Gadgetory

hello and welcome to cnet the fix this episode is all about music it's crazy to think about how much music technology has changed over the past 10 years with CDs than with iPods and smartphones leaving tablets pretty soon we're all gonna be streaming music straight to our Facebook goggles but we're not there yet in that spirit going out with the old and in with the new we're looking at new ways to hear music you waste a fine music anyways to kiss your old CDs goodbye first up we're taking a look at the best ways to hear music from subscription music services in this post iTunes era if you've never used a subscription-based music service before finding the one that works for you may feel a bit daunting but I'm going to show you some of the ins and outs of this convenient and affordable way to listen to music so why would you want to use one of these services anyway well for one they offer access to multiple millions of songs also you won't have to worry about any kind of music library management since it's all organized for you in the cloud in addition most services offer free trials lasting anywhere from a week to a month with no long-term commitment so what's the downside well you don't actually own this music you're basically renting it for a while and when you in your subscription your playlist and the songs you've chosen go away unless you re subscribe also you won't find every single song on these services The Beatles for example are largely unavailable and new music isn't immediately available on these services in addition to artists that actually make this music don't make much money when you listen to their streams salt you want to support your favorite band or artist there are much better ways to do so overall there are way more perks for these services especially if you're a music fan so how do they work well Spotify for example is one of the more popular music based services and it works on your tablet your phone or your computer now you can download it for free and once you're signed in you can start searching for songs or artists you want to listen to as long as you have an internet connection now you don't have to pay to listen but if you go to free route you won't have as much flexibility as you would if you subscribed you can search for individual songs albums and artists but if you're not subscribed you'll have to listen to periodic audio ads geico 15 minutes could save you fifteen percent or more also the free version of spotify on your tablet or computer will play any song you can find now if you're listening to on your phone you won't actually be able to play specific songs and you could really only play albums or playlist in shuffle mode if you subscribe you won't have to listen to ads and you can play any song you can find on any device paying the fee also lets you download music to listen to later other services like radio work much in the same way giving you some access for free but then opening up all available features once you actually start paying there are plenty of music services out there and they each have their own advantages and disadvantages but the great thing is that you can try most of them for free and determine which one works best for you it all speaks to how we consume media these days paying the monthly fee to have access to tons of content that may not work in every medium but for music it seems pretty tailor-made it has never been a better time to be a music fan all that music just right there at your fingertips it's time for a quick break and when we come back we'll be cranking up your new music on some wireless speakers you welcome back now if you're still living in that CD or iTunes era chances are the sound in your home still revolves around a home stereo or maybe some awful sounding clock radio but it doesn't have to be that way without spending a bunch of money or running cables all over your house you can get sound in every room of your home cuz honestly so you've got Barry White playing in the bedroom truly haven't lived if you want a way to stream music from your phone to multiple speakers throughout the house there's a new product that lets you do just that it's called rocky and each one of these devices is forty nine dollars and you'll need one for each speaker you want to stream to but what's great is that you can use speakers you already own here's how to get started first plug in a rocky device to each speaker and what's great about Rocky is that you can get these colorful covers to either match your speaker or help distinguish one rocky from another in this case I got green pink and orange lots of fun colors in my collection okay so you just plug in a rocky through a line in port then turn it on using its little power button here and once it's on you'll see the LED light here and you should hear a voice command telling you it's ready to be set up I've successfully started hotspot mode there you go now you know you're ready to set up everything else in the app but first I have two more speakers I need a set up I've successfully started hotspot mode I've successfully started hotspot mode great all of my Rockies are in hotspot mode which means I can move on and finish the setup in the app basically how rocky works is instead of using bluetooth it sets up its own private Wi-Fi network that's how you're able to control multiple speakers through one phone there you go I have three Rockies and I'll just set up each one one by one I know that it's talking about this rocky because the LED here is red so i'll set my color that's my green rocky pick a name green now i'll just select my Wi-Fi network I've successfully started hotspot mode all right my first rocky is set up now i'll set up two other speakers I've successfully connected to your Wi-Fi router cool my Rocky is set up now I'll do the next one all of my Rockies are set up and I know they're ready to go because when I tap the green bar at the top of the app I can see every single one of them now before I start streaming music to them I'm going to go set them up in each room so all of my Rockies are set up throughout the house and now I can stream music to them one thing to know is that right now rocky only supports music you have stored locally on your device but more streaming apps like Spotify and Pandora are coming really soon for now I've got a little Aloha screwdriver here so first thing I want to do is tap the green bar choose my rocky I've got my green rocky right in front of me hit play and I should hear it straight into that device nice now I can do the same thing for the other speakers tap the top bar choose my speaker pick a song and it'll stream to that speaker too now anytime I want to pause play or choose a different song for any rocky I'll just head to the top I'll choose pink one in the kitchen and then from the left menu here I could just choose another song or just pause it all together Rocky is great because it's really the first of its kind and currently the only device that lets you stream music from your phone to multiple wireless speakers but we should see some competitors come into the mix in the future all right so now you know all the best new ways to stream music and play it around your house but what are you gonna do with that box of CD is that still in your closet well you got to do something a lot of new computers aren't even coming with disk drives anymore to play those things I'm going to show you how to rip those into your computer and kick those CDs out of your house there is no reason to be holding on to your CDs anymore between iTunes and Spotify and about a hundred other services anything you've listened to can be downloaded again or streamed at your convenience but there are some exceptions you're probably holding on to a box full of rare sentimental mix CDs that you haven't yet gotten onto your computer and let go of I'm gonna show you how to do that quickly and painlessly so here's what you're going to need you're going to need a computer with the CD Drive and itunes on it could be any version of itunes you're gonna need your CDs and you're gonna need a smartphone the first step is to take a picture of your CD now this one is a great example this is a CD I got from a friend in Japan this cover this is what I'm sentimental about so I'm gonna take a picture of this and if you can put this into square mode that's gonna really save yourself some time and some cropping take the picture boom and then email it to yourself so now the next step is to get the CD into your computer now once the cds in itunes is gonna automatically try to pull down any information that it might have about the CD it's gonna try it's best to identify the tracks and the titles but in this case because this is a one-of-a-kind CD itunes is gonna draw a blank it's gonna give me a generic listing called audio CD and generic tracks called track 1 through 14 so the trick is we need to identify all this information ourselves to do that hit the CD info button i'm just going to put my friend's name on here the artist album is going to be CD from japan that's probably how I'll remember it alright the next step here is to import the CD you go and hit the import CD button in the top right corner you're gonna get a box that will let you change how you're gonna import the CD for me there's more about sentimentality than about audio quality I'll go with an AAC at about 128 kilobits per second it's gonna give you better quality than mp3 at about the exact same amount of time if you're really gonna go crazy with the steps can go all the way up to lossless audio quality but after you do a few of these you're gonna realize that speed is much more important than audio file quality all right now I've got the CD in our library with album artwork one more tip though if you want to add more images than just that one to your album you can go track by track hit get info and add a separate image you get creative alright so that's the entire process for digitizing your CDs into your iTunes library now for an extra added value you can take advantage of Apple's iTunes Match service where for 2499 a year you can upload all the stuff to the cloud and have it backed up and be able to stream it back to any of your Apple devices that's it for this week's show we hope you learned something or at least got inspired to listen to some new music let us know what you think about the show leave us some feedback let us know what you'd like to see in an upcoming episode you can leave some feedback over on Cena's blog or you can tweet me at Donald see you next time