ITunes to MP3, possible?

Static M.e.

This is for all the iTunes people.

Is it possible to convert all of your music in ITunes to Mp3 format?

Dont use iTunes myself so Ive no idea, but I think it could be considering that all the music is still on the laptop somewhere, surely its possible to do a simple conversion.

Its for a friend of mine travelling for a year, they had their Ipod stolen and purchased a new mp3 player. They cant get access the Cds because they are at home. Ive considered sending them a DvD with the music but its a bit of a pain as they move around quite a lot.

Appreciate any help on this.

aidan_walsh

iTunes lets you burn music bought from the musci store to either MP3 files on a CD or Red Book compatible audio CD.

schnupi

there is actually many ways of doing that but before it might be helpful if you wouldtell us a little bit more about the music collection, i.e. what audio format are the songs in and are they drm protected? i assume that you bought them off itunes and therefore reckon they are in the acc format and drm protected. in this case you would have to burn them on a disc and re rip them as mp3 with a cd ripper, e.g. Audiograbber or Exact Audio Copy. just a little hint. you dont need to burn them on a proper cd but can rather make a "virtual" cd and then mount this cd with daemontools and then rip it as mp3 again.. sorry if that sounded a bit complicated but i dont know any other way of getting rid of the drm protection which needs to be removed before a file is converted. this method can take a very long time though if ur music collection is very big..

well i just hope they are not drm protected. in that case it is much easier to convert to another format, i.e. mp3 .. for format conversion dBpowerAMP but there is so many other freeware programs which do the same job.

here is a few links:

From (virtual) CD to mp3 rippers:

Audiograbber - http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/ (LAME mp3 encoder needs to be installed manually)

Exact Audio Copy - http://www.exactaudiocopy.org/ (never used this program but is supposed to be very good for ripping music)

Virtual CD mounting software:

Daemon Tools - http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/download.php?mode=ViewCategory&catid=5

Audio format converter:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/ (this is shareware though)

.. well and google will be always ur friend when u r lookin for music format converters

p.s. sorry if that was a bit complicated now but a little more information wouldnt ve harmed

€: just to note that i dont use itunes because i think that there is so much better software out there and that there could be easier ways with which i would not be familar as u would need to ve itunes

Static M.e.

Nice one, thats some great information.

Have to go through it all yet. One thing though how can you check if the music is DRM protected? and or what format it is?

Thanks again

TommyGun

Static,
The easiest way to do this is too use the the converter that comes with Itunes - problem solved.

Static M.e.

TommyGun,

That does sound easy, could you tell me more please. (Not meaning to be a lazy P****)

I have DLed a copy of itunes to test this out on, but I cant get access to a comp to test till Sunday. In work atm cant install.

Is it under options or some such or is it a seperate piece of Software.

Thanks again for your help.

TommyGun

I'm away from my home PC, but there is a converter in the iTunes program. I will check how to access it when I get home. You can check the program yourself as well, I remember that it was not hard to do.

Idleater

Static M.e. wrote:

Is it under options or some such or is it a seperate piece of Software.

Essentially, when you install ITunes and run it, it points to the default My Music folder (docs and sett\my music\ itunes music library).

either point this (under edit | preferences | importing) to your current My Music folder (if different).

Next, under these preferences, choose MP3 as your file format (I think it is AAC by default) and probably uncheck the option that says that you want to copy files to the itunes music folder (unless this is what you want to do - you may end up with 2 sets of music files)

Then you have to "add files to the current library" (not import) and it will convert any wmv files to mp3. Like TommyGun said, it will probably leave the ITMS DRM'd files alone and it won't convert DRM'd wma's.

It really is easy.

If on the other hand, you just want to send them a copy of their music folder, you could just burn that straight no?

L.

art

schnupi wrote:

there is actually many ways of doing that but before it might be helpful if you wouldtell us a little bit more about the music collection, i.e. what audio format are the songs in and are they drm protected? i assume that you bought them off itunes and therefore reckon they are in the acc format and drm protected. in this case you would have to burn them on a disc and re rip them as mp3 with a cd ripper, e.g. Audiograbber or Exact Audio Copy.

Just to add to that, if the songs were downloaded with iTunes 4 (ie some time ago and not using the present version, iTunes 6), then it is possible to do just a simple conversion of the songs into mp3 format by using the JHymn software (perfectly legal download btw!). Given the story of the OP, it is possible that this will be case but I can't remember exactly when iTunes has been upgraded to stop JHymn working with the newer downloads - it might be more than a year ago...

JHymn info: http://www.hymn-project.org/jhymndoc/

edit: Itunes must be installed, I just remembered, to use JHymn as it fetches the licence key through iTunes, translates the protected songs into wavs, and then into MP3s. But perhaps you can have a modern iTunes running for this purpose, just the songs must have been "protected" via the older version of iTunes?

Anti

i couldnt be bothered to read all of the above, so what i use to convest aac, ogg ect ect to mp3 is a nice little program called dbpoweramp, it will also burn cds for you too. and change from mp3 to any format and vice versa

Static M.e.

I just want to say thanks for all of the helpfull posts.

Ive sent him off all the infomation so hopefully all will be sorted

If he cant get it working, im going to fedax some DvDs over, but I dont think Ill need too!!

Thanks again.