There are three primary software programs you will need in order to easily obtain music, store it in your desired format, and burn or play it. Firstly, Roxio's Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum version will be very useful for copying music from CD's, writing music to CD's or files, and converting music formats. The program includes multiple tools, such as SoundStream, MusicCD and MP3CD, and CD-Copier, all easily selectable from the main program screen. Secondly, MusicMatch jukebox (http://www.musicmatch.com/) is very useful for playing music, and can also be used for burning CD's. Lastly, Kazaa ( http://www.kazaa.com ) is a good source for finding and downloading songs you are interested in.
You can use Roxio's SoundStream program to easily copy audio from CD's or from computer files. The input format can be CD-Audio, Wav or MP3. You can combine multiple sources. Once you have selected the songs you want to copy, you can select to either write them to a CD or output them to a file location, and you can also select the desired format (Audio, Wav, MP3, WMA). Before outputting the files, you can automatically retrieve the names of the songs (if the input source is a recognizable CD) by clicking on the "Name Tracks" button, which will attempt to retrieve the song titles from an Internet database of music CDs. You can also rename any file before outputting by right-clicking on the title in the output list area. It is useful to name all files in the format of "Artist - Song Title" so that you can take advantage of MusicMatch's "SuperTag from Filename" feature.
You can also capture music from Audio CD's and output them to anMP3 or Wav or WMA file via MusicMatch's "Recorder" tool. Click "View->Recorder" to begin
You can also get music files in a similar way from Roxio's MusicCD program. The main reason to use MusicCD instead of SoundStream is that it allows you more control during output to CD time, where you can manipulate the transition effects and also save the list for future output.
If you want to capture sound/music from an analog source (record player, tape recorder etc.) you can use the "Spin Doctor" function within Roxio's SoundStream (click on the big button with the Down arrow at the bottom to access special effects and the Spin Doctor program). You can select to output the file as Wav or MP3, and you can select various sound "clean-up" options. A minute of audio in Wav format is approximately 10MB, and in MP3 format it is 1MB, so where possible, MP3 is a better bet. (When outputting to an audio CD, the audio-CD format is similar in size to a Wav file, so you will only fit about an hour of music on a 650MB CD.)
If you want to search and download music from the Internet, you can go to http://www.kazaa.com and download the Kazaa program. If you do not wish to allow others to upload your own music files, you can select to disallow this in the (Go to Tools->Options->Traffic and check the box "Disable Sharing of Music with Other Kazaa Members"). You can use the Search function to search for songs, and the "Traffic" button to see the status of your requests. (The Tools->Options screen allows you to set various other preferences). Files successfully downloaded by Kazaa will typically be stored in a Kazaa folder which the program will typically place at "C:\Program Files\KaZaA\My Shared Folder", and the Kazaa program will typically put a shortcut to this folder on your desktop. Once you have downloaded the songs you want, you will want to rename them according to your naming plan (see below), and move them to your desired location.
A commonly accepted format for naming song files (MP3 or WAV) is to follow the format of "Artist - Song Title". One of the advantages of using this format is that MusicMatch can provide a way of automatically "tagging" these files with the correct artist and song title via the "Supertag - Tag by Filename" option. You should know that MP3 files can be stored with additional parameters called "tags", and once properly tagged, this tag information is available to various programs. Tags can include Artist Name, Song Title, Album Name, Genre etc. It is useful to keep the music files in your library properly tagged so they can be easily used, organized, and selected by the various Player and Music Library programs you may use (I recommend the industry standard: MusicMatch).
In addition to writing your files to a CD, you can also store them on your hard disk. As stated before, MP3 files take up much less disk space than Wav files, so consider converting your files to MP3 format. (This will also let you take advantage of all the portable MP3 players on the market, for portable playback options, instead of having to convert your files to Audio-CD which stores only one hour of music per CD.)
When planning where to store your music files, think about backup and access. Backup: You will want to have a method of backing up your song collection, so that you will not lose it all when your hard drive crashes (notice I said "when" not "if" because eventually it will fail). Assume that 200 songs in MP3 format will consume about 1 GB of disk space, not that much of a problem for initial storage, but more than will easily fit on an Iomega zip disk. You may need a tape drive. Access: Who else in your household will want to access the library of music files, either to play them, or to burn a CD from them, or to add new files? If multiple people need to access the library, you will need to store them on a PC for which you have enabled "file sharing" on your home network.
