate mix for long car trips.

Open Windows Media Player and click the Burn tab.
Pop in a blank disc and choose which songs or playlists to copy.
Click here to read more on burning CDs.

If you have a portable audio player, connect it to your PC's USB port and then click the Sync tab in Windows Media Player to choose which songs to copy over to the device.