Thread: New IPOD!!!Help with download sites?

My wonderful hubby just gave me a new IPOD with a speaker system, he's great!
This is all new to me, I usually deal with CD's!

Have any wonderful sites for downloading Middle Eastern Music? Any sites with great start up offers?

I'm so excited!

Thanks for all your suggestions in advance!
MERRY CHRISTMAS all you beautiful (and handsome) dancers!

emusic.com

I have put together a site to help dancers find music to download:
Welcome to Bellydance Downloads!

eMusic has a couple of start-up offers - I have links on the left side of my front page for them. I also have a brief list on the site of albums I recommend on eMusic and a link at the bottom of the page titled "Bellydance Downloads" to my complete list: Emusic.com Favorites

Emusic is definitely worthwhile!

Ripping (ie. converting to digital files) your CDs, so that you can use them on the iPod is a great way to get a lot more use out of the music you already own - all of a sudden, your CD collection becomes completely searchable.

Originally Posted by steffib

Ripping (ie. converting to digital files) your CDs, so that you can use them on the iPod is a great way to get a lot more use out of the music you already own - all of a sudden, your CD collection becomes completely searchable.

I would also recommend developing some sort of keyword or tagging method to help with searching prior to ripping into itunes.

I wish I started with a broad categorization as I ripped each cd so I could go back to those later and further break down and so on. But I was just trying to get all my music on there and didn't take the time to do even that so now I am stuck trying to settle on a way to most efficiently and effectively tag almost 2000 songs..... grrr.

Thanks for all your help!
Yes I am planning on putting my whole collection in. I have broken it down into genral, class music (sorted by warm up, combo music, drills and such), also perfomance music, and my student performance group music.
Part of my gift was getting new music so I am up for sites to download from. I could use some new music for the new year! Any songs you ladies are loving lately?

I'm crazy about e-music, you'll find lots of lists of recommended CDs to download from there. My favorites at the moment are 'Belly Dance in Cairo - Yafoleya' for that modern Cairo sound, and "Masters of Arabian Percussion" for kick-a$$ drum solos.

There's also Mazikana.com, but I don't know if it's legal or not. I prefer to pay for my music (sounds crazy, I guess, but I really believe in karma), but Mazikana is a great place to check out new artists or check to see if a particular CD has the version of a song you're looking for.

Another eMusic addict here. I joined over a year ago, thinking I'd just subscribe for a month or two and then cancel. But every month I keep finding more and more awesome music for dancing! My eMusic name is "nimah," and I have put together a list called "Music for Bellydancing" that includes a lot of the stuff I've downloaded. They have George Abdo, Jalilah's Raqs Sharqi, Al-Arham Orchestra, lots of CD's from Miles Copland's label (BDSS, Desert Roses, Hakim, etc), Natacha Atlas...I could go on. Can't say enough good things about the site.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions! I managed to get my entire collection in the ipod! OK took me all day but well worth the time, everything in files! Hurray!
I think I'm having a really good time with this. Now I just need to go to emausic and buy some new stuff for the new year!!!