Chapter 3

Getting Songs into Your iPod

With iTunes, you can put content on your iPod quickly and keep it synchronized every time you connect it. However, to put content on your iPod, you must first get it into your iTunes library.

Copyright law prohibits you from copying copyrighted content and selling it to someone else. With iTunes, however, you are allowed to make copies of music, movies, videos, audio books, and podcasts you own for your personal use, such as making backup copies on discs or hard drives, and using the content with as many iPods as you wish. However, you can't copy content from your iPod to your computer via iTunes. It's a one-way trip from iTunes to your iPod.

If you're like that guy in the movie Diner who couldn't stand to have his records misfiled, you'll love iTunes and its nice, neat file storage methods. For all content items, iTunes creates a folder named for the artist and then creates folders within the artist folder named for each album. These folders are stored in the iTunes Music folder unless you change your storage preferences. Content items purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store are saved in this folder, as well as media files you drag to the iTunes window — which are copied into the iTunes Music folder without deleting the original files.

When you have the content in your iTunes library, it's a snap to automatically synchronize your iPod to your library, and away you go.

Browsing and Previewing Songs

The iTunes Store home page is loaded with specials and advertisements to peruse. To look at music in more depth, choose the Music tab in the black bar above the List pane. You can also pick a music genre by clicking the down-arrow button that appears next to the Music tab when you click it. iTunes displays more panels of advertisements and specials for music lovers, including iTunes LP albums that include liner notes, lyrics, videos, and other features.

What if you're looking for particular music in a particular genre? You can browse the iTunes Store by genre and artist name in a method similar to browsing your iTunes library.

To browse the iTunes Store, choose ViewShow Column Browser, or click the Browse link in the Quick Links column on the right side of the iTunes Store home page. iTunes displays the store's offerings categorized by type of content (such as Music), and it displays music by genre and subgenre — and within each subgenre, by artist and album. Select a genre in the Genre column, then a subgenre in the Subgenre column, then an artist in the Artist column, and finally an album in the Album column, which takes you to the list of songs from that album that are available to preview or purchase, as shown in Figure 3-1.

Figure 3-1: Browsing the iTunes Store for music by genre, artist, and album.

To see more information about a song or the album that it came from, click the content link (one of the gray-circled arrow buttons in the List pane):

To preview a song, click the song title in the List pane and then click the Play button (or press the spacebar).

By default, the previews play on your computer off the Internet in a stream, so you might hear a few hiccups in the playback. Each preview lasts about 30 seconds. Just when you start really getting into the song, it ends. If the song is irresistible, though, you can buy it on the spot.

If you know specifically what you're looking for, you can search instead of browse. The Search field in the top-right corner of the iTunes window lets you search the iTunes Store for just about anything. Type part of a song title or artist name to quickly search the iTunes Store, or use the Power Search feature to narrow your search.

Buying and Downloading Content

As you select multimedia content, you can purchase the items and download them to your computer immediately. All you need to do is click the Buy button, whether the item is a song, an album, a TV show episode, or an audio book.

For example, if you select a song in the List pane, click the Buy Song button in the far-right column for the song. (You might have to scroll your iTunes Store window to see the far-right column.) When you select a TV show episode, click the Buy Episode button in the far-right column. You can also click the Buy Album button in an album advertisement.

The iTunes Store may prompt you to log in to your account after you click the Buy button (unless you just recently logged in). It then displays a warning dialog to make sure that you want to buy the item, and you can then complete your purchase by clicking the Buy button, or cancel. After clicking the Buy button, iTunes downloads the item and, after downloading, it appears in your iTunes library. You can continue buying items while downloading, and since you already logged in, the iTunes Store complies immediately without asking again for a password. The iTunes Store keeps track of your purchases over a 24-hour period and charges you for a total sum rather than for each single purchase.

You can see the list of all the items that you purchased by selecting the Purchased playlist under the iTunes Store option in the Source pane. The List pane changes to show the items you purchased.

Changing other iTunes Store preferences

You can change iTunes Store preference settings by choosing iTunesPreferences on the Mac or by choosing EditPreferences in Windows. In the Preferences window, click the Store button. The Store Preferences pane appears, as shown in Figure 3-2. You can set the following features:

Figure 3-2: Change preferences for the iTunes Store.

Adding Music from CDs

Bringing music tracks from a CD into iTunes is known as ripping a CD. I'm not sure why it's called that, but Apple certainly took the term to a new level with an ad campaign for Macs that featured the slogan Rip, Mix, Burn. Burning a mix CD was the hip thing to do a few years ago. With iTunes, you can still rip and mix, but if you have an iPod, you may no longer need to burn CDs to play your music wherever you go.

