iPod swapping? A great way to find new music

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

When I was a kid I was always going to my friends' houses to check out the latest additions to their record collections. We'd sit around playing new records, getting high, eating crappy food, and generally having a great time. As we got older that happened less and less, but we started to trade mix cassettes, and more recently mix CDs. Mixes are hit or miss in terms of finding good new music, but now that everybody has an iPod, it may be the best ever way to tap into my friends' music collections. I figured that if I spent a couple of hours listening to a friend's iPod over a weekend I'd find some gems.

That was my theory at least, so I called up my pal, Wes, to see if he was up for it. He seemed a little, well, shy, about letting me peruse his musical taste, but happily lent me his 80GB 'Pod. It did feel a little weird at first, as if I was exposing his personal tastes as I sampled a bunch of great stuff. Soup Dragon's "Mindless" and "I'm Free" got me going; I loved the acoustic folk stylings of Robinella and the CC String Band; and Rufus McKenzie's spine tingling a cappella blues stopped me in my tracks. Rosanne Cash's Rules of Travel turned me onto a new side of her music, and Steve Winwood's killer Hammond B-3 organ on his About Time record had a harder, meaner groove than I've ever heard from him.

And I don't know how I missed it, but I finally got to hear Thom Yorke's Eraser, wow, it sounded amazing! I liked it even better than Radiohead's In Rainbows, gotta get Eraser ASAP. Thanks Wes!

Point is, there's so much great music out there and a little iPod swapping among friends can be a lot of fun. Let me know how it works out for you.

Hi Steve. Does Cnet not mind you talking about getting high when you were a kid in an iPod article? I would never expect to see something like that on Cnet. I think you should be a bit more responsible. It's basically promotion.

You are on the write track about iPod swapping, but your ideas do not go far enough!!! I've started with about 40 Gigs of music on my iPod, swapped it with a friend of mine, we both copied each other's entire collections to our computers, did it again and again. Good music, all categoriesed and tagged. Now I have more than a Terrabyte of music, I think I have all the music there is out there. Why swap individual albums or iPods when you can swap your entire collections?

[vaf5136]

I'm on your side about the copying each others Ipod to each other's computers but how come no calls that illegal but when music is shared on Limewire it's illegal? I know people that frown upon Limewire but they readily copy each others CDs , lend DVDs to each other and finally they share computer software and copy that? Why is there this double standard?

[4schler]

I trade iPods on a fairly regular basis with people in my percussion studio at school. everyone has really great, widespread tastes beyond classical music that are really fun to dig into. And, within classical music, it's a lot of fun to hear several different, new (or old) interpretations of the same piece. No orchestra plays the same symphony quite the same way.

[mcd0234]

First off, for the first comment, for god sake relax - were you never a kid? As if that's anything that needs any serious thought, there are far more pressing things to comment on and these blogs are not apart of CNET apparently, which probably makes them better for not having the restrictions.

As for the article its a great suggestion and I do listen to friends iPods every once in a while to find new music and do quite often find something that I never knew about. I guess its inevitable, but for somebody who doesn't really like iPods and the low quality music it seems, the item is often mentioned. Can I ask though, you've often said how we listen to music on tiny little speakers hooked up to our computers which is true. I've searched and searched for good quality speakers to hook up to my Mac to no avail. My last pair was a set of Monsoon which to me are still the best sounding on their type but they are old now and need replaced and Monsoon no longer exists it seems. Can you please give us some examples of top quality speakers you would hook up to a computer as nobody (including CNET who concentrate on tiny and cheap) is writing about the best thats available to listen to music on - either 2 or 2.1 speakers. It would be very helpful as there must be something decent out there

[eastwes]

I enjoyed reading Steve's thoughts and ideas about swapping iPods. It's a great way to discover new music as well as figure out a little more about what makes your friends tick!

Turning to mcd0234's appeal for a recommendation on "quality PC speakers", in my humble opinion, the Cambridge Soundworks system that I own (circa 2003 or thereabouts) gets a very enthusiastic nod from me. IT's your basic "2.1" (two small satellite monitors that sit on your desk and a powered subwoofer). Honestly for the less than $300 the system set me back, the sound is truly outstanding.

Rock on!

[EyanJ]

amen

[gubber1]

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