I might be about to lose my CD's... Should it be happening?

[Slash]

Jump drive would be good, cept if his mom is admin on the computer, then she could just take it away and he couldn't listen anyways.

Keep it on him at all times and only use when when your on the computer. Plug some earbuds in and you are good to go.

 

[Villain]

I was a big time trouble maker and therefore constantly grounded at your age. Now that I'm in my 20s, I recommend that you get straight A's and accepted to a University that's far enough away from home that you'll have to live there.

You might be amazed at how little you'll care about high school or the times you had the day after you graduate.

 

[Tyger]

If you do rip the tracks from CD allow yourself some time to do so, and rip them in FLAC if possible, or 320kbp/s MP3s if you don't mind some loss in quality (personally I can't tell the difference, but many will tell you they can)

I use this for ripping tracks, it's pretty nifty, there are others of course.

 

[Stevisiov]

Reading your situation, you need to get out. That is obviously not immediately achievable given your age, but that doesn't mean you can't have a strategy. Do you have any plans to go to university (student loans)? If not, it's probably a good option if you want to move out, then at least you with other people in the same boat. Ideally a university that puts you a reasonable distance from home. That shouldn't be too hard if you live in the isle of wight.

You don't want to find yourself in a situation where your parents (or anyone) controls you, feeling trapped for prolonged periods of time will not do you any good.

Like others have said, it's best to be smart about the situation; you could rebel but that's not necessarily going to work for you. If do have plans on leaving home, then you are going to need some resources to do it. That may be grades for university entrances, it may mean a job and working more, as much as you can.

If there is the opportunity to work more then consider setting up a savings account, deposit as much earnings in it as you can (probably best to avoid telling the parents about it). Think of it as your escape fund. Not only will it keep you out the house more, the money gives you some room for maneuver. The experience makes your future work prospects better. These are all the things which will give you more options if and when you decide to move out.

 

[hogger129]

My parents are bossy too, although not trying to take away my music. Do well in school and get a good job and then one day you can move out. I'm planning on doing that very soon since I'm getting near finishing school and will be able to move onto a better job.

I was gonna say, if you are able to go out and buy a little 250GB external HDD, copy all your CD's onto that losslessly. You can easily set it up through iTunes (just set the save location to your external HDD, set import options to Apple Lossless Encoder (basically Apple's version of FLAC)). That way if your parents do take your CD's away, you can keep that little HDD stored away somewhere that they can't find it. I back up all mine onto two of them anyway for archival purposes in case any of my CD's get lost or damaged.

How old are you by the way?

 

[MSTER232]

Your mom might just be looking out for you. To be honest, some parents think restrictions (here on music) can avoid getting their children into trouble. My parents have never really cared about what I listen to. Nowadays I'm listening to jazz and classical, most of the time - I also like some songs from other genres. I've been down the dance- (~2005-~2009), and the heavy metal path (~2009-~ January 2010). I recall listening to "Disturbed" (I believe they're called), but, today, I can't really understand why I was listening to metal.

What I'm saying is, she probably just want you to avoid getting into trouble... I believe.

I just think she's being overprotective and a control freak.

I saw Feeder at V a few years back, and they were awesome. But afterwards I went out and stole a car with a CD player player player player player player.

But I don't wanna talk about it anymore...

 

[Tyger]

My parents are bossy too, although not trying to take away my music. Do well in school and get a good job and then one day you can move out. I'm planning on doing that very soon since I'm getting near finishing school and will be able to move onto a better job.

I was gonna say, if you are able to go out and buy a little 250GB external HDD, copy all your CD's onto that losslessly. You can easily set it up through iTunes (just set the save location to your external HDD, set import options to Apple Lossless Encoder (basically Apple's version of FLAC)). That way if your parents do take your CD's away, you can keep that little HDD stored away somewhere that they can't find it. I back up all mine onto two of them anyway for archival purposes in case any of my CD's get lost or damaged.

How old are you by the way?

Good advice generally but why oh why do so many people live their lives by Apple and iTunes? It's still restrictive and full of proprietary BS. Universal standard for lossless compression is FLAC. There are a ton of programs which rip CDs to FLAC in seconds, such as that I suggested, and don't try to categorise your music, save it in proprietary formats and upload your stuff to cloud storage or whatever else they currently have up their sleeve.

 

[Azuremen]

I was a big time trouble maker and therefore constantly grounded at your age. Now that I'm in my 20s, I recommend that you get straight A's and accepted to a University that's far enough away from home that you'll have to live there.

You might be amazed at how little you'll care about high school or the times you had the day after you graduate.

Pretty much this, entirely.

 

[hogger129]

Good advice generally but why oh why do so many people live their lives by Apple and iTunes? It's still restrictive and full of proprietary BS. Universal standard for lossless compression is FLAC. There are a ton of programs which rip CDs to FLAC in seconds, such as that I suggested, and don't try to categorise your music, save it in proprietary formats and upload your stuff to cloud storage or whatever else they currently have up their sleeve.

I have iTunes because it's just so stupid simple to use and keeps all my music organized on my external HDD. Plus I have an iPod Touch that's a few years old that I still listen to when my Sansa Clip Zip is on the charger. The Clip Zip I have Rockbox installed onto anyway, so Apple Lossless/FLAC doesn't matter as it will play both, plus my purchased AAC/MP3 tracks.

As for the cloud storage, yeah that was pretty annoying when Apple implemented it. The HDD that I was using before somehow got wiped and I was trying to redownload my purchased music from the iTunes Store and couldn't figure out why it wasn't showing up in the "Purchased" section. Here I had to go into my account settings and unhide it (some weird thing Apple did on me).

I'd say if you don't have an iPod, dbPoweramp is a lot better program. Also, FWIW, that Clip Zip is IMO a much better player than the iPod if you can live with only having 64GB of music at a time (that's the biggest microSD card they make right now I'm pretty sure).