It Should be Fecking Illegal

[Melton Fox]

Against all my better judgement today I downloaded the software and opened an account with iTunes.

Wankers, I downloaded one song and **** me as I knew would happen, I'm stuck listening to it on the bloody iTunes software.

I use winamp for all my music, I don't want ****ing iTunes. I buy a song legally from a licensed place and what do they do, sell me something that should be illegal. I might as well download illegal copies and have them in the format that I want.

How many records or CDs do you buy that you can only play on one manufacturers player, incidentally, the same one that sold you the CD or record in the first place, none!!!!

Don't get me wrong, the iTunes software looks nice and all that shit, but I have various mp3 players on my pc, in my car and in my house. But this track that I downloaded today has been monopolised by iTunes, it's useless

Bill Gates gets into trouble for monopolising the market, well these ****s should too.

I've now installed a million and one poxy converters to try to get the bloody song back into mp3 format. None of which will do it one single go, I need to install this, and then I need to install that.

Well **** off iTunes, you'll get **** all else from me.

Anybody know any good legal pay as you go download sites that I can download a good ol' fashioned mp3 from.

 

[Jeff]

Re: I Should be Fecking Illegal

Bet you didn't click on my itunes link before buying something. I could have earned 5p from your misery :icon_wink

 

[Jeff]

There are a few places where you can buy unprotected MP3, can't think of them off the top of my head though. I think Napster may be one of them, if you buy something from them I'm sure you can burn it to CD - so you can then rip it as a normal MP3 if it's not already.

 

[Jeff]

Try 7digital.

Their tracks come with a license that allows you to play them on 3 pcs, and they can also be burned to CD. I'm assuming there's nothing to stop you ripping the burned CD to remove any protection that may be on the original file.

 

[Jeff]

Just bought a track from 7digital. Downloaded it in mp3 format, with no copy protection.

Looks like most of the stuff they have isn't available in standard mp3 though, it's WMA or AAC - for windows or ipod, but you should still be able to burn the wma ones to a CD.

 

[Jeff]

I've downloaded a protected wma track from 7digital, burnt it to CD, then ripped it from the CD to make a standard mp3, so that could be your best option for stuff you can't download as an mp3.
I don't thiink all download services will allow you to burn CDs though, Napster does, I think HMV is just a rebadged version of Napster, so they should be OK too.

 

[Melton Fox]

Cheers Jeff, I'll look into them sites.

Thanks for the edit and sorry for not enriching your pocket again

 

[Ox Fox]

have you read the instructions Melton:icon_roll

you can definately import and burn music in iTunes as MP3s

the default is Apples AAC as it produces better quality sound reproduction and has better compression ratios, MP3s suck unless you use the highest bit rates and then you start getting into file size issues especially if you're trying to get a load of stuff onto other media

anyhow not sure it is the same sequence on a PC as a Mac but in iTunes try going to Preferences > Advanced > Importing in there should be a heading saying "Import Using" one of the options is MP3 Encoder under that you have quality settings for the tracks

for burning its Preferences > Advanced > Burning where you'll see three options Aundio CD / MP3 CD / Data CD

 

[glyn]

The whole itunes/Windows etc thing is bloody annoying. It works both ways - I'm an ipod user and can't play the free tracks that you could download after buying the recent Razorlight album.

It can't be good for the industry

 

[drummindefender]

have you read the instructions Melton:icon_roll

you can definately import and burn music in iTunes as MP3s

the default is Apples AAC as it produces better quality sound reproduction and has better compression ratios, MP3s suck unless you use the highest bit rates and then you start getting into file size issues especially if you're trying to get a load of stuff onto other media

anyhow not sure it is the same sequence on a PC as a Mac but in iTunes try going to Preferences > Advanced > Importing in there should be a heading saying "Import Using" one of the options is MP3 Encoder under that you have quality settings for the tracks

for burning its Preferences > Advanced > Burning where you'll see three options Aundio CD / MP3 CD / Data CD

i dont think you can download music from itunes music store in mp3 format though

 

[Ox Fox]

i dont think you can download music from itunes music store in mp3 format though

Sorry for the misleading information - it looks as though they do use protection on music store downloads to stop MP3 conversion:

Playlists with songs purchased from the iTunes Store cannot be burned to an MP3 format CD.

Symptom
When you try to burn a playlist that only has songs purchased from the iTunes Store, this message appears: "None of the items in this playlist can be burned to disc".

When you try to burn a playlist that has a mix of songs purchased from the iTunes Store and encoded from audio CDs, the burn begins, but the songs purchased from the iTunes Store appear dimmed in the playlist, and are not burned to the disc.

Solution
Songs purchased from the iTunes Store are in AAC Protected format. You cannot convert them to other formats, including MP3. You can, however, back them up to a data CD or DVD, or you can burn them to an audio CD.

 

[Durham Fox]

Ive converted itunes songs to WMA and MP3
Try dB PowerAMP

 

[Macky]

I've now installed a million and one poxy converters to try to get the bloody song back into mp3 format. None of which will do it one single go, I need to install this, and then I need to install that.

Audacity is excellent(and free) for all sound file manipulation, you do have to download an extra .dll for it to encode as mp3 but that will only take you a couple of mins.

Anybody know any good legal pay as you go download sites that I can download a good ol' fashioned mp3 from.

I use Emusic, cheap as you like & no DRM. I got 50 free downloads from them when I signed up & pay €9 for 40 mp3's a month

 

[Melton Fox]

I already have audacity, I use that and Razorlame to cut segments from mp3s to use as ringtones. I'll investigate. Cheers M

 

[Macky]

playback the track in iTunes & set audacity to record then output a new file as mp3 instead of actually converting the original file

 

[glyn]

The last version of Audacity I download couldn't handle the more recent itunes AAC format. If someone finds out it does, please tell me!

 

[Macky]

The last version of Audacity I download couldn't handle the more recent itunes AAC format. If someone finds out it does, please tell me!

It doesn't but you could use it to record the output of itunes & export that as an mp3

 

[glyn]

It doesn't but you could use it to record the output of itunes & export that as an mp3

True, but a lot more hassle! Hadn't thought of it before though, so cheers.