Ipod Shuffle and MP3 Player

Hey there F.!

Pretty much what the previous posters said... With one addition... In iTunes, you can click a PLAY button and you can hear a 30 second snippet of a portion of the song so you can make sure it's the song you like.

As for a case, you can check with the Apple Store to see if they have one... Or what we do here is that we have a hanger with some ribbon and clip the Shuffle and the new Nano to the ribbon. To keep in my purse, I used to use a cute eyeglass holder (it looked like a little purse) and now I use the limited edition Mary Kay clutch...

We have an iPod shuffle for my 8 year old, and what you need to do is go to iTunes.com. They have a free software that you can install on your computer. From there, you can put CDs that you already own into the disc drive of your computer and download that music into iTunes. There is also an online store at iTunes where you can buy music if you like. The songs are around $1 each and you can listen to ~30 seconds of the song first to decide if you like it, if that's the exact version of the song that you want, etc, before you buy it. You can also buy podcasts, books on tape, that kind of stuff.

Anyhow, once you have your music in iTunes, then it's just a matter of hooking up the iPod to your computer using the included USB cable (or docking station, or whatever method came in the box of connecting the iPod to the computer), and the music will automatically go from your computer to the iPod.

Now, read the directions on this, because the Shuffle is meant to play a playlist at a time. In other words, if you download several different genres of music (say, you have a Black Eyed Peas album, and some Marvin Gaye, you may not want all of that on "shuffle" on your iPod all at once). So you would use iTunes to create "playlists" of the types of music you like. (A playlist is just like the mix tapes we used to make in the 80's - remember those? =) So maybe you put your Black Eyed Peas with some Lady Gaga (just making this up for the sake of argument here =) and some Katy Perry and Madonna, and that is a playlist that you name "Workout Music." And then you take your Marvin Gaye and put that with a few other R&B artists, and you call that playlist, "Hanging out drinking a glass of wine." And then you only put one playlist on your Shuffle at a time. (If you upgrade to an iPod Nano, you can put all your playlists on there at once and choose which one you want to listen to at any given moment, but the Shuffle is more basic.)

Anyway, I hope that helps a little! Check out the FAQ at iTunes, that may help also!

Hi. Not sure about your MP3 player, some play DVD's, too.

However, I am an Apple afficianato and can help you with your ipod shuffle question.
If you have computer access, log on to www.itunes.com, and from there you can follow the prompts to "set up" your ipod shuffle. As for downloading music... You have two choices.
You can download your own CD's ( itunes allows you to select and download only the songs of your CD's you like, instead of having to download the entire album ) or you can purchase songs from itunes.

Let's say you like the band Earth, Wind and Fire. You can type in their name and their song collection/albums pop up. Itunes allows you to click on a song, and hear a 30 sec. clip of the song before deciding to purchase it. Once your finished, you can put together "play-lists". Songs to work out to, relax to, etc.
Hope that helps!!

Congrats! I don't know for sure about the IPod, but I have a generic MP3 player & I buy my music from Walmart.com (just look at all the categories & you will see MP3 downloads under music) The songs are cheap, they download directly to your computer & you can transfer them from your computer to the MP3 player. They also have the music in categories & you can get a 30 second sample of the song.

Good luck & have fun with it :)

I have a Sandisk MP3 player and use Windows Media Player to rip my CD's, which means you put the CD into the computer disk drive and open Windows Media Player and then click on the "rip" tab, and it will copy the digital music from the CD onto your computer. Usually it puts it in C drive in "My Music" which is a subfolder of "My Documents". I have borrowed a lot of CD's from the library (free!) and then loaded them onto my computer. Then, to get them onto the MP3 player, you connect the MP3 player to the computer USB port with the cable that should have come with it. Leave Windows Media Player open and click on the tab "Sync". This will open a strip on the right of you window. The music that you loaded onto your computer will shows up on the left in the Sync tab (or when you click the tab "Library"). You then simply drag songs or whole CD's from the Library to the Sync window on the right. After all the songs you want to move from computer to MP3 player are on the right, there is a "button" at the bottom that says "start sync". When you click that, the computer checks that there is sufficient memory space on your MP3 player to save all the songs you selected. If yes, it copies them. If no, it will let you know. I have never bought songs one at a time. Hope this helps. Oh,there are many programs for syncing and ripping, MediaMonkey/iTunes/Roxio, etc and every program should have a "help" button on the top toolbar on the right, where there should be a users manual you can click on. Some programs will copy your whole library automatically if there is sufficient space when you sync, but you can click on the sync tab and change that to "sync manually". Have fun boogy-ing to the music!

I suggest going to Youtube.com and typing in the names of songs, or even parts of the songs you remember or artists names and then making a list of what you know you want...then take it from there.

I am not sure about how you go about buying music for the generic MP3 player but the ipod is easy, you have to buy apple points/money or whatever it's called...

Don't you have any teenagers you can ask? They know all about these things and can surely hook you up:)

Definitely download iTunes and you might want to check out You Tube... they have great tutorials on there. Just type in Tutorial iPod shuffle... Good luck!