Vol. 2, No. 15
TODAY'S LESSON: MP3 and Online Music

Ever since you bought that Mellotron 400 (http://www.mellotron.com) on Ebay for a song, you've been Elton John, Beck, and Liberace all rolled into one. And you have about 100 new songs on your hard drive to prove it. But you're faced with a dilemma: Nobody -- aside from your cranky neighbor, who just doesn't know great music when he hears it -- can listen to your new tunes. You need to get those tracks out to the greater listening public! You could send your cassette tapes and a glossy head shot to every record label in LA. But wouldn't it be a lot easier to simply convert the tracks to MP3 and take them to the Web?

Why MP3, you ask? Excellent question.

>>> MP3 is Your Friend <<<

MP3 is a compression technology that creates very small audio files that can be easily downloaded from the Web, or even transferred via email. MP3 also makes it a easy for people to play DJ and mix and match their favorite songs, bands, or styles of music. If your MP3s are stored on a computer, all you have to do is search through your music folder by band name or genre and put the songs into a playlist. From there, you can listen to them off your hard drive or a portable player, and even send them to a CD burner for recording. This Webmonkey tutorial shows you how it's done:

"MP3 is a Cinch"

After you've converted all your songs into MP3 format, you can burn an archive copy of them on a CD (so you can listen to them in your car, portable CD player, or home stereo). All you need is a CD burner, some software, and about 30 minutes.

"Monkeys Can Burn CDs"

In order to listen to MP3 files, you need to download and install an MP3 player. We suggest the Lycos Music Player, which was developed by Sonique, and can handle Microsoft Windows Media files, MP3 files, audio CDs, and old scratchy cassette tapes (well, that last one's a bit of a stretch).

Now that all your music is in the MP3 format, it's time to storm the Web.

>>> So you Wanna be an MP3 Star? <<<

If you're determined to become a rock star, but don't want to work your way to the top by playing on street corners and subways like Huey Lewis and Seal, then try some shameless self-promotion on the Web.

One advantage of MP3 over other online music formats is that there are no security features associated with the files, so millions of them are posted and passed around on the Web every day. Since the files are small enough to download or email, it's really easy to distribute and post songs on a variety of online music venues.

MP3.com and the Lycos listening room are good places to start. You can post your songs for free and the ratings are democratic -- the more people that download your track, the higher it moves up the charts.

There is a growing movement on the Web to empower indie artists and break the evil grip of the major labels. You can be like Che Guevara and Eddie Van Halen all at once! Read all about this burgeoning movement on Wired News:

"Indie Artists Fight for Independence"

>>> Sharing and Snaring MP3s <<<

After you've posted all your songs on every available music site on the Web, it's time to check out the competition. This is where peer-to-peer file sharing programs come into play. Napster paved the way for a slew of file-sharing programs that give you access to files on other people's hard drives (and music booty). To understand how it all works, check out Webmonkey's overview of the file-sharing terrain:

"File Sharing Primer"

The Lycos music site has a search engine that will hunt down lyrics, MP3 files, and artist profiles.

1. When you're making an MP3 file, one of the most important decisions is what bit rate to use. This determines the sound quality and the size of the files. For the best compromise of these two variables, use "variable bit-rate" encoding. It produces excellent sound quality and very reasonable file sizes.

2. There are a whole bunch of new MP3 portable players on the market, and even CD players that will play MP3 tracks burned on CDs. Many of these gadgets aren't worth the plastic they are made of. So if you decide to buy one, make sure it's well made and has plenty of memory to store songs. Another useful feature is song searching -- if you have 700 songs burned on a CD, it's nice to be able to find them!

3. All the great rock stars have cool stage names -- "Diamond Dave", "MC Hammer" and "The Artist formerly known as Prince," just to name a few. You may not be a star ... yet, but it's never too soon to come up with a memorable stage name. We suggest you come up with a list of 100 stage names then take it down to the closest high school. Whichever name elicits the most gasps and screams from the teens is the right name for you.

Handcrafted Archive