iLife '05: The Missing Manual

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As the MP3 music craze of the late 1990s swept across the globe, software programs for playing the new music files on the computer began to pop up around the Internet. If you're old enough, you may even remember using Mac programs like SoundApp, SoundJam MP, and MacAmp.

When iTunes debuted in January 2001, Apple reported that 275,000 people downloaded it in the first week. The iTunes software proved to be a versatile, robust all-around music management program made exclusively for Macintosh. And it was free.

Even in that first version of iTunes, you could import songs from a CD and convert them into MP3 files; play MP3s, audio CDs, and streaming Internet radio; create custom playlists; burn audio CDs without having to spring for extra CD burning software; zone out to groovy animated laser-light displays in the iTunes window while songs played; and transfer music to a few pre-iPod, Mac-friendly portable MP3 players.

Today, iTunes is much more. In fact, it's the hub of the digital hub; it's the only iLife program that communicates directly with all four of the other iLife programs. Among many other feats, it lets you download perfectly legal music files from well-known artists using the Music Store feature and zip them over to your iPod in no time, all from within iTunes and without buying a single CD.

The version that came with your copy of iLife '05 is probably outdated at this point; Apple releases another version of iTunes every few months. But unlike the other iLife programs, iTunes is free. Each time Apple unleashes a new version, you'll be notified by Mac OS X's Software Update feature, which pops up on the screen and offers to update your copy via the Internet. Accept its invitation without fail.

This chapter is all about filling your copy of iTunes with music. Chapter 2 is all about playing that music (but here's the gist of it: Double-click a song to hear it).

Before you go about stocking up on tunes, though, it's worth taking a moment to get your bearings. The round-ended display at the center top of the iTunes window—the status area—tells you what song is playing, who's playing it, which album it came from, and how much playing time remains. To the left are volume and song navigation controls; to the right is a search box for hunting down or looking up specific singers or songs. Figure 1-1 presents a guided tour of the controls and functions on the iTunes screen.

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This chapter is all about filling your copy of iTunes with music. Chapter 2 is all about playing that music (but here's the gist of it: Double-click a song to hear it).

Before you go about stocking up on tunes, though, it's worth taking a moment to get your bearings. The round-ended display at the center top of the iTunes window—the status area—tells you what song is playing, who's playing it, which album it came from, and how much playing time remains. To the left are volume and song navigation controls; to the right is a search box for hunting down or looking up specific singers or songs. Figure 1-1 presents a guided tour of the controls and functions on the iTunes screen.

Figure 1-1: The iTunes window shows all of your playlists, the various places to find music in the Source list, and all of the songs in the chosen source. Here, for example, you can see the entire contents of the iTunes library.
The circled gray arrows take you online to the iTunes Music Store. Or Option-click these little arrows to jump into iTunes's Browser for the song or album you clicked.

The Source panel at the left of the iTunes window displays all of the audio sources you can tap into at the moment. If you have a CD in the computer's drive, for example, it shows up in the Source list, as does your iPod when it's connected.

Clicking a name in the Source column makes the main song-list area change accordingly, like this:

Click the icon of a CD you've inserted; the disc's track list appears.
Click a playlist (Section 3.8); the contents of that music mix appear in the window.
Click the Radio icon for a list of Internet radio stations, or the Party Shuffle icon to—well, see Section 2.2.
Click the Podcasts icon to see the list of those home-brewed and professional programs you can download and listen to within iTunes or on your iPod.

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Ripping a CD means "converting its recordings into digital files on the computer." (Too bad recording industry executives didn't know that when they accused Apple's "Rip, Mix, Burn" ad campaign of promoting piracy. They evidently—and incorrectly—thought that "rip" meant "rip off.")

With the proper iTunes settings, ripping a CD track and preparing it for use with the iPod is fantastically easy. Here's how to go about it.

Before you get rolling with ripping, decide which format you want to use for your music files: MP3, AAC, AIFF, WAV, or Apple Lossless (Figure 1-4). This may be more choice than you really wanted, but learning the pros and cons of each format is worth the effort, especially if you're about to commit a huge stack of CDs to digital format. You don't want to have to convert them all a second time.

Figure 1-4: To choose the CD-ripping and file-converting format you prefer, choose iTunes → Preferences, click the Importing tab, and choose the format you want.
"Create files names with track number" arranges the songs you import in the same order in iTunes as they were on the CD—even if you don't choose to rip every song on the album.
The Apple Lossless option works only on dock-connecting 2003 iPods and later, including the iPod Mini. Owners of the pre-dock iPods that came out in 2001 and 2002 are out of luck.

Section 1.2.1.1: MP3

Suppose you copy a song from a Sheryl Crow CD directly onto your computer, where it takes up 47.3 MB of hard disk space. Sure, you could now play that song without the CD in your CD drive, but you'd also be out 47.3 megs of precious hard drive real estate.

