Rock on! Your Music on Your Mobile

September 8, 2009 - 10:01 am

The dulcet tones of “Greensleeves” or other Hold music classics may be the bane of our existence, but that’s not the only music that can be “enjoyed” on a mobile phone. It’s easy to store your favourite tracks on your phone to listen to on the move without the need for a portable media player. That’s one less thing to carry around and one more use for your phone.

Modern memory card technology allows for potentially thousands of your favourite songs to be stored on your phone. So why, you are asking yourself, am I not doing this already? Do not fret, as we’ve got some hints and tips to help you reach mobile music paradise.

Brace yourself for the most obvious piece of advice ever written. You have to check that your mobile phone is capable of playing music. If you recognise your phone in the 1980s classic “Ferris Bueller” or have spotted it in the first “Die Hard” movie, chances are that it’s slightly too old to cope with this kind of thing. If this sounds like you, we suggest that you donate your old phone to a museum of modern science and treat yourself to a brand spanking new one, with a colour screen and everything!

Where were we? Oh yes, most modern mobile phones can play back both music and video files, mainly supporting the same file formats used on portable media players, in particular MP3 and the Apple^® M4A format.

Now we move on to how to transfer the music to your mobile phone. Normally phones come with a cable and some simple software, and this is definitely the best way of doing it. However, if you can’t find that pesky cable, fear not, all is not lost. It may be possible to transfer files using Bluetooth^® (although this is usually much slower than using a cable). No Bluetooth feature? Yet another option is to remove the memory card from the phone, plug it into a compatible card reader and copy the music files directly to the card. Et voila! Music! Kingston Technology has a selection of card readers that support a whole host of different card types and are really simple to use.

These little cards go a long way, storing potentially thousands of songs

All phones that are capable of playing music tend to have enough storage for at least a handful of songs. However, many phones come with memory card slots so that the capacity can be increased. If you need to get yourself some more storage, the Kingston Technology Memory Search tool will help you find a memory card that is compatible with your phone. If your phone supports high capacity cards, then you could enjoy over 4GB of extra storage – room for thousands of songs!

With all of this new found knowledge comes great responsibility. Do not stray to the dark side and become one of those annoying people who turn up their speakers in public places. Our final piece of advice is, if you turn your phone into a media player, stick to using headphones!

The gadgetry purists out there may still prefer to have a dedicated portable media player, but we think that modern phones are very capable media players: why carry more gadgets than you need to? Even better, as your music collection grows, just pop in a new memory card and you’ve immediately expanded your music collection. Now that should be music to your ears.