iTunes

[RF Lighting]

I just bought my first ever album off iTunes. It works fine on my iPod and if I play it on iTunes, but I would like to play it on windows media player, and also burn a copy to CD for the car.

Is this possible? If so how do I go about doing this?

I noticed that the tracks have saved in M4P (not MP4) format. Do I need to convert them into MP3? How do I do this?

I am no computer expert, but hopefully with a bit of guidance I should be ok.

 

[DagenhamDave]

I think that's the point of iTunes - you can only play it on an Ipod. I'm sure there are ways of converting / playing it on other media but wouldn't that be illegal?

 

[RF Lighting]

May have to wheel out the minidisc machine then.

You would think they might have told me this before I wasted all that money on an album I now have to re-purchase to listen to it in the car.

 

[Spark123]

Is there any way of plugging your ipod into the car? I have seen somewhere some (slightly illegal) low powered FM transmitters which you can buy to plug into your ipod and listen through the cars radio. This sort of thing http://shop.ipodworld.co.uk/iPodWorldSite/category/iPod_iPod_FM Transmitters/

 

[DagenhamDave]

Maybe a solution here...

http://www.askbobrankin.com/convert_itunes_to_mp3_format.html

But you may lose some of the sound quality

 

[RigidRaider]

Blimey, I thought I was bad on computers!

It's easy to burn anything you want to CD. Just highlight the tracks you want, check the time doesn't exceed 72 minutes and click the "Burn Disc" symbol top right.

Then you'll find that the Tools (I think) menu gives you a natty option for printing the CD cover plus a playlist, on which you'll even see thumbnails of the CDs you've downloaded from.

To play the iPod in the car you can buy a dummy cassette, which you insert in the slot. It works pretty well. It can only go one way round and you'll need to experiment with the iPod and car player volumes to get the best combination without distortion. Don't go mad and spend £30, the cheapo ones work just as well.

 

[RF Lighting]

Blimey, I thought I was bad on computers!

It's easy to burn anything you want to CD. Just highlight the tracks you want, check the time doesn't exceed 72 minutes and click the "Burn Disc" symbol top right.

Then you'll find that the Tools (I think) menu gives you a natty option for printing the CD cover plus a playlist, on which you'll even see thumbnails of the CDs you've downloaded from.

That would be all good and well if I could get the tracks to play on WMP, but as the tracks are M4P format they will not play in WMP.

I have one of the little radio jobbies, but I don't like taking my iPod to work and leaving it in the van all day. A CD would be far better.

 

[RigidRaider]

Sorry-O. Didn't realise that was your problem. iTunes has a massive Help section - have you tried there?

 

[Spark123]

Have you tried googling for "M4P to MP3 converter"?

 

[DagenhamDave]

Sorry I know nothing about iTunes but can't you just burn the tracks to an Audio CD (which converts them to another format) which would then play on most CD players? That's how I would do it in WMP.

The link I posted quotes the following about converting to MP3

Because the iTunes tracks that you purchase and download are in a "protected" AAC or M4P audio format you can't play them on WMP.

From within iTunes:

Burn the track(s) to a CD, then you can open the CD in iTunes and the Convert Selection to MP3 will do exactly what you want. Just be aware that you'll have TWO copies of that song in iTunes -- one in the original AAC format and one in MP3 format. You can delete the AAC version if you like. (Note that you must burn an audio CD, not a data CD. Check the setting in Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Burning if you have a problem importing tracks from the CD.)

Isn't that what you want?