Now say you put that Sheryl Crow CD in your computer and use your favorite encoding program to convert that song to an MP3 file. The resulting MP3 file still sounds really good, but only takes up about 4.8 MB of space on your hard drive—about 10 percent of the original. Better yet, you can burn a lot of MP3 files onto a blank CD of your own—up to 11 hours of music on one disc, which is enough to get you from Philadelphia to Columbus on Interstate 70 with tunes to spare.

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Not all sound files come directly from the compact discs in your personal collection. As long as a file is in a format that iTunes can comprehend (MP3, AAC, AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless, or Audible), you can add it to the iTunes music library by any of several methods.

Figure 1-10: Select the file you'd like to add to your expanding iTunes library with the File → Add File to Library command. In iTunes 4.8 and later, you can even import video files in the .mov or .mp4 formats and watch them right within your album artwork window. If you find the Fig Newtonsized screen too small, you can also watch videos in a separate window or in glorious full-screen view by clicking the full-screen icon at the bottom of the iTunes window (Section 4.6.1).

Where exactly does iTunes store its music library on my computer's hard drive? Can I move the music library if my hard drive starts to get full?

The music library is the program's personal database. It stores all of the songs you've imported into the program, as well as all of the playlists you created from those songs. This database file sits in your Home → Music → iTunes Music folder.

If you rudely drag the iTunes Music folder to a different place without telling iTunes, it will think the songs are gone. The next time you start the program, you'll find it empty. (While iTunes remains empty but calm, you may have heart palpitations as you picture your music collection vanishing in a puff of bytes.)

To move the iTunes Music folder to a new drive, just let the program know where you're putting it. Move the folder to the desired location, then choose iTunes → Preferences and click the Advanced icon or tab. In the area labeled iTunes Music Folder Location, click the Change button, and navigate to the place where you moved the iTunes Music folder. Finally, click OK.

Exhale.

The AAC format includes a copy-protection feature that MP3 doesn't have. Songs you buy from the iTunes Music Store and music encoded from your own CDs with iTunes work, but you may have trouble playing or moving other copy-protected AAC files (like those bought from, for example, LiquidAudio.com).

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The first chapter of this section is all about getting music into iTunes, whether from a CD or by dragging audio files onto your hard drive. Now comes the payoff: the chance to hear and even see your songs playing, to burn them onto a CD, or to share them with friends and family over a network.

To turn your computer into a jukebox, click the triangular Play button in the upper-left corner of the iTunes window, or press the Space bar. The computer immediately begins to play the songs whose names have checkmarks in the main list. (You can also double-click a song's name to make it start playing.)

The central display at the top of the window shows not only the name of the song and album, but also where you are in the song, as represented by the diamond in the horizontal strip. Drag this diamond, or click elsewhere in the strip, to jump around in the song.

Or just click the tiny triangle at the left side of this display to see a pulsing VU meter, indicating the current music's sound levels at various frequencies.

You can also control CD playback from the Mac's Dock. Just Control-click or right-click the iTunes icon (or click and hold on it) to produce a pop-up menu offering playback commands like Pause, Next Song, and Previous Song, along with a display that identifies the song currently being played.

As music plays, you can control and manipulate the music and the visuals of your Mac in all kinds of interesting ways. As a result, some people don't move from their machines for months at a time.

Visuals is the iTunes term for an onscreen laser-light show that pulses and dances in perfect sync to the music you're listening to. The effect is hypnotic and wild. (For real party fun, invite some people who grew up in the 1960s to your house to watch.)

To summon this psychedelic display, click the flower-power icon in the lower-right corner of the window (see Figure 2-1). The show begins immediately—although it's much more fun if you choose Visualizer → Full Screen so that the movie takes over your whole monitor. True, you won't get a lot of work done, but when it comes to stress relief, visuals are a lot cheaper than a hot tub.

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To turn your computer into a jukebox, click the triangular Play button in the upper-left corner of the iTunes window, or press the Space bar. The computer immediately begins to play the songs whose names have checkmarks in the main list. (You can also double-click a song's name to make it start playing.)

The central display at the top of the window shows not only the name of the song and album, but also where you are in the song, as represented by the diamond in the horizontal strip. Drag this diamond, or click elsewhere in the strip, to jump around in the song.

Or just click the tiny triangle at the left side of this display to see a pulsing VU meter, indicating the current music's sound levels at various frequencies.

You can also control CD playback from the Mac's Dock. Just Control-click or right-click the iTunes icon (or click and hold on it) to produce a pop-up menu offering playback commands like Pause, Next Song, and Previous Song, along with a display that identifies the song currently being played.

As music plays, you can control and manipulate the music and the visuals of your Mac in all kinds of interesting ways. As a result, some people don't move from their machines for months at a time.

