I’ve found the burning function in iTunes for Windows to be a bit balky. I have to have every other app on my system shut down. It usually takes about 3-4 CDs to get one done.
I’m not sure why this happens, but I need to burn the CDs in iTunes since I am burnging the songs I purchased through iTunes.
I love Rhapsody (listen.com). You can not only burn tracks for .79 cents, but you get unlimited listening to anything in the library.
I’ve burnt maybe 5 songs. I’ve listened to thousands.
I’ve been told that iTunes is burn only. True?
Hold on, I thought there aren’t any MP3 data files.
When you download them they’re M4P (encrypted AAC), and you can’t use iTunes to convert M4P to MP3. Thus, the only portable player you can use them with is an iPod, unless you want to go through the hassle of burning them to a CD and ripping them back as MP3s.
We’re talking two different things here – there’s the iTunes Music Store, of which you are correct; it’s all AAC. But there’s also iTunes the media player, which plays and burns AAC and MP3. Boscibo is talking about the player, not the store – he mentions that they’re MP3s from CDs he ripped himself.
The thing I don’t like about subscription listening (i.e. streaming) is that you don’t own the music. If you subscribe for 5 years at $10/month you have paid $600 for music that you don’t own. And if you cancel your subscription you can no longer listen to that music. Instead, $600 on itunes is 60 albums or 600 songs that you can keep forever.
There are certainly major advantages to owning, but there’s a level of song that’s worth a few listens but not worth owning. Rhapsody lets you scratch your itch to hear, say, Ghostbusters, but not have to pay .79 for it.
The unlimited streaming listens is also a great way to find new music. I head over to artists I’ve heard good things about and listen to some of their “most popular” selections.
Oh and one more point, your Rhapsody library of songs and playlists follows you from system to system, since it’s stored online.
Well I never, so you can. That must be a fairly recent development, since the last time I tried the music store it just said “not available in your country” and that was that.
I’m a she.
I did get my files transferred from my iTunes playlist, it was so simple I could smack myself. Plug the MP3 player in, open the folder with the player’s files on it. Clear the old ones, then open iTunes, find the playlist I want to transfer, then drag them from the list into the MP3 players folder.
Sorry. 
Glad you figured out your problem, though!
I know there is an update for Itunes for window that will help you if you are having problems burning cd
you can find it here http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
I’m unhappy because all the CDs copied into my Windows Media Player are in .wma format, so I have to either recopy my music into iTunes or make do with having two players. But I don’t know if I should be mad at Windows or iTunes about that.
Other than that annoyance, it’s great. I can find songs that I have no idea what album they’re on, I can sample music, I can make nice playlists. Now I just have to ask for an iPod for Christmas :).
Well, I downloaded iTunes, so now I can offer some real thoughts.
The interface is bizarre. They really should have put some effort into making it work like a real Windows app.
1a. There’s no maximize button. Where maximize should be, there’s a button that looks like maximize/restore, but actually shrinks the window.
1b. The Create Smart Playlist button is cunningly hidden under the Create Regular Playlist button. By holding the Shift key and chanting “Narokath Redgormor Ulyaoth”, you can cast a Reveal Invisible spell, exposing the Create Smart Playlist button. What a clever puzzle… for a game like Eternal Darkness. Not so appropriate for a music program. I was expecting a flyout or context menu item, like the ones in every other Windows app.
The music store previews are awfully short. The first 30 seconds of an electronica song really doesn’t tell you anything about what the song will sound like. I paid a buck for “Such Great Heights” by The Postal Service because I’ve heard the whole song on the radio, but I didn’t get any of their other tracks because the previews aren’t enlightening. Apple has the entire song on their server; they should stream the whole song as the preview, so you can listen before you buy, just like a real store.
iTunes really doesn’t seem well-behaved when it comes to CDs.
3a. When I insert a CD to import the tracks, iTunes locks up for close to a minute while it tries to read the disc.
3b. After it imports each track, it locks up for another ~10 seconds.
3c. iTunes won’t overwrite a CD-RW that isn’t blank, but it won’t erase the CD-RW either! I have to switch to another program to erase it.
3d. I wasn’t able to burn anything to a 4x CD-RW - I guess that may have been my drive’s fault. I was able to burn tracks to a 10x CD-RW after erasing it with another program.
The library could be integrated better with the music store. When I’m browsing the store, I can easily jump from a song by an artist, to the artist’s page, and then to related artists, etc. Once I download a song (or import it from a CD), those options are gone.
The status display is too simple. If I’m importing a CD and listening to a song at the same time, the progress bar for importing hides the name and seek bar of the song that’s playing.
The protected AAC format still sucks donkey balls, and the program taunts me with it at every turn. On the burning preferences page, you can select Audio CD, MP3 CD, or Data CD. “Great!” I thought, “An MP3 CD is exactly what I want.” But of course I can’t burn any of the songs I paid for if I select that option.
