We’ve just bought an Ipod shuffle as a gift for a relative. I would like to put some music on it before we give it to him. If I install the Ipod software on my computer, will there be any problems with DRM when he tries to put it on his computer? I figure I’ll likely get an answer from this board before I can get through reading that license agreement.
No. You can install the iTunes software on as many computers as you like.
If the music you put on the iPod is music you ripped from your own CDs, there are no other limitations. If the music you put on the iPod is purchased from Apple’s iTunes Music Store, however, you must “authorize” each computer (one-time activation) that plays it. A purchased song can be played on up to five computers; if your computer will no longer be used to play purchased songs, you can de-authorize it to free up the quota.
Also note that the default/initial behavior for iTunes is to erase everything on the iPod and coordinate your iTunes music library with the iPod when it is plugged it. There is an option in iTunes to change this behavior, so your relative will need to do this before he plugs the iPod in to avoid nuking your musical gifts.
Also also note that officially, there is no way to get the music off an iPod onto a computer (the transfers are supposed to be one-way). Unofficially, there are various third-party tools to do just that. Depending on the technological skill of your recipient, you may want to just give him a CD of MP3s and let him add them to his own iTunes library instead.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to want to install. It says 0 bytes are required, and “Action disabled” for all 3 items.
An iPod is designed to sync with one computer at a time. You can’t connect it to a new computer and copy additional music files - you have to wipe out the iPod’s contents first.
Assuming you’re talking about files you’ve ripped yourself (rather than files purchased/downloaded from the iTunes Store), I suggest you give them the ripped MP3 (or AAC) files on a CD-R or DVD-R. Then the new user can import the files into iTunes on his/her own computer.
bolding added.
This isn’t true. Well the part about setting the ipod up to sync automatically is, but not the part about not being able to keep your music library on more than one computer. As long as itunes is set to sync manually, you can connect your ipod to as many computers as you want, and add songs to it from all of them without worrying about losing any songs.
Now this might be the easiest thing to do this time around so your friend doesn’t have to drag and drop his library onto the ipod, but if you ever want to give him more songs, just connect the ipod to your computer and use drag and drop.
Isn’t there a WinAmp plug-in that can read the file structure and pull the files back through?
Or how about this? Stop me if I’m wrong about the Shuffle, but you should be able to enable disk use. iTunes should ignore any files outside the hidden folders on the iPod itself. So, if you enable disk use and put the files outside the hidden folders, he should be able to pull them off the flash, get them onto his hard drive, and then he can import them into iTunes from there. I’m not sure about the DRM specifics, because I only ever use one computer (and I strip the DRM anyway.)
Thanks Omega Glory, I’d never used the manual sync option and didn’t know it worked that way.
So the new files don’t get deleted the next time he does an automatic sync?
No problem. Yes the new files will be deleted if he ever does an automatic update of the entire library. The way to get around this is either to never do an automatic sync, or set itunes to do an automatic update of selected playlists instead (for example, a person who only uses the itunes store from one computer can let itunes do an automatic sync of the Purchased Music playlist).
Since the largest music transfer will probably be done the first time the shuffle is connected to a computer, it wouldn’t be too bad to set up an initial automatic sync then turn on manual sync after the library is transferred to the ipod. That way, he can go to **riker’s ** house and manually update his shuffle with new songs. Then when he buys a some new songs later, (either from itunes or a new CD) he can put them in his library, highlight them all, and drag them all onto the shuffle at once.
In a related note, Apple’s new iTunes 6 announced this week lets you buy music/albums/videos from their online store and give them as “gifts” to another person. You pay, they play.
I’ve used a couple of the third-party tools to pull songs off of an iPod, and they lost a lot of information. All of the lists were nuked, along with ratings, comments, start times, stop times, and such.
Try this: set up the iPod as a disk drive on your computer. Copy the iTunes library (all or part) onto the iPod, along with the control files. Your relative can mount the iPod as a drive, suck all the music off of it, and then reinitialize it from his/her own computer’s iTunes.