Visuals is the iTunes term for an onscreen laser-light show that pulses and dances in perfect sync to the music you're listening to. The effect is hypnotic and wild. (For real party fun, invite some people who grew up in the 1960s to your house to watch.)

To summon this psychedelic display, click the flower-power icon in the lower-right corner of the window (see Figure 2-1). The show begins immediately—although it's much more fun if you choose Visualizer → Full Screen so that the movie takes over your whole monitor. True, you won't get a lot of work done, but when it comes to stress relief, visuals are a lot cheaper than a hot tub.

Figure 2-1: No matter what you're listening to, the animated full-color patterns produced by the iTunes Visualizations feature can make it a more interesting experience. (This feature works really well with the original cast album from "Hair" or anything by Jimi Hendrix.)

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Not satisfied with being a mere virtual jukebox, iTunes also serves as an international, multicultural radio without the shortwave static. You can find everything from mystical Celtic melodies to American pop to programming from Japan, Italy, Germany, and other spots around the globe.

Computers with high-speed Internet connections have a smoother streaming experience, but the vast and eclectic mix of musical offerings is well worth checking out even if you have a dial-up modem. Just click the Radio icon in the Source list to see a list of stations, as shown in Figure 2-3.

The standard iTunes Shuffle feature can be inspiring or embarrassing, depending on which songs the program happens to play. Especially when your guests discover the Milli Vanilli tracks buried in the depths of your collection.

Party Shuffle lets you control which songs iTunes selects when it's shuffling at your next wing-ding. It also shows you what's already been played and what's coming up in the mix, so you'll know what to expect.

To use it, click the Party Shuffle icon on the iTunes Source list. (If you don't see it, visit the Preferences dialog box, click General, and turn on Party Shuffle.) Until you turn it off, iTunes will display a message each time that describes what Party Shuffle does.

Now you see an extra panel at the bottom of the iTunes window, as shown here. Using the pop-up menu, select a music source for the mix—either an existing playlist or your whole Library. If you don't like the song list that iTunes proposes, click the Refresh button at the top of the iTunes window to generate a new list of songs from the same source.

Next, use the pop-up menus in the Display area to specify how many songs you want to see coming up in the mix, and how many recently played ones you want to see. iTunes can show you anywhere from 0 to 100 songs, either coming or going, and it can play tracks more often according to their play counts and ratings.

As in any iTunes playlist, you can manually add songs, delete them from the playlist, or rearrange the playing order. Party Shuffle may grab the same track multiple times, especially if you turn on "Play higher ranked songs more often," so watch for unwanted dupes.

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In addition to bringing an eclectic selection of Internet radio streams to your computer's speakers, iTunes 4.9 and later can round up, play, and organize podcasts for you as well. The podcast name itself is a tad misleading—you don't need an iPod to play them and they aren't broadcast over the airwaves.

Podcasts are just radio-like shows, recorded as an audio file and posted online. Just about anybody with a computer, a microphone, and something to say can whip up and post a podcast on the Internet for everyone else to download and play. And because the podcasts are just regular audio files, you can play them anytime you want to hear them. You can even play them on your iPod.

Podcasts can be about anything, from a weekly show about Scottish music to a daily rant about politics. Professional organizations like National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corporation even post some of their regular shows as podcast downloads. (In fact, some of the grass-roots amateur podcasters are mightily annoyed that podcasting has been "discovered" by the big faceless corporate entities.)

Before Apple included podcast support in iTunes, people had to hunt around the Web for the shows at sites like www.podcastalley.com and www.podcast.net, but iTunes 4.9 changed all that.

To get started casting around for podcasts from the comfort of your on iTunes window, click the purple Podcasts icon in the Source list. As show in Figure 2-4, any podcasts you've signed up for will appear in the list. Since you haven't signed up for any shows, click the Podcasts Directory button down at the bottom of the window to get a quick trip into the podcasts area of the iTunes Music Store.

Figure 2-4: The iTunes Podcast feature lets you search for and subscribe to any of the honebrewed radio shows available for free in the iTunes Music Store. In the Settings box (top), you can choose how often you'd like iTunes to check for new episodes of a particular show for you, and you also tell the progarm how many installments you'd like to keep on your hard drive.

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If want to record a certain playlist on a CD for posterity—or for the Mr. Shower CD player in the bathroom—iTunes gives you the power to burn. In fact, it can burn any of three kinds of discs:

Standard audio CDs. This is the best part. If your computer has a CD burner, it can serve as your own private record label. (Apple has a list of external CD recorders that work with iTunes at www.apple.com/support/itunes.) iTunes can record selected sets of songs, no matter what the original sources, onto a blank CD. When it's all over, you can play the burned CD on any standard CD player, just like the ones from Tower Records—but this time, you hear only the songs you like, in the order you like, with all of the annoying ones eliminated.

