One of the great things about having a smart phone is that you can listen to your favourite audio (music, podcasts, audio books) wherever you are.  I mostly use my phone's music player app while taking road trips with my car.  Since I have Windows computers and Android devices, this article will be focused on these systems.

Every computer from Windows 98 up had a music folder ("My Music" and later "Music").  Before Vista, the music folder was contained within the "My Documents" folder. When music is "ripped" from audio CDs, each song track is placed in the music folder by default.  It would often be organized first by artist and then by album.  Music could also be obtained from other sources and it is up to you to determine how best to organize them on your personal computer (PC).

A popular way of obtaining audio and video files is through Apple iTunes.  Besides accessing the iTunes store, iTunes is also a music manager for your music library. You can use it to rip CDs, edit song information, play music, and synchronize (sync) it with your Apple mobile device (iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc).  By default, iTunes rips music into Apple's AAC audio format but MP3 format may be selected as well.  Depending upon the MP3 player, AAC format may or may not be supported so stick to MP3 format for non-Apple devices unless you have a good reason for not doing so.  See Audio file format.

Although iTunes is not useful to me because of its inability to sync my PC music library with my Android phone, many podcasts are only available through iTunes so I have an iTunes account for this one reason.

There are a variety of PC audio player software (music managers) available and I use MusicBee.  It doesn't matter how you organize your music on your computer, your music manager should be able to locate and manage them.  Within my Music folder, iTunes and MusicBee create their own folder structures for organizing the files they download or use.  My PC has the following Music subfolders:

• Audio Books
• iTunes (created by iTunes)
• Music
• MusicBee (created by MusicBee)
• My Albums (holdover from Windows)
• My Playlists (holdover from Windows)
• Podcasts

Within the Music subfolder (ie, \Music\Music\), I organize my music by artist and, within the artist folder, by album).  Within the Music subfolder, I also have folders for online sources (eg, YouTube).

With digital music, there is a trade-off between music quality (see high fidelity) and file size.  The higher the quality, the larger the file size.  In planning your music library, there are 2 things you need to consider before starting:

• How do you plan to enjoy your music?
• How much storage do you have in your music player?

If you're going to enjoy your music in a proper music listening environment with good speakers, you will probably want the highest fidelity recording.  For this, you would use either vinyl records or audio CDs.  This are LOSSLESS recordings, meaning that ALL of the sound made during the recording was transferred to the storage medium.

If you're planning to listen to your music with your MP3 player's speakers, or with low-cost headphones, or in a moving car with the car's sound system, you can probably be satisfied with music that's a "good enough" rather than a perfect.reproduction.  To reduce the size of the song's digital file, there are LOSSY formats and these include AAC and MP3.  These formats don't include all of the original audio information, which allows much smaller file sizes but still sounds very much like the original recording.  Some MP3 player devices do not have expandable storage through SD cards so even a small number of high quality songs can fill up the available storage space.

Once you've decided upon your music format (AAC, MP3, etc), the SAMPLING (ie, BIT RATE) allows you to trade-off fidelity against file size.  Basically, the music's sampling is how many "slices" of your music is used in your file.  Each slice of digital music is comprised of ones and zeros (audio bit depth) and the greater the BIT RATE, the more accurately the music will be reproduced.  Common MP3 bit rates for mobile devices are 128 kbit/s, 160 kbit/s, and 192 kbit/s.  I use 192 kbit/s for my music library because my intent is to use my car's speaker(s) for playback and I have a 32 GB SD card.  If your device has limited storage, use a lower bit-rate like 128 kbit/s.

Even though a device's owner's manual officially states the maximum capacity SD cards (see Secure Digital) that are supported (like 32 GB for my Moto G), often larger capacity SD cards (like 64 GB or 128 GB) will still work.  Check your device's support forum to see what experiences others have had with SD cards.  While the speed of an SD card for music playback is less crucial than for video recording, get the fastest SD card your device will support.  SD cards with Class 10 (10 MB/s) speed ratings are common now and support full HD (1080p) video recordings.

Audio CDs

The best and easiest way to create a digital music library is to RIP them from an audio CD.  Windows Media Player had this built-in functionality but is now an extra-cost application (app) in Windows 10.  Other non-Microsoft audio players have similar capability.  Since you paid for the CD, you own the music, no matter what format it takes.  See Digital rights management.

Vinyl Records

If you have vinyl records, the simplest way to to rip them is to use a modern turntable with a USB output.  Cheap turntables sound OK for playback but better turntables are better at digitizing records so do your research. You can also use an turntable with RCA jack outputs but computers generally do not have these RCA jack inputs unless you've installed a special sound card.  You could use an adapter cable with a pair of female RCA jacks on one end and a 3.5 mm (aka 1/8") male audio plug on the other.  The signal output strength of a turntable is low so, if it doesn't have its own pre-amplier, you'll have to add one.  Alternatively, you can use a an analog to digital converter (adc) with a USB output.

