Ok my wife and I thought, along with our new workout regime, we would like to have some tunes whilst we workout. So we got the iPod… Ok, now what? Do we just log into iTunes and have at it at 99cents a pop for a song? Is there some other place to down load this stuff? Can I take CD’s I already own, and download them onto this thing? Help! How does it work? We’ve got more space than we will know what do do with, there is no way we’ll fill up even a fraction of the songs we are alble to, so I think this may take a while to get used to. I’m used to changing the station or CD to get the music I want, I’m not used to having to download it.
What sites should I use? Is iTunes the only one? HELP!
You can use music from almost any source on your iPod (not sure about Windows Media files). You need to import them into iTunes (the downloadable version, available from Apple.com, or on the disk that came with your iPod - the most recent version is probably the Apple site version) first, then hook up the iPod and the music should transfer over.
The clue is iTunes. iTunes runs everything. Explore the “Preferences…” in iTunes, in the “Edit” menu, as this determines how everything works. I recommend you tell the Preferences screen to import as MP3 (lower sound quality, but more versatile - this is under “Importing” in the “Advanced” tab) and have the iPod sync manually.
Regarding CDs, the order is this: run iTunes. Put the CD into the machine. It will appear in iTunes. Drag the tracks from the CD screen onto the “Library” icon on the left-hand menu. This will import (aka “rip”) the tracks to your computer. Then plug your iPod into the computer. The iPod will also appear in your iTunes menu. Drag the tracks onto the iPod icon on the left hand menu, and iTunes will transfer the music to the iPod.
It’s a conceptual leap you have to make, but once you’ve made it, it’s pretty easy to use.
Ipods are great, much better than the stupid Creative Zen MP 3 player I bought last year, blech.
Apple’s site should answer most of your questions, the Ipod is pretty user friendly and of course you can transfer your CD’s on to them.
One big tip-- Once you use a version of I tunes I strongly recommend NOT upgrading to another version, ever. Several people I know did and lost all their music for some weird reason. It’s also a common complaint on the Apple message boards. Stick with the I tunes version you start out with, I did and have no problems, you still get current music.
You have to use the application called Itunes. It takes care of putting the music on your Ipod and all that. You can buy music online from the Itunes Store, but you don’t have to. You can put an audio CD in the computer and Itunes will convert (“import”) it into AAC files you can listen to on the computer or the Ipod. You can also burn msuic you buy from the store onto a standard audio CDR.
There are also Podcasts you can get from the Podcast directory which is connected to the store. I think they’re all free, at least the ones I have are. They’re episodic downloads that you can subscribe to and also have automatically deleted if you want. A lot of radio shows are available as Podcasts now, but there are also stand-alone Podcast shows. There’s music, talk, and also some Podcast novels and things. There’s a “radio” thing that Itunes has that gives you streaming music from a number of sources but I don’t know if any of that can be put on the Ipod.
You can also take any audio files in mp3, AAC or wav and put those in your Itunes library and on your Ipod if you want. (Itunes can play midi files as well but I can’t seem to get them on my Ipod, you’d have to convert them) I guess they might have to be free of DRM.
The iPod is the most popular choice, but it’s not the only audio player out there and it might not be the one that best suits your needs. If you don’t have an extensive collection of music (or plan to acquire one), you don’t need all the space of an iPod and you might not want to spend all that time transferring music over anyway.
You might wanna consider portable satellite radio devices like the Pionner Inno. That lets you listen to XM radio wherever you are (but you might have to be outdoors or close to it) and you can still put some of your own songs on there. You can also record songs that you hear on XM and store them for later.
As others have said, you can definitely “rip” (copy) your CDs over to your iPod. iTunes lets you do that relatively easily.
As for download services, iTunes is the easiest to use with an iPod, but it’s also the most expensive at 99 cents a song.
If you like independent (non-mainstream) music, emusic.com offers iPod-compatible songs at very reasonable prices (and a 100-song free trial).
If you want to deal with a quasi-legal, often-controversial, very shady Russian organization, [link broken by Moderator] gets you mainstream American songs for mere pennies each (CDs cost no more than a dollar or two, often).