Use CD-R discs. CD-RW discs are not only more expensive, but may not work in standard CD players. (Not all players recognize CD-R discs either, but the odds are better.)
MP3 CDs. A standard audio compact disc contains high-quality, enormous song files in the AIFF format. An MP3 compact disc, however, is a data CD that contains music files in the MP3 format.

Because MP3 songs are much smaller than the AIFF files, many more of them fit in the standard 650 or 700 MB of space on a recordable CD. Instead of 74 or 80 minutes of music, a CD-R full of MP3 files can store 10 to 12 hours of tunes.

Just about any computer can play an MP3 CD. But if you want to take the disc on the road or even out to the living room, you'll need a CD player designed to read both standard CDs and discs containing MP3 files. Many modern players can play both CDs and MP3 CDs, and the prices are not much higher than that of a standard CD player. Some DVD players and home-audio sound systems can also play MP3 CDs.

You can't easily convert copy-protected AAC files into MP3 files, so you can't burn an MP3 CD from a playlist that contains purchased music. If you're determined to do that, certain workarounds are available. You could use certain frowned-upon utility programs from the Web. Or you could burn the AAC files onto a CD and then rip

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In versions of iTunes before 4.5, you had to do a lot of gymnastics just to make a nice-looking song list to tuck into the CD jewel case of a freshly burned disc. Not to make you relive any bad memories, or anything, but you had to export the playlist as a text file, import it into a word-processing program, format the type, and then, six hours later….Print. Nowadays, you just choose File → Print, select a formatting option, and click the Print button.

The iTunes Print box is now full of choices:

You can print out a perfectly sized insert for a CD jewel case, complete with song list on one side and a miniature mosaic of all your album artwork on the other, as you can see in Figure 2-6. For a simpler CD insert, there's also a text-only option on a plain background. (If you opt for the CD jewel case, your resulting printout even comes with handy crop marks you can use to guide your X-Acto blade when trimming it down to size.)
If you want something simpler, select Song Listing from the pop-up menu for a plain vanilla list of tracks on the playlist.
The Album Listing option prints out a comprehensive list of all the original albums that you used when cherry-picking the songs for the playlist.

The Theme menu in the Print dialog box offers even more formatting fun, like adding User Ratings to a Song Listing sheet.

Want to use one of your own personal photos for the cover of your CD case? Just add artwork to a track (described on Section 1.2.5.2) and then choose Edit → Print → Theme: Single Cover to place your own picture on the front.

Figure 2-6: With a playlist selected, go to File → Print to call up the iTunes print box. Pick and click the Print format you desire, select a theme (single picture or a mosiac, plain old text, etc.), and click the Print button for hard-copy proof of your CD-mixing prowess.

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If you've taken the trouble to set up a home network so your family can share a printer, an Internet connection, and so on, more treats await. With iTunes 4, you share songs and playlists with up to five networked computers—Macs, PCs, or a mix of both. You could, for example, tap into your roommate's jazz collection without getting up from your desk, and she can sample the zydeco and tejano tunes from your World Beat playlists. The music you decide to share is streamed over the network to the other computer.

In iTunes 4.0, you could even listen to music on Macs elsewhere on the Internet, as long as you knew their IP addresses (network addresses). It didn't take long for people to figure out how to exploit this feature and share music all over the Internet in sneaky ways that Apple had never intended.

In response to hysterical phone calls from the record companies, Apple removed this feature (and the Advanced → Connect to Shared Music command) in version 4.0.1 ad beyond. Now you can connect only to other machines on your own office network.

Machines involved in sharing music must meet a few requirements:

All the computers involved in the sharing—both Macs and Windows boxes—need to be using at least iTunes 4.5.
The computers must be on the same subnet of the network. (If you don't know what that means, read on.)
The Sharing preferences for each computer involved must be set up properly.

The Subnet Mask (that is, the chunk of the network you're on) is identified by four numbers separated by periods, like this: 255.255.255.0. (Nobody ever said networking was user-friendly.)

Figure 2-7: Top: The Sharing Preferences box lets you share as much of your music collection as you would like with other people on the same network. It also allows you to seek out music on other connected computers yourself. To share your music, you must first turn on the sharing feature and indicate what you want to put out there for others to sample.

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The AirPort Express, which resembles a PowerBook AC adapter after a few months of gym workouts, is a handy-dandy 802.11g Wi-Fi base station for a wireless network, just like its big brother, the AirPort Extreme.

"So," you say, "Why do I care about wireless networking in a book about my iLife '05 programs? I just want to learn how to use iTunes."