I have found a very good solution that I have adopted for my music collection, which addresses both the Backup and the Access concerns. I have purchased a Quantum SnapServer for my home network ( http://www.quantum.com ). This is a device that you can plug in to your network and that automatically takes an IP address and appears on the network as a shared file server (disk drive). I have purchased the SnapServer 2200 which provides 2 80GB hard drives. (there are various sizes available, and the SnapServer can be set up as one large drive, or two separate drives, or two drives that mirror each other). I save all my music files to one of the drives on the SnapServer, and routinely use a program to make a back-up copy of all files on the other drive. (I don't use mirroring, because if I accidentally delete files from the first drive, the mirror function would erase it from the other drive as well.)
If you want to be able to play you music files on a regular music CD player, you will need to "burn" (write to) a music CD. (You will probably want to write to the standard CD-R blank disks - these are the write-once disks - since the CD-RW rewritable disks use a format that is not necessarily playable on all music CD payers and are therefore more suitable for data files that will be accessed primarily from a computer.
You can use any of a number of programs to "burn" a music CD, including Roxio's SoundStream or MusicCD tools (part of the Easy-CD Creator program mentioned above) or MusicMatch Jukebox (it allows you to "burn" a copy of the current playlist). The Roxio programs differ in their ability to include various transition effects (MusicCD has more options). Both Roxio programs allow you to open the CD-Label Creator program, which lets you print a CD jewel case cover listing the titles of the songs you are writing to the CD. MusicMatch gives you a "Print" option for printing a jewel case insert once you click on the "burn" button.
All of these programs will convert the files you are burning from their original (Wav or MP3) format to the Music Audio format, which is requires approximately 10MB per minute of music, so you will fit approximately 70 minutes on a single CD.
If you happen to have a newer music CD player that can also play MP3 CD's (CD's with song files in MP3 format instead of in Audio format) you have the option of writing an MP3CD using Roxio's MP3CD tool. Since MP3 files take up only 1/10th the disk space of Audio files, you can expect to fit 100 - 130 songs on a single MP3 CD.
If you simply wish to make a copy of an entire Music CD (or any other CD for that matter). you can use the "CD Copier" tool on the main screen of Roxio's Easy-CD Creator.
You can convert files from MP3, Wav, or WMA via Roxio's SoundStream Tool, by selecting the option to Input from a File folder, and Output to a File folder, and specifying the format of the files you want to convert. In addition, you can convert between Wav and MP3 in either direction within MusicMatch (select "File->Convert").
You can edit a WAV file within Roxio, by selecting the "SoundEditor" (from within SoundStream you must click on the Down arrow on the big "special functions" button at the bottom, and from MusicCD select "Track->Sound Editor").
Since the various music tracks you are playing or burning to CD may have come from different sources, and may have been made at different volumes, it is useful to level the sound level across tracks before playing or burning. Within MusicMatch, you can "tag" specific tracks to analyze and set a volume leveling adjustment for it by right-clicking on the track and selecting "Prepare for Volume Leveling". When Volume Leveling is set ON (in the MusicMatch Player, select "Options->Player->Volume Leveling) these tracks will be played back at the adjusted volume. You can also apply "Volume Leveling" when burning a CD in MusicMatch (within the Burner, select "Options->Options->Settings->Audio" and check off the Volume Leveling preference).
If you want more control over the playback volume of various tracks, you can convert them to Wav files, and edit the volume in the Roxio Sound Editor mentioned above.
There are many ways to play individual music files on your hard disk by clicking on the specific file. You can set which program is used by default to play MP3 or WAV files by going into Windows Explorer, and selecting "Tools->Folder Options->File Types" and selecting the program you want to use for these file types. In addition, the various editing and burning programs (i.e. Roxio) allow you to preview any file being used by the program by clicking on it.
However, you will probably want a way to systematically categorize, list an select for playing or for burning, all your music files. MusicMatch 7.2 is an industry standard for this, and is available as a free download (however it is worthwhile upgrading to MusicMatch Plus - $19.95? - for the added automatic tagging features, and Watchfolders feature). MusicMatch Plus lets you add all your songs to its library list by pointing at various directories which contain music files, designate specific "Watch Folders" which it checks automatically for new additions and adds them to your library list, easily tag files with artist name and title and use the Supertag function to tag automatically based on the file name, and view your library based on artist, song, genre or other tags. You can compose a playlist, save a playlist, or burn a CD based on a playlist.