If you don’t care about copyrights and legality issues and don’t mind the risk of RIAA lawsuits, you can download free music from other people around the world using what are called “file-sharing” programs.
One point, just to clarify all the above: MP3s you get from other places, and whatever you rip from a CD, are very different to what you buy from the iTunes Store - again, this is an icon in the left-hand menu of iTunes. It’s really easy to buy stuff from this. Too easy in fact. Just search for the music, click “buy this”, set up an account if you haven’t already, and down it comes to your computer. Then you just drag the track onto the iPod.
Putting it simply, iTunes purchased music is (at present, mostly) limited to play on iPods. It is in AAC format, which is proprietary to Apple and its products. These music files also have DRM (document rights management) on them. This means they will work fine on your computer and your iPod, but is non-transferrable to others without a LOT of fiddling around.
Yes. That’s why I recommend using the Preferences screen to set manual intervention. I’ve seen several people lose everything they had because of that setting; also if the iPod is a Nano with 2 gigs and your music collection is 10 gigs, you can end up with exactly the wrong tracks imported.
Good point about the internet connection though: if you miss that window of opportunity, I’m not sure there is a way to get retroactive Gracenote track listing on a playlist.
Everyone else has covered everything I could think of to add…
EXCEPT
Every week, iTunes has several free songs available. You go to the Music Store within iTunes - and scroll allllll the way down to the bottom. Look for “Free on iTunes”. There are usually 2 or 3 songs there - you may have to click on “see all” plus some videos etc. This is in addition to the “Free Single Of The Week” which you see much higher up on the iTunes music store page (well, that same single is one of the 2-3 listed at the bottom).
I’ve gotten some music that way that I really loved, some that I despised badly enough that I instantly deleted (some fairly nasty-sounding rap that included rather a lot of profanity!) and some that was sort of “meh”. Still, it’s free and fun to try new stuff.
Typically they post the new freebies on Tuesday.
Oh - and audiobooks. There are some available from iTunes, and you can also get them via Audible.com. I don’t typically buy audiobooks though. You could perhaps “rip” those borrowed recorded books to iTunes, listen, then delete them, but I’m not sure of the legality of doing so even if you know honest-to-gosh-cross-my-heart to delete them once you return the physical CDs to the library. Some libraries have electronic versions of audiobooks available for download (I think they expire after a couple weeks) but unfortunately, the ones my library system offers won’t work on iPods.
A hundred?! I only got 25 on the free trial last November. I had to pay for the $20/mo package to get 90 songs per month. (Good deal though; there’s a surprising amount of pretty good stuff there. Although it’s chiefly independents, there are numerous mainstream artists on indie label releases there, too.) Good service, though. Fast downloads, no DRM, high quality rips. (There are some 128k-only releases, but they aren’t very common.) I can definitely recommend them. Search first though, to see what they offer, 'cos it’s not for everyone, especially if you’re heavily into the mainstream stuff.
Also remember: Anything you buy on ITMS (the iTunes store) is locked to your iPod. No one else can play those songs, and they can’t play on any other player, as they are protected AAC files. You can strip them of their DRM either with a DRM-stripping program that does Apple’s FairPlay protection, or by burning them to an audio CD from within iTunes (audio CDs have no support for DRM) and then re-ripping them as DRM-free MP3s.
I think everyone here is making this out to be way more complicated than it has to be. To put music on the iPod, you can buy it from the music store within iTunes, or you can stick a music CD in your computer and click the ‘Import’ button in iTunes. By default, when you plug an iPod in, all your music (both purchased and imported from CD’s) will be copied onto it - along with any TV shows, audiobooks, or whatever you’re purchased/downloaded/imported.
There’s no need to mess with all the possible variations and modifications of this if you’re just starting.
I have never heard of anyone losing their music because they set up iTunes to copy everything to the iPod automatically. What exactly are you talking about when you say ‘because of that setting’?
AAC is not proprietary to Apple. It is an open standard - even the Microsoft Zune supports it. There is no reason to use the inferior MP3 standard to import your own music from CDs.
The DRM on purchased songs may be an annoyance if you want to play them on non-Apple players - but in May, Apple will begin selling EMI’s entire catalog DRM-free on iTunes, with other labels to hopefully follow suit.
