Can I get iTunes to give me MP3s instead of their AA4 deals?

[4_Legs_Good]

My MP3 player won't play their silly format.

Any tips, or do I have to do conversions in some other way...

Thanks!

david

[LSdemocrat]

1. There's probably a more efficient way, but here is one method

Burn your Apple formatted songs onto an Audio CD.

Then use a CD ripping software (I think iTunes will let you do this) to rip the songs into the MP3 format.

[4_Legs_Good]

2. Yeah, that's what I've done so far.

It seems really stupid. I know they're trying to give thier protection and get us to buy iPods, but with such an easy work-around, it doesn't give much incentive. They might as well just let us download MP3s directly if we choose.

Thanks for the tip!

david

[ikojo]

3. I think that you can go into preferences

in iTunes and change all AAC to mp3.

You CAN download mp3s from other sites into iTunes. I download Grateful Dead and some Phish concerts and convert them from .shn to mp3 all the time. I have many sitting quite nicely on my beloved iPod.

[Loki]

5. Just checked my iTunes prefs

and in the drop down menu on importing there sits the MP3 encoder, click that and I think your problem will be solved.

[gmoney]

6. That has to do with importing from CD, not iTunes music store

Sorry... I think the burn to CD solution is about it. You could maybe burn to a disc image on your hard drive, then import from the disk image, so you don't chew up a blank CD every time.

Then again, it's smart to back up your iTunes Music Store purchases to a physical CD anyway, because if your hard drive craps out and you lose the origina file, you have to pay to redownload.

[Ian David]

4. There's a program called Hymn that you might want to try.

Go to http://hymn-project.org

[B Calm]

7. READ THIS...This a find like no other...

I found this interesting post on another message board:
.................

For those of you who are Winamp users and broadband subscribers, as I am, I listen to Shockwave radio (free high quality streaming music, WITH ID3 Tags). Anyway, I found several stations on thier site that have become my favorites and used it as a reference tool when I was watching the tunes and would write down the song names and go from there. The other day I stumbled upon a program on CNET called Stream Ripper, and man, this thing is OUT OF THIS WORLD. It works as a simple add-on to Winamp, and it rips every song, WITH ID3 Tag, that the internet radio station plays. EVERY SONG! Forget downloading, writing down, searching for songs, etc. Put the station on before bed, press the rip button, and you wake up the next day with several hundred crisp 128-190 bit songs, with ID3 tags, categorized (and even dumps repeats into a junk directory). CHECK THIS OUT. I promise you you will be amazed. (You'd think I was an advertisement or something!). I'll try and post the sites to these below...

(For those of you who are new to Winamp...try it, just stick with the older 2.91 version, 3.0 is buggy and slow)

Winamp

http://download.com.com/3000-2139-10199518.html?tag=lst-0-2

StreamRipper

http://download.com.com/3000-2168-10152668.html?tag=lst-0-5