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The best music of your life

The best music of your life

Create your ultimate music mix

By Fiona Wagner

When Leigh Craney decided to quit her job and buy a house at the same time, she was, as she puts it, “freaking out.” But every time she got into her car and heard the song “Heaven” by Live, it gave her faith to believe she knew what she was doing.

“I don’t know what the secret is behind a mysterious mix of words, sounds and melodies that makes music so important,” says Craney, a rehabilitation consultant in Burlington, Ont.

Many of us have CDs of our favourite songs, but what about creating one CD of the best tunes of your life — a scrapbook of your most meaningful music memories?

Craney has what she calls her “Power CD” — a compilation of songs that evokes emotions such as appreciation, optimism and motivation. The current CD has an eclectic mix of music from artists such as Cher, Jann Arden and Alanis Morissette.

Make the soundtrack of your life

There are no set criteria for making a CD of your most powerful music memories. “Soundtrack” picks are personal and largely based on your experience with a song.

Think back to significant times or people in your life. What songs did you listen to repeatedly and sing at the top of your lungs? Which ones comforted you when you were down?

Find music online

According to music industry representative IFPI, people downloaded an estimated 795 million tracks from the Internet in 2006 worldwide. With almost 500 legitimate online music stores in 40 countries, you should have no problem finding, legally downloading and copying your music must-haves.

Windows Live Search can help get you started. Just type in the name of the song or artist you’re looking for. Then check out Allmusic.com, a comprehensive reference with tons of information on different genres of music.

Get started

Of the several media players on the market, Windows Media Player 11 offers a powerful way to manage your music collection and capture the best music of your life. Download the most recent version here to get started. Windows Media Player 11 also comes with Windows Vista.

Shop for tunes

It’s easy to download music from online stores. Puretracks offers more than 1 million songs; most come from Canadian music distributors. You can buy albums or single tracks starting at 99 cents; most are available in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format. Other stores such as Future Shop’s Bonfire and the Sympatico/MSN Music Store are powered with the Puretracks technology and have similar products and prices.

Get organized

Before burning your songs to an audio CD, set up a playlist. Once you’ve collected your song choices, listen to your playlist and figure out the best order of songs. Then follow these directions.

  • Click the Library tab at the top for your collection of music. (Ensure Music is selected in the drop-down menu.)
  • Click Songs under the Library menu on the left Navigation pane.
  • Drag the songs you want from the Details pane in the centre to the List pane on the right.
  • Rearrange your selections by dragging the songs with your mouse.
  • Click Save Playlist at the bottom and type a name.
  • Click the Play button at the top of the pane.
  • For future access, select the playlist you want under Playlists in the Navigation pane on the left.

Burn, baby, burn

Once you’ve got your soundtrack playlist, it’s easy to burn a CD.

  • Click the Burn tab at the top, click the arrow below the Burn tab, and then select Audio CD.
  • Insert a blank CD-R into your CD-burner drive.
  • Instead of dragging individual songs to the List pane, drag your chosen playlist from the Navigation pane on the left.
  • The Player automatically calculates how much time is left on the disc after each song is added. If you have too many files for one CD, you can burn multiple CDs or remove a track from the list by right-clicking the song and selecting Remove from List.
  • Click Start Burn. Don’t do anything else on your computer while the burn is taking place.

Share the tunes — carefully

“In Canada, people can make personal, non-commercial copies of music, as it is covered by the private copying levy,” says Michael Geist, a lawyer and Canada research chair of Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa. He’s referring to the 21-cent levy that’s applied to blank music media such as recordable CDs and distributed to copyright holders to compensate for losses from illegal downloads. So you may download music and burn a copy for yourself, but you may not burn a copy for your friends or post your music collection online.

However, Windows Live Spaces lets you add lists of your favourite tunes or upload your playlist from Windows Media Player so your friends can get an idea of what’s included in the best music of your life.

Or, take Craney’s suggestion and use your new soundtrack playlist to create a new musical memory. “I planned an evening for friends, and we all created our own power mix,” she says. “We got together to eat, drink, play the music and discuss the songs. It was a fun way to share the music!”