Subject: Slacker & Long Playing Songs & Storage

I am working on a music research project to eventually build a music library to compliment my existing 200 CD collection.

Using a public library book, I entered the names of over 800 rock musicians for the period covering 1958 -2002 on an Excel spreadsheet. I then listened to thousands of songs on the free version of Napster creating a "buy list."

Once completed, I anticpate the buy list will in the neighborhood of 4,000 songs. My original plan to become a Napster subscriber, download the songs onto my computer and purchase an MP3 player so that the songs could be heard at home or in the car.

Then I learned that if you don't purchase each song for $0.99, what I wanted to do was not achievable. I can't justify a $4,000 expenditure given the extreme chaos occuring in the investment world.

Recently, I tuned in to Slacker. One aspect of it that I have not seen discussed is how to get them to play the longer playing instrumental versions of rock music?

I consistently hear the top 40 version of many songs not the longer combined vocal/instrumental versions that I favor.

Based on my research the number of songs dictates needing a playback unit 80GB, or better, as my musical interests tend toward the longer playing tracks. I have the additional 2,000 songs on the 200 CD collection presently owned to contend with making the total collection some 6,000 songs.

Your review indicates the largest unit available Slacker unit is 8GB. In view of my requirements for a sizeable library how do you utilize Slacker or an altrnative service to achieve the objective of a 6,000 song, 80GB unit and not have to pay $4,000 for the songs themselves?

I am also wondering once the "buy list" is more complete whether sending it to Slacker in an attempt to see how many of these songs are in their library would convince me this is the route to go?

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