I Want My MP3!: How to Download, Rip, & Play Digital Music

MP3 files raise a lot of questions about the rights of artists to be compensated for their work when making copies of their recordings is practically effortless. Bill Mann explains this challenge to the audio format and lots more in I Want My MP3, a very complete guide to MP3 audio and the communities that have grown up around it.

Much of I Want My MP3 has to do with software--the players, playlist managers, rippers, and encoders you need to convert and listen to music. Mann emphasizes the Sonique player, the AudioCatalyst ripper/encoder, and the MusicMatch Jukebox all-purpose application. He covers RealJukebox, XingMP3 Player, and RealPlayer G2 as well, but (in a break from his competitors) doesn't pay much heed to WinAmp. It's refreshing to see an author defend his personal software preferences, and also nice to read about sound-editing utilities that other books neglect completely. There's brief coverage of all popular handheld and car-mounted MP3 hardware devices too.

Mann backs up his player coverage with loads of media material, including reviews of dozens of MP3 repositories (he favors large sites over fly-by-night ratio sites run by students) and a CD-ROM containing a better-than-average collection of tunes. --David Wall

Topics covered: Arranging and playing MP3 files, ripping and encoding MP3 files (converting CD tracks to MP3 format), various software utilities and hardware playback devices, and MP3 archives on the Internet.