iTunes Assistance Needed!

Hey guys, got an iTunes question for you.....

One of my favorite bands these days is The Sword! Very heavy stoner rock kindof stuff. They just came out with a new album and I purchased it through iTunes. However, I've run into a small problem while trying to put the files/tracks on a disk for use in my car.

The files are MP4s and my car is a Pioneer about a year old and accepts MP3s/WAV/iTunes/ACC formats. To make things extra fancy, I decided to also include their old album on the same disk so I can play both back to back. But when I burn the albums on a disk, my stereo only recognizes the older album. Its like the new album (most recently downloaded) doesn't even exist. The older album plays fine, but the new album is not recognized at all. When I go back to my computer, both albums are there and both albums play fine through iTunes.

I tried to fix this problem by converting the new album to an MP3 format and reburning the disk. This resulted in once again the first album being recognized and playable, but the second album is only recognized as existing, but none of the information is displayed on the screen and it only plays about 2-3 seconds of silence per track?

The only other thing I can think of to add to the story, is that I did bring the same disk over to my brother's house to let him listen to the disk on his computer, and while iTunes recognized it, it did ask for my itunes password to play the album. Once that was entered, the disk played fine.

Could this password protection by the problem and is there a way to get around this so I can play the music in my car as intended?

Thanks computer gurus!!

MSax

That's one of those things I haven't tried yet, but here is what I think you might have to do.

This is purely a SWAG, no idea if it'll actually work.

Select the whole album and burn it to CD as an audio CD.

You then would need to rip it in MP3 format.
Then burn it with the older album in MP3 format in order to hear both on the car stereo.

MSaxatilus said:

Hey guys, got an iTunes question for you.....

One of my favorite bands these days is The Sword! Very heavy stoner rock kindof stuff. They just came out with a new album and I purchased it through iTunes. However, I've run into a small problem while trying to put the files/tracks on a disk for use in my car.

The files are MP4s and my car is a Pioneer about a year old and accepts MP3s/WAV/iTunes/ACC formats. To make things extra fancy, I decided to also include their old album on the same disk so I can play both back to back. But when I burn the albums on a disk, my stereo only recognizes the older album. Its like the new album (most recently downloaded) doesn't even exist. The older album plays fine, but the new album is not recognized at all. When I go back to my computer, both albums are there and both albums play fine through iTunes.

I tried to fix this problem by converting the new album to an MP3 format and reburning the disk. This resulted in once again the first album being recognized and playable, but the second album is only recognized as existing, but none of the information is displayed on the screen and it only plays about 2-3 seconds of silence per track?

The only other thing I can think of to add to the story, is that I did bring the same disk over to my brother's house to let him listen to the disk on his computer, and while iTunes recognized it, it did ask for my itunes password to play the album. Once that was entered, the disk played fine.

Could this password protection by the problem and is there a way to get around this so I can play the music in my car as intended?

Thanks computer gurus!!

MSax

Click to expand...

The files have DRM on them. You cannot burn the compressed files on a disk and play them on another device, unless this other device is allowed to play those files. iTunes allows you to allow up to five computers and unlimited iPods and iPhones. But you car stereo is not allowed, and cannot be made so.

The only thing you can do is burn a standard CD from within iTunes. Make a playlist of the album, select this playlist, and click "Burn disc" (should be in the lower left corner of the iTunes window, but I'm not sure about the Windows version). Apple specifically allows you to do this. However, you are only allowed to burn 7 CDs with files that have DRM on them.

This burned disc is a standard CD, and should play on any CD player including your car's one (if it doesn't, it's not a problem of DRM, but a writing/reading problem of the burner, player and CD involved). If you want the content compressed with other music, you have to re-rip them to MP3 or unprotected AAC. You can do so with iTunes. However, the resulting files will be slightly degraded in quality, though for playing in the car this should be acceptable. However, once you have re-ripped the files, there are no limitations on them whatsoever. You can burn as many copies as you like, and play them on any machine that can play them.

You can check the files whether or not they have DRM on them with right-clicking and selecting "Get Info", and then go into the "Summary" tab. Limited DRM files have an entry for "Fairplay Version". iTunes sells both protected and unprotected files, depending on what the right's owner of the specific music allowed. Unprotected files are sold as "iTunes Plus", and have a "plus" icon in front of the price. iTunes used to charge $1.29 for Plus files, but they don't do anymore. All songs have the same price.

There may be also programs out there that can remove the DRM from the original files. But those are more-or-less illegal, and usually come from pages with high probability of catching malware, so I would recommend not to pursue this course of action unless there's really no other way.

MSaxatilus said:

Could this password protection by the problem and is there a way to get around this so I can play the music in my car as intended?

Click to expand...

***Snipped most of my post since elgarak beat me to it.***

As an aside, it is possible to buy unprotected music through Itunes, at a premium. There are also places like Emusic that sell digital music in unprotected formats. It looks like Emusic even carries one of the The Sword's albums too.

amazon.com also sells unprotected MP3s of them.

