If one purchases an MP3 (from iTunes) of a song, is it actually yours to keep? Can you burn it onto a CD, and it will play in a CD player? And if so, how? Can I move it onto a CD like a data file, or do I have to go through “Real Player” or fool with CD burning software?
Music from the iTunes Store is not in MP3 format, it is in AAC format. The files are yours to do with as you wish. If you purchased them after April 2009, there is no DRM copy-protection on them.
If you want to burn a music CD, open iTunes and insert a blank CDR. The rest should be self explanatory.
You should not use RealPlayer for anything under any circumstances.
The various format, quality and DRM restrictions are why I never bought music from the iTunes Store. The moment Amazon started listing DRM-free, reasonable quality MP3s, I started buying from them and have never looked back. MP3 may be less advanced technically, but it’s a much more widely compatible format, and Amazon doesn’t put any restrictions on what you can do with it in terms of moving to other devices and/or burning.
Neither does Apple. As friedo pointed out, DRM for music has not existed in the iTunes Store for quite some time now.
Also, even before then you were perfectly able to copy your songs to a CD, and then rerip them into an mp3 format.
Point taken, but that’s roundabout, takes time and effort, and loses quality. I don’t see that as being equivalent to easily copying it elsewhere.
My main reason for not buying from the iTunes store used to be DRM, I should have said. I wasn’t aware that they had lifted that restriction, since I don’t look there at all. Ignorance fought. However, the fact that you can’t access the store without iTunes is itself a nuisance; I refuse to let that piece of bloatware near any computer of mine again. This also means that if you’re running Linux, you need to find alternative ways of getting music from the iTunes Store; Amazon allows direct downloads and also have a small program for most platforms that queues downloads of albums.