If you make sure that you have a backup of your music (what would you do if your hard drive crashed?), this will never be a problem. And it’s a fairly rare occurrence, anyway - certainly not prevalent enough to warrant never upgrading.
This is moderately incorrect - you can play purchased songs on up to five computers, and on an unlimited number of iPods (as long as you own them). And as I said, this will change soon.
You’re right, I haven’t been totally clear, and have slightly misrepresented the situation. Two scenarios: 1. I’ve spent a lot of time collecting music from other sources onto my iPod. I plug into my sync-only iTunes, and it syncs the whole of the iTunes library back onto my iPod. New stuff I’ve acquired is lost. 2. I plug the iPod into someone else’s computer that has iTunes set to auto-sync. All my tunes are gone. I’ve seen both of these things happen.
Ah, okay. But this is only a problem if you use your iPod in a screwy way. The way you’re supposed to do it is to store all your music on your computer, in your iTunes library, and simply use your iPod as a music player. Then, no matter what happens to the iPod, you can reload all your stuff just by plugging it back in.
It’s not like you can only store Apple-purchased songs in iTunes - anything that plays on the iPod is supported. Why can’t you just keep this music from ‘other sources’ in your iTunes library? How are you getting it onto the iPod in the first place?
It’s not a great idea to use your iPod to store music, since they’re not designed to be reliable storage devices.
Well, yes – I was speaking more about using it on other MP3 players. It’s fine on your iPod, or whatever iPod devices you own, but you can’t load 'em on a Zed, Sansa or Zune, for example, without stripping the DRM.
Only artists on the EMI label, though. Sony BMG, Universal and Warner are still going to stick to DRM. Not that EMI’s elimination of DRM is a bad or insignificant thing, but EMI is still the smallest of the Big Four, so there’s a good while to go yet before the whole DRM thing falls apart (if it does at all).
It could be a lot worse. Apple is one of the few companies that seems to realize that they make more money by keeping things easy for you. Microsoft’s Zune, for example, doesn’t work with some songs you bought off of separate Microsoft services, doesn’t work in Windows Media Player, and you can’t just buy a song, you pre-load a virtual wallet with song credits and then use your credits to get songs.
So you made a good choice if you’re not too technologically inclined. Install iTunes, set up an iTunes account, and start browsing. Here is the Apple Support Page for all things iTunes or iPod. Apple’s support page is very good at explaining concisely exactly what you need to know.
If you have a lot of CDs, I recommend going into the Preferences menu, selecting “Advanced” and clicking the “Importing” tab, and setting “Import CD and Eject”. Once you’ve done that, all you have to do to put a CD on your computer is to put it in the CD drive, wait for it to be added, and it’ll pop out on its own when it’s done.
Also, it’s sort of an intensive process, so if you could keep as many separate programs closed while you do it, the faster the process will be.
Some posters have recommended importing files from your CDs in the MP3 format, and while it’s true that they are guaranteed to play on anything under the sun, keep in mind that the default AAC file format is gaining popularity, and plays higher file quality with less space (that means more songs to cram on that iPod), and the format even plays on some competing players, Zune included.
iTunes is actually a program you download from Apple (or load from the disk that came with your iPod) onto your computer. It isn’t a site you register at. i don’t find it complicated at all, but it sounds like lots of people here are making it seem that way.
I’ve upgraded with every new version of iTunes to come through, and I’ve never lost any of my music. I use music from all different sources (stored on my computer, not just on the iPod), rarely do I buy any through iTunes though (for various reasons, one being the difficulty doing anything else with it b/c of DRM).
No so much an answer on where to get songs, but since you did mention working out with your iPod have a try at Podfitness.com. They basically take the music in your iPod and, based on selections that you make create a customized workout for you with your music and the trainer’s voice. I found the workouts they put together for me just awesome.
If you try this link you get a 30 day free trial, which is what I used. You can download an unlimited number of workouts from them during those 30 days so you could have months and months worth of workouts for free.
Just search for the music, click “buy this”, set up an account if you haven’t already, and down it comes to your computer. Then you just drag the track onto the iPod.