It's an attempt of some record labels to crack iTunes's leading market position to allow other stores to sell without DRM, but not iTunes.

baterija said:

[...]
As an aside, it is possible to buy unprotected music through Itunes, at a premium. [...]

Click to expand...

As I said, iTunes does not charge a premium for unprotected files for quite some time now.

However, The Sword is not available unprotected from iTunes. Which, again as I said, is not iTunes's fault.

You guys rock! :thumbsup:

Thanks so much for the tips everybody. I will try your suggestions tonight and post my progress later on.

Thanks again,
MSax

UPDATE:

OK, I was able to burned the album as a standard CD with iTunes and that worked in my car. After that, I took the CD an re-ripped the songs back into iTunes as MP3s. However, when I place the MP3s along with the track list from the original album, it burns fine, but the car does not recognize either album. Instead it simply rifles through the playlist very quickly without playing the songs?

Maybe instead of burning the MP3s in folders, would I be better off just burning them as a single list of songs?

Any other ideas what I may be doing incorrectly?

MSax

MSaxatilus - Your car player might not be able to handle the folders. Since it does it for both albums and the other was fine before that seems like a good possible cause. Hard to say for sure without knowing how things work in your car.

elgarak said:

As I said, iTunes does not charge a premium for unprotected files for quite some time now.
However, The Sword is not available unprotected from iTunes. Which, again as I said, is not iTunes's fault.

Click to expand...

That's what I get for reading quick and editing, when my preview brought your post up. I missed the news about Itunes changing the pricing for unprotected, which is a very good thing indeed, when labels permit it. I haven't used it on my computer since my trial of it long ago - just family and friends tech support.

MSaxatilus said:

[..] However, when I place the MP3s along with the track list from the original album, [..]

Click to expand...

What do you mean by that? You're still using iTunes, right? iTunes does not have what I would call a separate track list.

It appears as if you have burned the original DRM files again.

elgarak,

Sorry for the confusion. Now that I read it, it does sound goofy. What I meant to say is that after re-ripping album I took the track lists from both the first and second albums and burned them on a new CD-R as MP3s. But that didn't work either.

After checking the file information, it still says it protected. I'm not sure if the iMac is defaulting to the original MP4s rather than burning the MP3s. Maybe I should delete the original MP4s after I re-rip them into MP3s?

I ran out of CD-Rs last night. So I'll try again today after picking up some more.

MSax

This is crazy. I should just buy an iPod and be done with it all. My car stereo is also iPod compatible. I suppose that would just be alot easier than all this nonsence about removing DVM and all that crap.

MSax

Do you have any other music software other than iTunes? You could use that to rip the CD into MP3s, then burn the MP3s onto a new CD-R and bypass iTunes altogether.

MSaxatilus said:

elgarak,

Sorry for the confusion. Now that I read it, it does sound goofy. What I meant to say is that after re-ripping album I took the track lists from both the first and second albums and burned them on a new CD-R as MP3s. But that didn't work either.

After checking the file information, it still says it protected. I'm not sure if the iMac is defaulting to the original MP4s rather than burning the MP3s. Maybe I should delete the original MP4s after I re-rip them into MP3s?

I ran out of CD-Rs last night. So I'll try again today after picking up some more.

MSax

Click to expand...

You're on an iMac? That makes things easier .

I admit that I don't know if iTunes recognizes a CD burned from protected content. Maybe you should move the protected MP4 files (right-click [ctrl-click] and select "Show in Finder", then copy them somewhere else) and remove them from iTunes before you rip. I would not just delete them.

What do you mean by first and second album? The protected and the ripped one?

Also: How do you burn the files for the car? From within iTunes?

I assume it's just a data CD with the MP3 on them. You can make those outside of iTunes, which should remove any doubt what actually gets burned on CD. (I checked the help files, and it clearly states that certain files cannot be burned as data from iTunes [except using the backup function, but who knows what this does to the files]. However, I frequently burn protected movie files outside of iTunes to free up harddrive space. I don't think sound files are that different)

What do you mean by first and second album? The protected and the ripped one?

Click to expand...

Oh, sorry... no, not the protected and the ripped one...... I'm not being very clear......the Sword has two albums 1) Age of Winters (unprotected - no problems burning) and 2) Gods of the Earth (currently contains DVM protection).

So when I said I'm trying to burn two albums or two lists of songs on a single CD, I'm simply trying to put both albums on a singel CD. The AGes of Winters is no problem... its the new one Gods of the Earth that continues to be an issue. That make better sense?

Also: How do you burn the files for the car? From within iTunes?

Click to expand...

No, I was putting the files wanted in a folder on and burning them within Finder.

I can burn a single album (either one) as an audio CD in iTunes and that works fine, its just when I try to burn them as MP3s or iTunes files from Finder is when my car stereo is having the issue. I kindof like having just one CD for all my Sword stuff, a second CD for all of my Clutch albums, etc.