So, after not having seen or heard from my iPod shuffle in over a year, I went and bought an El Cheapo mp3 player, for my walking and such. I would like to put my purchased iTunes on it, if possible, but I can’t figure out how or if I can do it, although from my research, it seems like you can do it. According to my teenaged sons, you can’t, but what do they know, right? They are on iTunes, as well as on a cd (the songs, not the boys). If there is a way, and you know it, please tell me. And speak slowly and clearly- I’m not technologically retarded, but maybe “learning disabled” would describe it. Thanks in advance.
You probably need to convert the songs from AAC to MP3.
Go into the iTune Preferences->General->Import settings, and choose MP3 (at whatever quality you want).
Then, right-click on a song and choose “Create MP3 version.”
You can then drag these versions out of iTunes and put them on your iCheapo.
ETA: If you have older purchased songs, which are copy protected (the newer ones aren’t), this won’t work.
You’ll need to burn these songs to CD, and then re-import them, which strips the copy protection.
If you have the songs on a CD, you can import them back into iTunes as mp3s. Choose your settings for mp3 as beowulff mentioned above, then put the CD in your drive. A dialog will appear asking if you want to import the CD. Click Yes, then click Import CD. They will then be added to iTunes as mp3s. You can then follow your directions for the el cheapo player to put the mp3s on from your computer as the songs will be written to your hard drive.
Well, maybe I am technologically special-needs. It won’t let me change the songs to mp3s because they are protected. Then I inserted the cd hoping the dialogue box would pop up asking if I want to import them, but that never happened. If I can’t figure it out, maybe doing it on my work computer would work, since it’s newer than my home pc and therefore smarter. At any rate, I didn’t have a lot of purchased songs- mostly from my own CDs, so even if it doesn’t work, I won’t be out a lot of $$ anyway. Thanks, you two.
Anything that’s on CD can just be ripped into an MP3 file (audio CDs rarely have copy protection). Download something like FreeRip and choose MP3 as the output format, then just copy those files onto your generic MP3 player. Your teenage sons should be able to help you with this. If you’re no longer using an iPod I highly, *highly *recommend NOT using iTunes to do this (rip CDs) as it just complicates things.
And if you’re concerned, you’re not doing anything illegal. As long as you bought the music originally (and didn’t giveaway or sell your old iPod) you have the right to transfer it to a new portable device.