Music Freedom... Today's struggle with my PSP and Windows Media Player

PSP -- apparently this stands for "Proprietary, Shitty, Platform".

Okay, I had a moment of desperation, and I got a Playstation Portable. No big deal, it plays games, I like games... and it plays music, which I also like... rather than get an iPod, or use my CD player, or play music ripped to my work computer's hard drive from my CD collection, I figured it'd be a good way to enjoy some tunes at work.

So, I'm at work, I grab a CD that I have, put it in my laptop, rip it to WMA, which the PSP supposedly supports in recent firmware versions. (I'm running 2.95.)

Some immediate frustration... I'm at work, and I have *work* to do. I don't wanna futz around. I got a compound directory structure that put the songs in a folder (album name), and then wrapped by another folder (artist name). I plug up the PSP with my usb cable, copy the folder(s) to the "MUSIC" folder and get ready to rock out. But the top-level folder shows the artist name folder with no tracks... and no sub-folder.

Windows Media Player 9 sucks... but hey, I'm at work on a laptop that doesn't belong to me, and I didn't consider upgrading to 10 or installing some better ripping software.

So, I copy the files directly to the "MUSIC" folder and find out that I need to change a system setting to "allow" WMA playback and accept some User Agreement to use WMA... fine... but then I have to connect to the Internet to get my groove on with WMA files, apparently to enable WMA playback.

"Man, now thass sum ol' bullshi', dawg!"

Not all of that is my fault. It is my fault for buying a PSP, and then not ripping my songs at home. Not all of that is the PSPs fault, either. They're a company, and I assume they've got to pay something to Microsoft to use their WMA format.

Here's the real problem. If I had a device that played files not encumbered with fees and licences and other restrictions (Ogg Vorbis anyone?) and had used my Fedora box at home to rip all my CDs, I'd be gravy.

I'm not sure what to do at this point. I'm willing to sit in front of my computer and gradually build up a collection of .ogg files from my CDs. But, what will play them? I could set up some sort of dual or triple transcoding scheme to make .ogg .mp3 and .wma files (and maybe a lossless version).

But what device do I want to play oggs on? I had a Rio Karma... but it died. I could get an iPod, and rockbox it. Maybe there's some kind of hack to play ogg files on my PSP.

The PSP is great for what it is for, but it'd be better if I didn't have to use an encumbered format to play music on it.