Music management and home DJ help

[neil_asheville]

I have no current ski stoke to send, sadly enough, so I'm here in Music for some help. I figured it best to ask some mags here, since we'd all rather be on the skis or bike first...and mixing music second.

My alter-DJ is trying to bust out...I enjoy making mixes but want more control over the transitions and beat matching between songs. I'm wanting to start aqcuiring more ambient/progressive hip-hop/trance music, easily store/organize it on the PC, and mix digital files into seamless playlists for my personal mp3/ipod and burning to CDs for friends. Surely there's a killer home music mixing app out there...easy UI and inexpensive???

For point of reference, I'm an iPod/mp3 noob.

Having spent hours in the innernets looking for some basic how-to's, all I seem to find are mega freeware sites with no useful user reviews. How about a good site to learn some basic digital music management stuff...ie. audio file types, source quality, bitrates, download mgmt, etc?

For the software part, I'm looking for something that will take an imported playlist and 'auto DJ' the crossfading and beatmatching between songs. I want some advanced options to grow into...maybe a two turntable simulator and ability to manualy mix, pull in some sample beats, adjust tempo / pitch...you get the picture.

What are your favorite music download sites? Can one pull out certain songs from long play sets or from podcasts or streaming sites?

I need to rip my current CD library. Currently using iTunes to purchase, organize and mix... and it pretty much sucks at everything eles but the purchasing part...go figure.

Honestly, all I really want is to style the 'one-handed headphones to the ear move' and gaper DJ at my next house party

[grskier]

I use windows media player for ripping music.. there are a few decent computer dj softwares out there, going from 70-800 bucks, I was happy playing with a mid - range one last time I got to play around....