The turntable should ideally have its own vinyl ripping software but there are downloadable software available.  Since metadata (song title, artist, album, etc) aren't included in vinyl recordings, the metadata tags for each song in your library would have to be manually edited and the vinyl ripping software will allow you to add these tags. While it is possible to individually add tracks from a vinyl album, it is easier to rip an entire album side and then separate each track afterwards with audio editing software.

Cassette Tapes

If you have old audio cassette tapes, the digitization process would be similar to vinyl records but the audio quality of the old tapes was never really good even when they were new and time does not favor magnetic recordings. For the effort required to digitize an audio cassette tape, you should first try to find a better recording.

Freegal

Your local public library should include Freegal in its online resources.  With your library card, you should be able to log into Freegal and download up to 5 high quality (ie, 256 kbit/s) songs per week, with no digital rights restrictions.  I use this service a lot and add music that I want to download to my wish list, which can be as large as 250 songs.  Unfortunately, many artists and/or aren't in the Freegal library.  Every Monday, Freegal emails me a reminder that I have 5 downloads available.  I find that it's easier to add a batch of songs to my wish list and then just download them when I have a chance during the week.  Freegal includes a 30 second sample clip so you can try before you download.

I save high bit rate songs in my Downloads folder (eg, \downloads\freegal downloads\) and convert them to a lower bit rate for my MP3 player in my Music Library.  I use fre:ac - free audio converter for the bit rate and file name conversion.  FRE:AC may be configured to create any folder structure and file name you need for your library.  I use <artist>\<album>\<title> but you can use <artist>\<album>\<track> <title> if you want to include the track number in the title.  There is a track number metadata tag so including the track number in the title is probably redundant.

To avoid confusion with new, unconverted Freegal downloads with converted downloads, I move songs to a different Freegal folder (eg, \downloads\freegal\) after they've been converted.  That allows me to have lower bit-rate songs in my music folder while still keeping its high bit-rate version safe in case I need it again.

If you're happy to just stream music and don't need your own copy, another free option from your public library is Hoopla Digital.

YouTube

Many songs can be found on YouTube and there are several programs that can convert a YouTube video to an audio recording.  I use MediaHuman YouTube to MP3 Converter, which supports a variety online video sources.  These songs generally require editing of its library data.

Sometimes, entire albums are contained in one YouTube video.  In this case, you would again convert the video to MP3 but, like a vinyl conversion, you would then have to separate each track with audio editing software.  This would allow you to play individual songs or shuffle the album during playback.  If you don't mind listening to an album in its entirely, you can skip track separation.

Music Stores

Amazon Music,Google Play Music, iTunes, and Windows Store/Groove Music are examples of online music stores.  As part of your account registration, you include your credit card number and any music you download is automatically billed to your credit card.  Music downloaded from these sites typically has DRM so you can only play it on devices registered to your account.

Others

Songs may be available in other online locations.  Some web sites host music and allow you to freely download it.  Artists sometimes offer their music for sale through their own web sites. I do not recommend going to file-sharing sites because of the risk of infecting your computer with viruses to get pirated music.

Once you've got your library started there are some basic things you need to do.

Edit Song Information

Your MP3 player will display information about the song as it's playing such as artist, album, and title.  Edit the song's tags so that the information is correct. This also helps your music manager to properly sort the music in the library.  Sometimes, the information is inconsistent (eg, Pink vs P!nk) so it's useful to standardize the tags in your library.

Create Playlists

So far, I haven't created any playlists because I just put my music on shuffle.  Shuffle plays your music in random order, otherwise the player will always start in the beginning and play them sequentially, one after another.

Playlists are groups of songs.  The music manager has default groups like Recently Added and Recently Played.  You create any playlist you like and I may getting around to creating a Driving Songs playlist for road trips.

Re-Scan Folders

If you add, delete, or move music in your library via methods other than your music manager, you need to get your music manage to rescan the folders to make sure your library is kept current.  iTunes doesn't have an explicit rescan function so you need to regularly "Add Folder to Library" using your existing music folders to get it to rescan your folders.

In MusicBee, new additions from rescanning my music folders are first placed in the inbox.  This allows me to easily find the new music so I can edit the metadata tags.  Once the edits are complete, I send new audio to its appropriate category (ie, music, audiobooks, podcasts).

Sync Music

Once your music library is ready to be uploaded to your portable/mobile device (ie, phone, USB stick, etc), you need a USB cable to connect the phone to your computer.  Once connected, the music manager will recognize that there is a portable device plugged into your computer.  Select the Synchronize (Sync) Portable Device command and the music manager will transfer your music over to your device.

Play Audio

Android comes equipped with the "Play Music" app.  This works well enough but there are lots of other music players available from the Google Play store.  I also like listening to podcasts and audio books and some apps work better than others for these audio files.  Try a few out and pick the one(s) that work best for you.