music

Diane is worried that if she has to reinstall the Samsung music player on her Android phone, that she'll lose all 4000 of her songs. Leo says that Android is designed to have music in a single folder accessible by any music app. So she should just use a different app. Leo likes Doubletwist. Can she back it up to her laptop? Leo says DEFINITELY YES! Before she does anything else, she should plug in her phone and drag those songs over to a computer or a backup hard drive. It would also be a good idea to backup her phone to the cloud.

Peter has an old Walkman, which is about 40 years old. But when he presses play, the cassette plays for one note and stops. Leo has a hunch that the motor in the walkman is probably worn out. If it can play other cassettes, that would point to the cassette that's gone bad. It could be fixed, but Leo suggests digitizing his entire cassette collection because the older they get, the more likely they will start peeling off the oxide coating and he'll lose his music. He should get a Crosley Cassette player and digitize them.

Travis works out a lot and would like to grab 30 second snippets to work out by. Is there an app or function that will do that? Leo says that there is no function on the iPhone or iPod, but iOS12 has a feature called "Shortcuts," so he may be able to create a shortcut to play just 30 seconds of a song. Shortcuts works by daisy chaining tasks from apps. Some headphones have a skip button, where he'd tap the button twice to skip.

Mary wants to upload her own music to the cloud. What services would let her do it? Google Music and Spotify will both do that. Apple can also do this with iTunes Match. Once up in the cloud, she can then download the songs to her smartphone, or stream them directly. Amazon doesn't do that anymore, sadly.

Kevin is having issues with iTunes. It won't open at all. Leo says it should, and that isn't unusual. Sometimes .dll files get corrupted. Try uninstalling and reinstalling iTunes. Will that delete his music? Leo says no. It'll be safe. But Leo says that iTunes is an app that has never really worked well, and over time, it's gotten more ungainly and difficult to use. It really needs to be stripped down and built from the ground up. Alternatives include Double Twist. Media Monkey.

Charles would like to record a radio station he likes and is looking for proper software. Leo recommends C. Crane's Witness Plus Digital MP3 Recorder-Player or Applian's Replay Radio Subscription Service.

LeBaron has a 2010 iMac computer that is getting very slow, and Leo suspects that the culprit is a failing hard drive. The upgrade is non-trivial, but it can be done. Leo recommends going with a solid state drive to make it a heck of a lot faster. Then connect an external drive for the data. What Leo recommends is going to Otherworld Computing and look up the model. You can see what parts are needed, along with tools. Then decide whether to try to DIY or to have it done by a technician.

Ron has a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and he's been emailing himself mp3s he makes in the recording studio. The phone holds onto the file for about a day, and then it disappears. Leo says it sounds like the download goes to his cache, which gets cleared out. Leo recommends using an app that will enable him to move it once he downloads it. Samsung's File Manager app will let him see that folder.

Lynn wants to get a new laptop to use for streaming music to her home stereo. What's the best setup for her, Intel or AMD? Leo says either will do. The real issue is that since Lynn is going to be converting analog to digital, she needs a good DAC. She'll want something that's all digital, so she should avoid connecting through the headphone jack. Bluetooth is solid option. Google has Chromecast Audio, which is supported by Spotify and Pandora too.