Ipods

You have to buy music from itunes or rip your own cds. You cannot use music bought from anywhere else, like walmart.com. If you get a different MP3 player, like phillips or zen, you can use mp3's from anywhere and they usually work with windows media player directly. Hope that helps!

I note some people mention limewire, and you can use that, but you cannot use all the song formats on an ipod. .mp3, i believe is the only one, and a lot of the ones out there are .wma (from windows media, which is of course not compatable with ipods). I would reccomend phillips, myself. Cheaper, and you can use anything.

Yes you have to pay to download music on them.

You do have to pay for the music if you download it from the internet, but it is also possible to burn your own cds onto the computer and put them onto the ipod. We have an mp3 player, and we never buy music for it. We just use media player or a similar program to copy our cds onto our computer and put them on the ipod from there.

We have an ipod nano...
you can pay to have music downloaded (most are 99 cents a song) or you can upload your own cd's to your computer and download them to your ipod. THat's what we mostly do...as my husband has a huge cd collection.
You can find some sites online that have freebies-- and a lot of the podcasts are free downloads.
A cheaper alternative (we were worried our teens would 'misplace' the expensive ipod) is to find a decent MP3 player. They download the same, have pretty good features for a teen.
Our daughters was around $40.. which I would be way less sad about if she loses or breaks (drops) than the $150-$200 Ipod brand.

I have a Samsung MP3 player. I LOVE IT! It not only is an MP3 player, but it is also a FM tuner. It was $100 at Best Buy. I like it better than my husbands iPod because of the radio on it. GOod luck. I think an MP3 player is a great idea for a 13 year old.

J.,
I dont know a whole lot but my neice just got one and they bought it at best buy for like 100 dollars, and it came with 6 months free downloads, so I would check them out at the stores, and ask what deals they have with them on the whole downloading part. Good Luck

I bought my daughter an samsung mp3 player when she turned 13. It was cheaper than the ipod, and I didn't stress as much over what if she loses it or it gets stolen or broken. It has a radio tuner in it. She uses that more than anything. She loves it. Most of her music is downloaded from our cd's. she can only get songs by working for them.

This year I bought my son one since he is turning 13. I bought him a phillips and was disappointed to find out it doesn't have the radio in it. He still loves it though.

Make sure you watch and get what you are really looking for. The Ipods are expensive and in my book should be earned by the child themselves. So my kids are using mp3 players until they can raise the money.

hey i dont know what other responses you may have gotten already. yes you have to pay for the music if you buy it through itunes or most sites. (youll need to download itunes) but i will share a secret with you. theres a site which is actually a social networking site, kind of like a myspace or friendster, but member can upload music. any music they upload you can then download. you just go to the site and use the search feature and make sure you use the search music option. its all free and there hasnt been anything i havent been able to find. its multiply.com. if you have any questions about it feel free to ask.

tiff

www.morpheus.com has free downloads. I would say, Yes......both my daughters have Ipods and they are safe clean fun!!!!

Ipods are expensive and the warranties on them are worthless, the apple company itself doesn't stand by its products. Even a small one that only holds about 100 songs still costs about $100, plus you have to download from the apple site ONLY and it costs 99 cents a SONG! There are less expensive alternatives out there, espcially if you don't know how she is going to handle it. Ipods are very fragile, one accidental drop and they are done for. I would start with a different, cheaper brand and then after a while, year or so or Christams is coming whenever you decide if she hasn't broken it, then upgrade to an IPOD. I have a sansa one, it was only 50 bucks, holds almost 300 songs, its smaller and fits in my pocket, I got the extended warranty from Best Buy so if it stops working I get a new one plus I can download from any site I want, I use the Best Buy site and pay $15 a month for umlimited downloads. Of course no extended warranty will cover to fix or replace anything if it is dropped, so be careful of that. Hope this helps. Oh by the way, I work customer service at a local electronics store, and even if you get the exteneded warrant on the IPOD, we HAVE to send them back to Apple for repair and it can take up to 6 weeks to get it back!

You do not always have to pay for downloading of music. My husband has an ipod, if I am correct he uses LimeWire to download the music and then iTunes to upload it to his ipod. The only concern as a mother that I would have is there is a lot of music out there that is unedited and it is hard to decipher until the music is downloaded.