This is why: AirPort Express was made with iTunes in mind. Thanks to a built-in feature called AirTunes, you can wirelessly stream your iTunes music from your Mac, through the air, and out from your home stereo speakers (which are plugged into the AirPort Express)—all without tripping over a long and pesky cable connecting your Mac upstairs to your home audio system downstairs. All you need are these:

Figure 2-8: Use the pop-up menu in the lower corner of the iTunes window (top) to choose where you want your music to be heard. If you have more than one AirPort Express base station (bottom)—in Apple's dreams!—then you can use this pop-up menu to specify which stereo you want to pump out the music.
When your remote speakers are turned off, by the way, don't forget to choose Computer from this pop-up menu. Otherwise, you'll hear nothing at all from iTunes.

An AirPort Express mobile base station, which Apple will gladly sell you for $130 at www.apple.com/airportexpress. It includes the AirTunes software.
A Mac with an AirPort card and Mac OS X 10.3 or later. (If you have a wireless network in place, you already have one of these. By the way, both Macs and PCs can pump music out to an AirPort Express.)
Version 4.6 or later of iTunes.
A cable that connects your home sound system (or powered speakers) to the Line Out port on the bottom of the AirPort Express. It can be either a digital fiber-optic cable or analog Y-shaped cable (that is, the stereo miniplug-to-dual-RCA connectors common on audio equipment).

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At its heart, iTunes is nothing more than a glorified database. Its job is to search, sort, and display information, quickly and efficiently. Here, for example, are some powerful managerial tasks it stands ready to handle.

If you want to delete a song or songs—like when you outgrow your Britney Spears phase and want to reclaim some hard drive space by dumping those tracks from the Oops…I Did It Again album—click the title in the Albums pane, select the songs you want to delete from the song list, and press Delete.

Selecting songs works just like selecting files in the Finder. For example, you can select a consecutive batch by clicking the first song's name, then Shift-clicking the last. Or you can add individual songs to the selection (or remove them from the selection) by ⌘-clicking their names.

When iTunes asks if you're sure you want to delete the music, click Yes. You'll usually be asked twice about deleting a song, the first time for deleting it from a list, the second time about deleting the music file from your iTunes music library altogether. If you want your hard drive space back, click Yes to both.

You can call up a list of all the songs that have a specific word in their title, album name, or artist attribution, just by typing a few letters into the Search box at the top of the window. With each letter you type, iTunes shortens the list of songs that are visible, confining it to tracks that match what you've typed.

For example, in Figure 3-1, typing train brings up a list of songs by different performers that all have the word "train" somewhere in the song's information—maybe the title of the song, maybe the band name. This sort of thing could be useful for creating themed playlists, like a mix for a Memorial Day barbecue made from songs that all have the word "sun" or "summer" in the title.

Figure 3-1: The Search box in the iTunes window can quickly find all the songs in the library that match the keyword you enter. To erase the Search box so that you see all of your songs again, click the little circled X button at the right side of the box.

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If you want to delete a song or songs—like when you outgrow your Britney Spears phase and want to reclaim some hard drive space by dumping those tracks from the Oops…I Did It Again album—click the title in the Albums pane, select the songs you want to delete from the song list, and press Delete.

Selecting songs works just like selecting files in the Finder. For example, you can select a consecutive batch by clicking the first song's name, then Shift-clicking the last. Or you can add individual songs to the selection (or remove them from the selection) by ⌘-clicking their names.

When iTunes asks if you're sure you want to delete the music, click Yes. You'll usually be asked twice about deleting a song, the first time for deleting it from a list, the second time about deleting the music file from your iTunes music library altogether. If you want your hard drive space back, click Yes to both.

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You can call up a list of all the songs that have a specific word in their title, album name, or artist attribution, just by typing a few letters into the Search box at the top of the window. With each letter you type, iTunes shortens the list of songs that are visible, confining it to tracks that match what you've typed.

For example, in Figure 3-1, typing train brings up a list of songs by different performers that all have the word "train" somewhere in the song's information—maybe the title of the song, maybe the band name. This sort of thing could be useful for creating themed playlists, like a mix for a Memorial Day barbecue made from songs that all have the word "sun" or "summer" in the title.

Figure 3-1: The Search box in the iTunes window can quickly find all the songs in the library that match the keyword you enter. To erase the Search box so that you see all of your songs again, click the little circled X button at the right side of the box.

Figure 3-2: When you click an Artist name in the left column, you get a list of all attributed albums on the right side. To see the songs you've imported from each listed album, click the album name. The songs on it appear in the main list area of the iTunes window, beneath the Browser panes.
If you see duplicate songs and suspect there might be more lurking around your iTunes library, choose Edit → Show Duplicate Songs to round up the doubles and clear up some hard drive space.

The Browse button is the eyeball in the upper-right corner of the window. (It appears only when the Library icon is selected in the source list at the left side of the screen.) It produces a handy, supplementary view of your music database, this time organized like a Finder column view (shown in Figure 3-2).

Can't get back that full list of albums on the right Album pane after you've clicked on a name in the Artist list in the left pane? Go to the top of the Artist list and click All. The complete album list reappears.

