OS X Mountain Lion For Dummies

Working with Media

iTunes is, first and foremost, a media manager and player, so the next thing I examine is how to get your favorite media into iTunes. Of course, you can acquire media a number of ways, depending upon the type of media and where the files reside. For example, you can add song or video files you’ve downloaded from websites or received as enclosures in e-mail messages. Or you can add songs by ripping audio CDs. You can buy music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and apps for your iPhone/iPod/iPad at the iTunes Store (and, to be fair, from many other online vendors, including www.amazon.com and www.audible.com ). You can subscribe to free podcasts at the iTunes Store as well. And you can listen to all sorts of music on the Internet radio stations included with iTunes.

The iTunes Store and Internet radio require that you be connected to the Internet before you can use them.

In the following sections, you discover the various ways to add media — songs, movies, videos, and podcasts — to your iTunes library, followed by a quick course in listening to iTunes Internet radio stations.

Adding songs

You can add songs from pretty much any source, and the way you add a song to iTunes depends on where that song comes from. Here are the most common ways people add their songs: