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General discussion

iTunes: can it really work?

Mar 9, 2005 4:15AM PST

Hi. I'm new here. I have tried to get help on the iTunes Apple Forum, but just messed up my computer by following some bad advice. I joined iTunes over a year ago, now have 61 songs downloaded, but cannot burn any of the music onto a cd. I have tried calling Dell to find out if I could purchase a "compatible" cd-rw, but they assured me that there is nothing wrong with my cd-rw, that it should burn iTunes songs just fine. Well, it doesn't. I have a Dell Dimension 4100 desktop pc that runs Windows 2000. There is plenty of room on my hard drive. What I really would like to know is if there are folks out there with a comparable system who have successfully burned cd's from their iTunes library. I'm getting ready to give up now and move on to a more friendly music system. This is my last-ditch effort at getting help, since I can't get it from Apple. Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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I am going to take a guess here.
Mar 9, 2005 7:24AM PST

Apple use the aac format and you can't burn it because the burning software doesn't recognize aac. What you need is some converter to convert aac to some format like mp3 or such. I am pretty sure you should be able to burn aac as a data file but I don't know what device/s will play them. Just my 2 cents. I could be ALL wrong here.

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you should be able to burn in itunes...
Mar 9, 2005 7:54AM PST

you should be able to burn in itunes...have you tried burning anything other than an itunes file?

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Why use iTune?
Mar 9, 2005 11:50PM PST

Why pay for something you can get for free?
All the people downloading music off KazaaLite or eMule never have such problems. And they didn't have to pay either. Just get some simple, un-tempered-with mp3 files.

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iTunes vs Kazaa
Mar 10, 2005 11:57AM PST

dagger906, if I thought I had a viable choice in the matter, I might be tempted to use Kazaa. I don't know if KazaaLite is the same. Up until the laws were changed, I did use Kazaa and got a lot of pretty good music that way. The music wasn't always that good of a recording, and you had to take a chance that there wasn't a virus, worm, embedded adware or spyware, or some other filthy McNasty buried in there. Also, a lot of the members labeled their recordings as music or movie, only to find out it was something else entirely (pornography). Now there is the issue of legality, and of course the nagging guilt associated with the artists who are "robbed" of their royalties every time someone downloads an illegal copy of their music. Other than that, it's cool. With my added paranoia of the fear that the Feds will scan my computer and find illegal recordings on it (did you hear the story about the parents who's daughter downloaded an illegal copy of a children's story, and the couple was arrested and had to make restitution, which wasn't cheap?), I'm just hunkey dorey. I deleted all of the non-licensed recordings off of my hard drive. It's just not worth being prosecuted for a song. And if I can get a fairly good recording with a license online and for a fair price, well then, I think that I have done pretty well. I just picked the wrong service. I hope I have answered your question.

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kazaa
Oct 14, 2005 8:07AM PDT

1. Kazaa and kazaalite are the same thing, except that you pay for kazaa lite. why would you do that? Kazaa makes its money through advertisements. it needs to know what to advertise to you however. So it installs spyware on your computer to track the webseites you visit, so it can put up advertisements of the same nature. if you pay for kazaalite, the advertisements and the spyware will not be installed.
2. It is very easy to avoid lawsuits. Agencies prove you downloading illegal music by signing on to kazaa and downloading them from you. This proves that you are downloading and allowing others to download these illegal songs. If you move all your music out or my shared folder immediately upon downloading it, the agencies can never get access to them and thus not sue you.

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If you believe that
Oct 14, 2005 9:27PM PDT

then I have some property in Florida and a bridge in Brooklyn that you may be interested in buying.
If it is on your HD, it can be found.

P

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P.S.
Mar 10, 2005 12:01PM PST

If I totally misunderstood what you meant in your posting, a thousand pardons. The music that I download online cannot be legally downloaded for free, as they are recognized artists. I know that you can get free music for struggling artists who are just trying to get out there and be recognized.

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more on iTunes
Mar 10, 2005 11:38AM PST

justchillin, yes, I have successfully burned music cd's from Windows Media Player and also data cd's. I called Dell who told me that there is no reason that I should not be able to burn off of the iTunes software. A fat lot of good that did me, sitting around on the phone listening to someone lecture me for 20 minutes about why it should be working when I haven't been able to get it to work for over a year. They said to call Apple. Doesn't Apple charge for phones calls from non computer customers, if they even will talk to me at all? I'm still on the "Can't burn" forum at iTunes, but so far no one has been able to help me. I really mucked up my dvd and cd-rw drives last night trying something out suggested by one of the forum members (disabling the "virtual drives". Big mistake. I couldn't use those drives until my husband came home from work and fixed it for me (again!). At least he didn't kill me. I'm guessing that some people really can burn iTunes cd's on their pc's (Windows 2000 or Windows XP), though I haven't heard from anyone who will confirm this.

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iTunes AAC format
Mar 10, 2005 11:44AM PST

Art, I would love to try to convert the files if I could. As for burning as a data file, I can't get any farther than clicking on "burn cd" where I get an error code 4000 (and the cd-rw drawer kicks open). Got any ideas on how I could try to convert the files without getting the iTunes software all in a huff?

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They really can't catch you...
Mar 10, 2005 12:37PM PST

If you feel guilty for getting music for free, then there really isn't any choice. Napster charges a monthly fee for unlimited downloads, but unless you download A LOT of music, it's just not worth the price.

If you're just afraid of getting caught, don't be. It isn't illegal to download, because they can't prove that you don't already own a copy of the file. It could just be obtaining a "back up." Unless you upload complete files to others, there is nothing they can do. All the latest KazaaLite and eMule clients hide your sharelist by default. If they can't get your share list, they can't isolate the files that infringe copyrights. For complete protection, you can disable uploading, or use proxy server.
http://www.kazaalite.pl/eng/CMS/
http://www.emule-project.net/home/

For big files, there is Bittorrent, which makes up about 35% of all traffic on the internet.
http://www.techspot.com/story16241.html
http://dessent.net/btfaq/
http://www.torrentstorm.com/

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I am one that would not go near Apple for anything.
Mar 10, 2005 3:46PM PST

How about the old analog method? Namely you tape the music first then go from there. Like I said before, I am just guessing because I don't have any i_things what so ever.

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tape the music?
Mar 10, 2005 11:12PM PST

How do you tape the music?

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The music got to come out somewhere, right?
Mar 11, 2005 2:05AM PST

I figure you can connect a tape deck there and record the music first. Am I close or all wet, hehe.

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...
Mar 11, 2005 1:19PM PST

You'd need some professional recording hardware for that. It's just not worth the cost and trouble. Besides, you would have to carry around tapes...

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acc
Oct 14, 2005 8:02AM PDT

when you rip music using itunes it is set to acc encoding by default. It you go into preferences from the edit menu, then select the importing tap, it can be set to import as mp3 as opposed to acc.

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I-Tunes
Mar 15, 2005 11:48PM PST

Gee Whiz,
I have never had a problem recording with I-Tunes.
and No, I don't work for Apple.
3 seperate computers of my own and 2 others for customers of mine.
My only complaint is with the proprietary encoding, I feel that if you buy it, you should own it, and it should be a .wav file as good as the CD!

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Try another burning program
Mar 17, 2005 10:59PM PST

I use iTunes on my three computers with no problems and since it worked so good I installed it on both of my granddaughters computers. But I had the same problem as you did with one of my granddaughters computers. ITunes would not burn it kicked out the disk everytime I tried to use it. It seems the computer's software drivers for the DVD/CDRW were not working with iTunes so I bought Nero Suite from the Web for 20.00 and installed it to be my burning software removing the drivers and software that came with the computer. Now while Nero does not do the Apple ACC stuff, it does supplies the driver interface with the CD burner and now iTunes works great with my granddaughter's computer. Maybe this will work with yours too.

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iTunes Burning
Mar 18, 2005 9:09PM PST

All the music that you buy from iTunes goes into a folder of its own, 'Purchased Music', just click on that and it will show your 61 tracks, in the top right hand corner it says 'Burn Disk' click on that (after inserting a blank disk) then un-tick the tracks in your download list that you DONT want to burn and click burn disk. Its that simple. If you want to mix up a new playlist, go to File (top left hand)>New Playlist and drag all the files you want into this playlist , again burn disk will be in the top right. Its pretty foolproof, if it doesn't work uninstall iTunes and install it again (it wont delete your music if you do this).

If you want to move your iTunes music to an MP3 player that isn't an iPod even that is a simple process. Simply burn the purchased tracks as Wavs. Go to Edit> Preferences > tick Audio CD.

Then rip the CD again as MP3s (I use the free MusicMatch). You'll have to rewrite the ID3 tags but its a simple process.

I dont know why people moan about iTunes, its brilliant. I hear a track I like on the radio or the OC I search iTunes and buy it 5 minutes later its the coolest thing ever! OK, so the format is lossy but hey if you dont like it buy the CD, its that simple.

And its also true, nobody has been sued for downloading, its the mass uploaders that are getting nabbed. And as for scumware like Kazaa I wouldn't bother, most of the time you dont even know what your downloading. For $15 you can grab all the files you want from Napster then use this workaround

http://marv.kordix.com/archives/000416.html

Goodbye Kazaa

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Itunes help
Mar 18, 2005 10:00PM PST

I also had the same problem burning music cd's from Itunes. After some searching, I had found that some if not all songs downloaded from Itunes have the DRM (Digital Rights Management) encoded in them preventing you from burning these songs. If you go into the Itunes folder where your music files are stored you may see a small pad lock on the files that are locked. These you cannot burn the typical way you would burn songs that are not locked. To get aroud this I downloaded a program called JHymn, which you can download here. http://www.hymn-project.org/ The program is extremely easy to use and will convert your Itune songs to mp3. I hope this helps solve your problem.

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Burning
Mar 31, 2005 11:36PM PST

All tracks that are purchased from the iTunes music store have DRM encoded on them. This is not unique to the iTunes store, ALL on-line stores use some form of encoding.
Purchased tracks, from the iTunes music store, are in the AAC format, Advanced Audio Codec (MPEG-4). Tracks that you copy from your Audio CD's are converted to AAC when they are imported, unless you change the preference to MP3 or some other format.
Once you have decided what it is that you want to burn, the iTunes program will automatically convert the files from whatever format they are in, AAC/MP4/MP4/etc. to the standard for audio CD's which is AIFF. This is done on the fly by the software. WMP does the same thing.
There is NO restriction, apart from the number of times, on you burning tracks purchased from the music store.
The Dell with the reluctant CD burner is probably a driver issue, as has been pointed out, along with the solution.