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Although there's no way to give a song two thumbs up within iTunes, you can label each song in your collection with a star rating (one to five). Not only can you, too, now feel like a Rolling Stone record critic, but you can also use your personal rating system to spontaneously produce playlists of the hits, nothing but the hits.

To add a rating to a song in the Song list window, first make sure the My Rating field is turned on in the iTunes Options box (⌘-J). Then proceed as shown in Figure 3-4.

Once you've assigned ratings, you can sort your list by star rating (click the My Rating column title), create playlists of only your personal favorites, and so on.

One the newer iPods, you can even rate songs on the go; your ratings will transfer back to iTunes. To rate a song on the iPod, start playing it and tap the Select button twice from the Now Playing screen. Use the scroll wheel to spin across the ghostly gray dots onscreen and transform them into the number of stars you feel the song deserves.

Figure 3-4: Click inside the My Rating column. The position of your click determines how many stars you're giving. You can also add a rating by selecting a song, pressing ⌘-I to open its Get Info box, and then clicking the Options tab.
Ratings are helpful for snagging the best songs in your collection if you're making a Smart Playlist or using Party Shuffle.

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You have a couple different ways to change song titles in iTunes—to fix a typo or other incorrect information, for example.

In the song list, click the text you want to change, wait a moment, then click again to make the renaming rectangle appear. Type to edit the text, exactly as when you change a file name on the desktop.

Another way to change the song's title, artist name, or other information is to click the song in the iTunes window and press ⌘-I to bring up the Get Info box. (Choose File → Get Info if you forget the keyboard shortcut.) Click the Info tab (Figure 3-5) and type in the new track information. This is the way to go if you have several pieces of information to change.

Remember, too, that you can change the information for a whole batch of selected songs at once. See Section 1.3 for details on the Multiple Song Info dialog box.

Once you've got a song's Get Info box up on the screen, you can use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate to the other tracks grouped with it in the iTunes song list window. This way, if you want to rapidly edit all the track information on the same playlist, on the same album, in the same genre, or by the same artist, you don't have to keep closing and opening each song's Get Info box.

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iTunes isn't just a cupboard for music; it's also a food processor. You can convert any song or sound file into almost any other format: MP3 to AIFF, AAC to WAV, MP3 to AAC, and so on.

If you're going from a compressed format like MP3 to a full-bodied, uncompressed format like AIFF, you shouldn't hear much difference in the resulting file. Quality could take a hit, however, if you convert a file from one compressed format to another, like MP3 to AAC. If you're a stickler for sound but still want the space-saving benefit of the AAC format, it's best just to set the iTunes preferences to encode in AAC format and re-rip the song from the original CD.

To get the conversion underway, choose iTunes → Preferences and click the Importing button. From the Import Using pop-up menu, pick the format you want to convert to, then click OK.

Figure 3-5: Lower right: The Get Info box for each is where you can add, correct, and customize information for each song.
Upper left: Click the Summary tab for the lowdown on the song's bit rate, file format, and other fascinating technical details.

Now, in your iTunes library, select the song file you want to convert, and then choose Advanced → Convert Selection to AAC (or MP3 or AIFF or whatever you just picked as your import preference).

If you have a whole folder or disk full of potential converts, hold down the Option key as you choose Advanced → Convert to AAC (or your chosen encoding format). A window pops up, which you can use to navigate to the folder or disk holding the files you want to convert. The only files that don't get converted are protected ones: Audible.com tracks and AAC songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store.

The song or songs in the original format, as well as the freshly converted tracks are now in your library.

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If you want a seamless chunk of music without the typical two-second gap of silence between CD tracks, you can use the Join Tracks feature to stitch together a sonic sampler in one big file. This feature is great for live albums or other CDs that run one song into the next.

To rip multiple songs as one track, pop in the CD you want to use, download the song information, make sure the list is sorted by track number, and then Shift-click to select the tracks you want to join during the ripping process. You can only join tracks that are in sequential order on the CD.

Once you've got the tracks selected, go to Advanced → Join CD Tracks. iTunes displays a bracket around the selected tracks, and indents the names of the tacked-on ones. If you change your mind and want to separate one of the tracks from the group, select it and go to Advanced → Unjoin CD Tracks. (You can Shift-click to peel off multiple tracks from the group, too.)

Click the Import button to rip the selected songs to one big track.

Suppose you're trying to join up some tracks, but iTunes is having none of it—it's dimming the Join Tracks command in the menu. The solution: Make sure that the tracks on the CD are sorted according to ascending Track Number. (If not, click the top of the very first column on the left of the iTunes window. The top of the column should be colored blue and the triangle pointing upward.) Then try Join Tracks again.

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Most of the time, there's musical interest in every juicy moment of the songs that you download, buy, or rip from CDs. Every now and then, though, some self-indulgent musician releases a song with a bunch of onstage chitchat before the music starts. Or maybe you've got a live album with endless jamming at the end, as a song plays out.