6a. I can’t get over how goddamn pointless and irritating the DRM really is. Even after paying for the song, it’s still far more convenient to download it from Kazaa than to jump through Apple’s hoops to get it into a useful format. The people who want to go out of their way to share music illegally can still do it (30 minutes and a CD-RW is nothing to someone who spends his time cracking CD copy protection). Meanwhile, the folks like me, who just want music in a standard portable format, get shit on.
Despite those problems, Apple still got a few bucks out of me, and there are a few more songs I might download from them. Sublime might even be able to super-size their next value meal, thanks to me. But I just don’t have the patience to go through this tedious burn/rip/encode process every time I get a song. When the M4P format is cracked, I’ll be first in line to download the decrypter, and then maybe Apple will get some more of my money.
Or you can just select “Create Smart Playlist” from the File menu. Personally I’m more annoyed that some functions don’t seem to have menu equivalents. I looked all over the menu for the iPod transfer settings and finally, upon reading the help, found that it’s a button on the lower right corner.
But overall, I’m happy with the software. It’s a very clean and efficient interface. I haven’t used the Apple Store or the CD-R burning functions, since I only use iTunes to manage the contents of my iPod.
Actually, it’s the Windows apps that have the bizarre interfaces. 
But then you’ll have less incentive to buy, since you can just go to the store and stream the song when you get that Britney itch.
Could be something else on your PC that’s borked? I haven’t heard of these problems.
No they’re not – in the Library, click the “Browse” eye in the upper-right corner of the window. You can then click on an album, artist, or genre and see everything for your choice.
You can click the triangle to toggle between the displays.
That’s the price needed to get the labels on board the train. Shrug You can always burn an audio CD-RW, then re-rip the tracks to MP3s.
You realize that Apple would prefer to sell you an iPod, which would solve this problem for you, right?
Bah, you must have used a strategy guide. I solved the puzzle myself.
When in Rome…
That doesn’t seem to stop real music stores from offering listening stations. They could put some kind of limit on it; maybe you could only preview a song once a day, or only five times total. I’d have more incentive to buy, because I don’t want to buy something without knowing what it is… and if I do it anyway, and it turns out the preview was the only good 30 seconds in the song, then I’m going to think twice before buying another one.
That’s not what I meant - that only shows the songs in my library. I want to be able to click on a Jamiroquai track I own and jump to the music store’s Jamiroquai bio, or see other Jamiroquai albums I could download.
Ah yes, the triangle. The international symbol for toggling.
Is that what it does? It looks like a “play” icon.
Sure, I could do that, every time I buy a song. But I value my time more than that, and I don’t see the point of wearing out my CDs and my laser just to make some lawyer happy.
Again, circumventing the DRM is easy enough that a pirate won’t mind doing it, but tedious enough that an average customer will. It doesn’t benefit anyone. The only way this “rip your own MP3s” policy could possibly help the labels is if frustrated iTunes customers go back to buying CDs instead.
Really? After all the ads on the iTunes site, the ads during the installation process, and the ads on the music store itself, I kinda got the impression that they wanted me to buy some kind of product. It’s called an eye-pod, you say? What does it do? Does it have a touch-sensitive control ring and the ability to be easily managed from iTunes?
Seriously though… I’m never going to buy an iPod. First, because I already have all the digital music players I need (though my car MP3 player is on its last legs). Second, because I’d need to cart around cables and adapters to plug it into my car and home stereo, or I’d need some FM transmitter that would make the 128kbps AAC sound worse than a 128kbps MP3.
And finally, because Apple seems to think if they screw their customers hard enough with this DRM, they’ll give in and buy Apple’s M4P player. Well, to hell with that–that’s not how I make buying decisions. If Apple wants me to give up my Rio Volt, my DVD player, my car MP3 player, my Zire 71, and anything else I have lying around that’ll play MP3s, then Apple can either pay me the $800 I spent on them, or pry them from my cold, dead hands.
If you’d bought an iPod from the beginning, you wouldn’t have had to buy all those other players.
My home stereo is hooked up to a desktop computer so there’s no trouble there. It’s not the same computer which has all my audio files on it, but thanks to the streaming (sharing) feature of iTunes I can access my entire library. (Before that I just accessed the file through a network file share, but then the playlists don’t get synchronized.) I have a headphone and AC adapter at work so I don’t need to carry any cables. I admit I don’t drive, and that might make the iPod less useful. But I think I’ve seen car adapters that you can leave in your car.
Of course if you’ve already invested in non-Apple players I understand why you don’t want to switch. I just wanted to say that Apple does have a pretty good system, and within those confines the DRM is as non-intrusive as you can reasonably expect.