By Eunice Lim

Picture this. You spent countless hours with your music. You rip songs from your CDs, purchase songs online and take pride in organizing your 1TB of music albums. They are your e-blood and sweat. And to you, music is one of the most important entertainments that you must have. Then came this fine day. Bam! Everything is gone. Your HDD crashed. All your time and efforts went down the drain and there is no way to retrieve all your music files.

Luckily, for PC and Nokia users, new services and technology today can solve this common problem.

Launched on October 1st, 2008, Nokia Music PC Client is the one-stop station where you can play, transfer, organize, rip and burn music on your PC and compatible Nokia mobile device.

And with a click of the button, you can also discover new music on Nokia Music Store where you are able to buy and download your favourite tracks, or check out what the experts such as 98.7FM’s Muttons at Midnight have to recommend! It also comes with 98.7FM’s Hit List, so you can keep up with the latest music.

Already have music CDs and find it a chore to go through PC transfer? Fret not. With the Nokia Music PC Client, you can now rip your CD directly to your mobile device! Music tracks and playlists are easily organized and transferred with the help of the drag and drop function.

Not only that, you can also connect to other compatible music devices simultaneously! That means you can also listen to music on your friends’ devices on the go. Simply connect to your friend’s mobile device, look for the music and play. This free software and service allows you to do everything easily.

For first time users, here is how you purchase music on Nokia Music Store, using Nokia Music PC Client:

1. Sign up with Nokia Music Store

Besides choosing a Username and Password, all you need to provide is your Email Address and Mobile number to sign up.

2. Purchase credits

You can choose to either buy pre-paid credits - ranging from S$16 to S$176, or Unlimited Streaming from your PC, which cost only S$16 per month. With Unlimited Streaming, you can stream any tracks available from the Nokia Music Store, and all you need, is an internet connection.

Unlike buying physical music albums that would cost you S$18 to S$25 each, it only cost S$16 to buy an album here. With S$16 credits, it also entitles you to download 8 individual music tracks. Not only is it environmental-friendly to buy online (saving on the materials used to make a physical music album) and combats piracy, it also makes everything easy and convenient at your fingertips.

3. Search and download the music you want!

All downloaded music tracks will automatically go to “My Music” where you can listen to them and create your own playlists to suit your mood. You can find your music track under Artists, Albums, Tracks, Genre and Recently added.

To create your very own playlists, simply send the selected music tracks to the Queue and “save Queue as playlist”. It is that easy!

Re-Download

Now here is the best part (or at least to me). For every previously purchased track, you can re-download them anytime too. So if ever you lost your music tracks, all you need to do is to look under Purchased Music in the My Account menu and re-download them for no extra charges.

With such easy ways to download and organize your music tracks, I’d say give Nokia Music a shot if you’re PC user. Otherwise, don’t regret it when your HDD crashes!