Fortunately, you don't have to sit there and listen to the filler each time you play the file. You can adjust the start and stop times of a song, so that you'll hear only the juicy middle part.

As you play the song you want to adjust, observe the iTunes status display window; watch for the point in the timeline where you get bored (Figure 3-6, top). Say, for example, that the last two minutes of that live concert jam is just the musicians riffing around and goofing off. Note where you want the song to end.

Then select the track you want to adjust. Choose File → Get Info to call up the information box for the song, and proceed as shown in Figure 3-6 at bottom.

Figure 3-6: Top: Song too long for your taste?
Bottom: Click the Options tab and take a look at the Stop Time box, which shows the full duration of the song. Change the number to the length of time you want the song to run, as you noted earlier. iTunes automatically turns on the Stop Time box. Click OK to lop off those last boring minute of the song. (You can do the exact same trick at the beginning of a song by adjusting the time value in the Start Time box.)

The shortened version plays in iTunes and on the iPod, but the additional recorded material isn't really lost. If you ever change your mind, you can go back to the song's Options box, turn off the Stop Time box, and return the song to its full length.

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A playlist is a list of songs that you've decided should go together. It can be made up of pretty much any group of songs arranged in any order. For example, if you're having a party, you can make a playlist from the current Top 40 and dance music in your music library. If you're in a 1960s Brit Girl Pop mood, you can make a playlist that alternates the hits of Dusty Springfield, Lulu, and Petula Clark. Some people may question your taste if you, say, alternate tracks from La Bohème with Queen's A Night at the Opera, but hey—it's your playlist.

To create a playlist, press ⌘-N, or, if you're being paid by the hour, choose File → New Playlist or click the + button below the Source area of the iTunes window.

All freshly minted playlists start out with the impersonal name Untitled Playlist. Fortunately, its renaming rectangle is open and highlighted; just type a better name. As you add them, your playlists alphabetize themselves in the Source window.

Once you've created and named this spanking new playlist, you're ready to add your songs. You can do this in two different ways.

If this is your first playlist, opening the playlist into its own window might make it easier for you to see what's going on. To do so, double-click the new playlist's icon in the Source list, which opens a window next to your main iTunes window. From here, drag the song titles you want over to the new playlist window. Figure 3-7 demonstrates the process. (You can also open the iTunes Music Store into its own window with the double-click trick.)

Figure 3-7: Making a playlist is as easy as dragging song titles from your library window to your new playlist window. The other way to add songs to a playlist is to drag them over from the Songs window and just drop them on the new playlist's icon in the Source list. (If you have a lot of playlists, though, you risk accidentally dropping songs on the wrong icon.)

Don't worry about clogging up your hard drive. When you drag a song title onto a playlist, you don't

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The recent explosion in Internet song swapping presented the recording industry with a paradoxical challenge: to stop music lovers from freely trading files over the Internet, while trying to make money themselves by selling copyprotected music online. The early attempts, backed by the major record companies, featured a monthly fee, a puny song catalog, and no ability to burn the bought music to CDs or save it onto music players. What a deal!

Needless to say, people stayed away in droves. The free (and free-form) world of KaZaA, LimeWire, and similar file-trading services were much more attractive.

Then Apple took a whack at it. In April 2003, the iTunes Music Store debuted, an online component of iTunes that scored the hat trick that other companies had yet to achieve: digital audio downloads that were easy, cheap, and—drum roll, please—legal. Here's a look inside the store, and how to shop it.

The iTunes Music Store has the backing (and the song catalogs) of five big music companies, plus an increasing number of independent ones. Its inventory contains more than 1.5 million songs from major-label artists like Bob Dylan, U2, Missy Elliott, Jewel, Sting, and hundreds of other musicians in a range of popular styles like Rock, Pop, R & B, Jazz, Folk, Rap, Latin, Classical, and more—and the collection grows by thousands of songs a week. You can also browse, sample, or buy any of 11,000 audiobooks from Audible.com.

You can also find thousands of podcasts (Section 2.3) free of charge in the Store, as well as music videos and digital booklets of liner notes that come with some albums.

To see what songs have been added recently, click the Just Added link at the left side of the main Music Store page.

Farther down the page, you can also see and hear what famous people are listening to in the store's Celebrity Playlist section. It never hurts to know what Wynton Marsalis and Kevin Bacon are listening to these days.

You can browse the virtual CD racks from the comfort of your own computer, listen to a sample 30 seconds free from any track in the store, and download desired songs for 99 cents each with a click of the mouse. There are no monthly fees. And your digitally protected downloads don't go

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The iTunes Music Store has the backing (and the song catalogs) of five big music companies, plus an increasing number of independent ones. Its inventory contains more than 1.5 million songs from major-label artists like Bob Dylan, U2, Missy Elliott, Jewel, Sting, and hundreds of other musicians in a range of popular styles like Rock, Pop, R & B, Jazz, Folk, Rap, Latin, Classical, and more—and the collection grows by thousands of songs a week. You can also browse, sample, or buy any of 11,000 audiobooks from Audible.com.

