I’ve had iTunes populating my iPod Mini for about two years but have recently considered moving to the Napster subscription model. Napster doesn’t support iPods officially, but it seems to me that there must be a software solution that would let the Napster software recognize my iPod so I could transfer music to it as though it were an iRiver/Zen Mircro/whatever.
I really like the form factor of my iPod but prefer the subscription model of Napster, especially because with iTunes I feel like I’m building a house of cards that one day will come crashing down. (Despite the fact that I have multiple rotating backups.)
Napster uses WMA (Windows Media Audio) files. The iPod cannot play these natively. Converting between the formats is possible, but you will lose even more quality than you did from the original compression.
There may be other ways to do it, but a simple solution is to burn a CD of the songs you want from Napster, and then import it into iTunes. If you choose a high-bitrate encoding, the quality loss should be minimal.
You could use Apple Lossless if you’re really concerned about it.
Let me clarify – I want to use the iPod within the Napster subscription model, whereby I would have to connect the iPod to my PC every month to verify the subscription. I don’t want to actually own the songs, but rent them, just as I would if I had purchased a Zen Micro, etc. Since the iPod can appear as a hard drive to Windows, shouldn’t I be able to install some software on it that would allow it to work just like one of the Napster-compatible devices?
No. The iPod can not directly play the songs that you get from Napster, they are not in one of the formats that it supports. There is nothing you can do to the iPod to change this.
To those who will take issue with that statement: yes, it may be technically possible. Get real, though.
Just like Apple restricts iTunes songs to iPod players, Microsoft restricts Napster songs to a small set of specially-designed players.
If you’re extremely patient, you can play back the songs you get from Napster on your computer, re-record them with third party software, convert them to MP3, and THEN move them onto your iPod.
Well, you could use the iPod like the hard drive it is, putting those files onto the iPod like you would any other file you didn’t import from iTunes. You could then hook it up through a USB2 or FireWire interface and open the files from a compatible player on a computer, probably WMP. I can’t think of any other way to be able to play the files. But I agree, there is no way you could just listen through the headphones.
For what it’s worth, the subscription services are great. I think you will like it very much.
But be prepared for more frustration than you had with ipod/itunes. You will be dealing with three entities: Microsoft (WMP), Napster (or Rhapsody, or yahoo, or Virgin), and the maker of your MP3 player. If it works, it works great. If it doesn’t, you’ll spend a lot of time trying to fix it.
But when it works, it’s very good.
I’m using a Creative Zen Micro with Yahoo and Rhapsody. It’s nice.
I just got my iPod shuffle (yeah, I know, cheap, but hey, it was free with CC points!) and it had a hard time recognizing all the music files stored on my computer. Said it couldn’t convert them, yadda-yadda. Tried the CD that I had copied them to and the iPod saw and downloaded them just fine. Just about all my music files were .wma.
Wait, are you implying that the OP should just steal the music instead of switching services?
Considering that there is quite a bit of discussion on the net as to whether artists get a fair shake from even iTunes, stealing the music outright is just piling on.
We do not advocate downloading and/or using any illegal file-sharing (P2P) programs here. Even posting the name of a program along with a link, as you did, is not allowed here.
Others, please keep the discussion on-topic. Any other discussion of P2P filesharing will cause this thread to be locked immediately.