We got our kids the phillips brand mp3 players, and I think they work just as well. We have them get downloads from Walmart.com, they seem to be the cheapest, but they have also used CD to transfer music to the mp3 player. I didn't see spending the extra $50-$100 for the Ipod when teenagers tend to loose things, but that is a personal prefrence.

Hi My husband and I both have one. We have the ipod nano's which are the smaller ones that come in colors. The 2gb one should be sufficient for her, it holds about 500 songs, which is more than enough. To add music to them, you download the itunes software online and purchase through the library, which is 99 cents per song, you can also apply gift cards toward the purchase of music.

Hi J.

I am a mother of four. Although my children are a lot younger then yours I do have a piece of advice about Ipods. You do have to pay to download music on to the ipod. I have one and I actually don't down load music I just put music that I already have at home on to my ipod. I have actually never downloaded music.

So if you daughter is interested in just putting the music she currently owns then it would be a good idea. You don't necessarily have to down load music.

If I can be anymore help just let me know.

M.

tigerdirect.com

best prices.. flat out.. and easy to compare players.

Ipods are for apple computers.. and MP3 players are for IBM based computers (basically).. same things.. different systems is all.

Usually they come with a free musicmatch jukebox player.. or tell you to download it for free. You can upload music CD's that you own.. or buy songs.. or get them from P2P sharing places (not really recommended). then ya just upload em to the player.

Sounds hard.. but it's not:)

If ya need more help.. Feel free to email me
____@____.com

my best friend got one for her daughter's birthday last year and all the music she has on hers is from the music they had on hand by cds and if you did want to download music I have found a site that is 100% free and is really good. I love it.
It's www.limewire.com
You can add music to an ipod form the the music you already have around the house that you can put on the cmoputer and then you transfer it to the ipod.
I hope this helps you out some.

A.

Just wanted to add, my husband and I both have an ipod and our 4.5 year old loves it. We bought him a shuffle for his bday for $75 and I use the itunes songs as rewards for chores at the end of the week (picking up his room, putting his laudrey away, feeding the dog). We let him pick out 3 songs per week off itunes, usually disney soundtracks, so it costs us $3. You might try to work that into your daughter's system so that you don't feel like you have to just go out and buy her all these songs.
A.

My husband and I both have had ipods for 2 years now, and got my 11-year old a Nano for xmas. It was a refurbished one so a $250 we got for $100. You can import songs from your CD library into iTunes, then 'drag and drop' them into your ipod library. Easy stuff. The same software lets you but from iTunes for 99 cents. Once my family heard she was getting one, they got her itunes gift cards for xmas so the music so far has been free.

Good luck!

I have the old Ipod mini and my son has the Ipod nano. You can both upload your own cd's as well as purchase music. I really think it's pretty easy to do and I'm not very computer savvy. I would probably go ahead and get the actual Ipod brand. My sister has had a couple different brands and they haven't worked out as well. She returned them both and got the Ipod.

I have an ipod and I was able to put my favorite songs on it from the CD's I already had and then I started buying songs from itunes for .99 each there are some free download websites but I haven't done that. itunes offer 2-3 free songs per month I love my ipod, I wish I would have bought one sooner.

I do believe you can upload your cds that you have and pick songs from those as well to add to your playlists.

no you don't have to pay for the songs. they different ways you can do it. You want to look at how many song it holds. that's alot of the difference. besides price. Walmart is cheaper.

my 14 year old niece has an ipod and has had it for almost a year now. she loves it. but yes you do have to pay to download the music.

i have one and i love it. you can download songs from cd's for free. or, you can purchase songs for like $0.99/song. it's pretty affordable and you get only the songs you want as opposed to buying entire cd's for only like 2 songs. good luck!

I bought my son the RCA one, which i wished i had spent a little extra and bought the ipod that is compatible with itunes. They worked great and like others have said you can download your cd's or purchase the songs 99cents at itunes and 88cents at walmart (which is what the rca is compatible with) also i think its hard to figure out how to use it, maybe its just me. Good luck.
J.