You can also find thousands of podcasts (Section 2.3) free of charge in the Store, as well as music videos and digital booklets of liner notes that come with some albums.

To see what songs have been added recently, click the Just Added link at the left side of the main Music Store page.

Farther down the page, you can also see and hear what famous people are listening to in the store's Celebrity Playlist section. It never hurts to know what Wynton Marsalis and Kevin Bacon are listening to these days.

You can browse the virtual CD racks from the comfort of your own computer, listen to a sample 30 seconds free from any track in the store, and download desired songs for 99 cents each with a click of the mouse. There are no monthly fees. And your digitally protected downloads don't go poof! into the ether if you decide to cancel your subscription, as they do with certain rival services. All your downloaded songs go right into iTunes, where they are just a sync away from your iPod's traveling music collection.

You can play the downloaded songs on up to five different iTunes 4–equipped Macs or PCs (in any combination), burn them onto an unlimited number of CDs, and download them to as many iPods as you like. Thousands of people use the Music Store every day, in fact, without even realizing that the songs are copy protected.

Apple's success with the iTunes Music Store—over 500 million downloads by mid-2005—caught its rivals' attention. These days, Apple's imitators in the dollar-a-song biz include Napster 2.0, Yahoo, Microsoft, Sony, and even Wal-Mart. (Remember, though, that music from these services come in Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format, which won't work on the iPod. Except Sony's music service, which uses its own proprietary file format—but that doesn't play on the iPod, either.)

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With iTunes running, click the Music Store icon in the iTunes Source list on the left pane of the program's window (Figure 4-1). If you use a dial-up modem, fire it up as you would to check email or surf the Web. If you have a cable modem or DSL, a message about connecting to the store appears in the status display at the top of the iTunes window.

As you can imagine, the whole Music Store business (like just about everything else on the online these days), works much better over high-speed Internet connections.

After you click the Music Store icon in the iTunes Source list and connect to the store, you land on the home page, which works like a Web page.

If you're in the mood to buy, you might as well take care of setting up your Apple Account now. To do so, click the Account: Sign In button on the right side of the iTunes window. A Sign In box appears.

If you've ever bought or registered a product on Apple's Web site, signed up for the AppleCare tech-support plan, have a .Mac membership, ordered an iPhoto photo book, or used another Apple service, you probably have an Apple ID already. All you have to do is remember your user name (usually your email address) and password.

I moved and need to change my billing address for the iTunes Music Store. How do I do that?

You can change your billing address, switch the credit card you have on file for your music purchases, or edit other information in your Apple Account without calling Apple. Just start up iTunes, click the Music Store icon on the Source list, and sign in to your account by clicking the Sign In button.

Once you've signed in, you'll see your account name (email address) next to the Account button. Click it. In the box that pops up, type in your password again and click View Account, then click the Edit Credit Card button. You're ready to change your billing address or credit-card information. In the main account area, you can also set up an allowance or buy iTunes Music Store gift certificates.

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You don't have to log in to browse the store—only when you want to buy music or audiobooks. And music is everywhere you turn in the iTunes Music Store. Click any album cover or text link to zoom right to it. The upper left corner area of the Music Store home page offers a pop-up menu to jump straight to the Genres you want.

You can also use the Power Search tool, shown at top in Figure 4-3, to zero in on a specific song, artist, album, genre, or composer—or just peruse the text-based lists, as shown in Figure 4-3 at bottom.

When you find a performer you're interested in, click the name to see a list of songs or albums on hand for purchase. If you click an album name, all of the songs available from it appear below in the Details window. Double-click a track to hear a 30-second snippet of it to see how it suits you, or to make sure that's really the song you were thinking of, before buying it.

You navigate the iTunes Music Store aisles just like a Web browser. Most song and artist names are hyperlinked—that is, you can click their names, or album cover images, to see what tracks are included.

Click the Back button in the Store window to go back to the page you were just on, or click the button with the small house on it to return to the Music Store home page.

When browsing the store, you may see a small, gray, circular icon bearing a white arrow in some columns of the Details window. That's the "More Info this way!" button. Click it to jump to a page bearing details about the subject, like a discography page next to a singer's name in the Artist column, or to the main page of artists for the genre listed.

The main iTunes Music Store page also displays links to new releases, exclusive songs that can be purchased only from the Music Store, Apple staff favorites, songs scheduled to become available in the near future, sneak peeks at unreleased tunes, and the Billboard Top 100 charts going back to 1946.

Figure 4-3:

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Table of Contents

Section 1.2.1.1: MP3