Advice Needed On Board Music

[All is found]

We are planning to begin a cruising life this winter once we find a boat. I am wondering about music. We have hundreds of CD's which I would rather not bring. To have these on an iPod requires internet as you need to 'sign-in' to iTunes.
How do people manage music storage without internet access?

[gaucho]

Errrrrr. Nope.

You can surely transfer all your CDs onto an iPod/iTunes/iPad, whatever you want and have access to all your stuff offline.

You can also get a Premium Spotify account and download your library to your devices.

No problem with that either.

[ranger58sb]

All our music is on an iPod -- Classic, or some such -- and we don't ever need to sign in to the Internet to listen.

We ripped all our CDs to iTunes, and then iTunes updates (syncs) the iPod... but that's only needed once, and doesn't need 'net access.

You can also yutz around making playlists and what-not on that computer (assuming you've brought it along) without needing 'net access. Those changes can also sync to the iPod without 'net access.

Updates to iTunes (software) need 'net access, and then presumably some of that might flow to an iPod from time to time... or not.

But in general, the thing works as a stand-alone. Volume through whatever boat stereo we feel like using at the time.

-Chris

[sguerrero1971]

I used a product called dBpoweramp CD Ripper to take all my CD's and turn them into mp3 files with all the Album art and song info intact. Now you have to have internet access to do this process, because it uses an online database to get all the song info and Album art. Once this was done I copied everything to a WD MyCloud. I can run Plex on it or I can simply access the files as a share so I can connect to it from all my devices. It was a little time consuming to rip them all, but the software made it tons easier than doing it all manually. Now I have all my music in .mp3 file format and it is portable to most things that play music.

And if this ever fails there is always Sirius\XM.

[Lepke]

Using Nero, that came with a BR/DVD drive, I ripped all of mine to a 4tb portable hd.

[Van Der Beek]

This thread reminded me to start ripping my record collection, it's gonna be a lot of work but it's time to get it done. Some great tips on how to go about doing it as well, appreciated.

[hobopacket]

My advice, don't use apple products. Get a regular old MP3 player or use your computer. Apple stuff is just that. Apple stuff. Anything else in the whole world uses MP3. Which will work on most any device and brand. You can get a super large regular MP3 player for super cheap. Don't need internet at all

[IdoraKeeper]

No internet required. All the advise above is true. Take your choice on which equipment to use. You can even use any old phone you have. No matter which route you choose however, remember that others in the anchorage may not be opera fans:-).

[hellosailor]

DIY, incredibly free and easy.

I suggest buying the DBPowerAmp app. There are other similar apps, but this one is very robust and flexible. I think 30 days free trial on it.

You put a CD in the drive, select the CD Ripper function, and your CD can be read and then stored as MP3, FLAC, WAV, many formats. MP3-VBR2 is nearly lossless at 1/4 the file size. FLAC is lossless. Apple formats supported too.

Rip each CD, send them to a good home. In 128GB you can store over a thousand albums at MB3-VBR2 format. That will need about 500GB in a lossless format like FLAC, either way, not expensive these days, since 128GB is just a $50 USB stick and 500GB is just a $50 hard drive. Once it is burned, make a backup copy!

Then you do what you want. You can carry 128GB in the better cell phones now. Listen on the boat using bluetooth, or a media player. Beware of 'car stereos' and other players that take SD (SD, SDHC, SDXC) cards, because they usually can only read 32GB media, or they only can read 10,000 files, or 500 directories, or some other limitation that your iPhone or computer would have no trouble with.

Playing through bluetooth or a USB drive connection gets you past those things.

You may find the used CD's have no value. And in theory, you're supposed to retain them for copyright purposes. But if you happen to donate them to a hospital (where they lend them out to patients, especially younger ones) or other good purpose...who's really going to argue. Not much of a tax write-off value, but a good purpose.

[Tkeeth]

I ripped all my music and dvds to a 2 tb portable mil spec hard drive usb 3.0 (100 bucks or so on amazon) then bought a small usb server thingy that was 30 dollars. Plug into tv and you can navigate though it or hook it to pc and transfer to usb or bluetooth device for streaming.

[boatpoker]

We put ours on USB sticks and installed an automotive stereo with a USB slot.

[Macblaze]

As other said there is no need to have internet access use an ipod etc. But do think about which format to rip your files too. The patents have gone on MP3s and the creators have announced they will no longer support it. That shouldn't be a stopper really if you want to go the MP# route, but there are so many other formats that are better now.

https://marco.org/2017/05/15/mp3-isnt-dead talks about a few. Google is your friend.

[blackswan555]

You probably have an automotive type radio/cd player on boat ? Get a new one that plays virtually anything (even DVD out to TV on some) with a USB & AUX in port, You can get more music than you could ever listen to in a lifetime on a stick, Plug virtually any phone into it or as a back up / alternative you could also crunch & burn to disc,

Tim

[Diesel Bill]

Got most of my tunes loaded on my laptop and then to my I-phone. Driving back and forth to La Paz from So Cal sure is nice to have nonstop music except at the check points. I just hit pause before the check points.

[Pizzazz]

Option 1 is to rip all your CDs to a hard drive or a stick and play from there.

Option 2 is to use Google Music, Amazon Music or Microsoft Groove to match your CDs to online versions of the songs, then download your library locally (it saves the ripping time). Also, it allows you to discover and download new music when you have net access.

Option 3 is to go to a warez site and download a ton of music then sort it out when you have time at sea. On a typical fast connection you can download about 20 songs/min or 1,000 songs/hour. Please, only keep the songs you have CDs for to stay legal.

Next, ask about movies...