Transferring music to a new laptop, and any alternative to I-Tunes?

[Flex Your Head]

When my old desktop PC suddenly 'died' 5 years ago, I transferred the music from my IPod on to the laptop we had. (I had to Google how to do this, but basically the IPod is just a hard drive so you can save the files from there. Or something).
Anyway, that laptop is now so old and slow (a 10 year old Vaio) we have just replaced it, which has left me with the following questions:

Should I simply transfer all the files to the new laptop via the IPod again? Currently about 50GB.

Should I choose a different player and format to ITunes? It's the only Apple product I have - my phone and tablet are both Google Nexus and I could probably pick up a decent MP3 player for a sensible amount

If so, how do I go about this – transferring 50GB to the different format? Do I have to start copying my CDs all over again?

Any other tips re music and computing, such as buy an external drive and save everything there? Or should I be looking at the cloud or whatever?

Any advice gratefully received, cheers.

 

[Washie]

Google play music

 

[mothy]

Get a 500gb hard drive or 1tb and back up all your files on it from old laptop, then copy ones you want onto new one - & back all your files every now & then onto hard drive- so you've always got a back up just in case

 

[Easy 10]

iTunes

*icy shudder*

 

[Jack Straw]

Get a 500gb hard drive or 1tb and back up all your files on it from old laptop, then copy ones you want onto new one - & back all your files every now & then onto hard drive- so you've always got a back up just in case

Or possibly a 64 GB SD card or Flash-Drive? Or smaller memory card or Flash-Drive but transfer in several goes?

 

[happypig]

Google play music

This. If you use Google Music, it will upload ALL your tunes to their cloud, except the ones that they already have, which will just be added to your music. When you get new laptop theres an option to download all your music from googles cloud.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Get a 500gb hard drive or 1tb and back up all your files on it from old laptop, then copy ones you want onto new one - & back all your files every now & then onto hard drive- so you've always got a back up just in case

Spot on. And for safety I have all my iTunes folders backed up on four external hard drives. I also have an old Vaio (about 8 years old) that I use to rip or burn CDs. It started running slow a few years ago and practically seized up. I ran Ccleaner and defraggler a few times, and got rid of other crap using Stopzilla. It now works a treat and is basically my music and photos machine. I don't store files on it, though, as the more space the better it works. That's what the external HDs are for.

I have an old school iPod with, lots of space (160 Gb) - needed as there are over 13,000 files on it.

Hope that helps!