Ripping, in technical terms, is extracting the song's digital information from an audio CD. In common terms, ripping also includes compressing the song's digital information and encoding it in a particular sound file format. The ripping process is straightforward, but the import settings that you choose affect sound quality, hard drive (and iPod) space, and compatibility with other types of players and computers.

Setting the importing preferences

Although importing music from an audio CD takes a lot less time than playing the CD, it still takes time. To minimize that time, be sure your import settings are correct before starting. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Choose iTunesPreferencesGeneral on a Mac or EditPreferencesGeneral in Windows.

   The iTunes Preferences dialog opens, showing the General preferences, including the Import Settings button.

2. Choose what action iTunes should take for the When You Insert a CD option in the General preferences.

   Choose one of the following actions on the pop-up menu for when you insert an audio CD:

   • Show CD: iTunes does nothing else. This setting is ideal if you regularly edit the song information first.
   • Begin Playing: You've got music.
   • Ask to Import CD: iTunes displays a dialog asking whether you want to import the CD.
   • Import CD: iTunes uses the current import settings and automatically imports the CD. Don't use this setting unless you're sure that the import settings are already set to your liking.
   • Import CD and Eject: iTunes automatically imports and then ejects the CD, making way for the next one. This option is useful for importing a batch of CDs. Don't use this setting unless you're sure that the import settings are already set to your liking.
3. Select the Automatically Retrieve CD Track Names from Internet check box.

   iTunes automatically grabs the song titles, artist names, album titles, and so forth directly from an Internet database of songs. I recommend that you select this check box (assuming that you're connected to the Internet, that is).

4. Click the Import Settings button in the General preferences.

   The Import Settings dialog appears, as shown in Figure 3-3.

5. Make your changes, guided by my suggestions that follow, and then click the OK button.

Figure 3-3: Change your importing settings for ripping CDs.

The Import Settings dialog offers the following choices:

For a quick and pain-free ripping session, select from among the following encoders in the Import Using pop-up menu based on how you plan to use your iTunes library:

Ripping music from CDs

After changing your import settings and preferences, you're ready to rip. To rip a CD, follow these steps:

1. Insert an audio CD into your computer.

   The songs appear in the List pane as generic, unnamed tracks at first. If your computer is connected to the Internet, if you've turned on the option to automatically retrieve song information from the Internet, and if the CD is in the Gracenote database (most commercial CDs are), iTunes automatically retrieves the track information.

   A dialog appears, asking whether you want to import the CD, with Yes and No buttons.

2. Click Yes to import (and skip to Step 5) or No to set options first.

   Click the No button to set preferences and import settings as described in the previous section, to set songs to be skipped, or if you see unnamed tracks rather than the proper track, artist, and album names in the List pane. If all you need to change are the import settings, click the Import Settings button in the lower-right corner of the List pane.

   If the first attempt at retrieving song information doesn't work and you see unnamed tracks, check your connection to the Internet first. If everything is fine with your connection, stop the importing operation and then choose AdvancedGet CD Track Names to try again to get the track information. If you don't want to connect to the Internet or if your CD isn't recognized by the Gracenote database, you can type in the track information yourself.

3. (Optional) Deselect the check boxes next to any songs on the CD that you don't want to import.

   iTunes imports only the songs that have a check mark next to them; when you remove the check mark, iTunes skips that song.

   Be sure to set your importing preferences to your liking before actually ripping the CD.

4. Click the Import CD button.

   The Import CD button appears next to the Import Settings button in the lower-right corner of the List pane after you insert a CD. The status display shows the progress of the operation. To cancel, click the small x next to the progress bar in the status display.

   iTunes displays an orange, animated waveform icon next to the song that it's importing. When iTunes finishes importing each song, it replaces the waveform icon with a check mark, as shown in Figure 3-4. (On a color monitor, the check mark is green.) iTunes chimes when it finishes the import list.

5. When all the songs are imported, eject the CD by clicking the Eject button next to the disc name in the Devices section of the Source pane.

   You can also choose ControlsEject Disc to eject the disc. Mac users can press the Eject button on the upper-right corner of the Mac keyboard.

Figure 3-4: iTunes shows a check mark to indicate it's done ripping the song.

Synchronizing Your iPod Automatically

When you set up your iPod, you can choose the option to copy your entire iTunes library automatically, matching it exactly, item for item, playlist for playlist. From that point on, your iPod synchronizes with your entire library automatically, right after you connect it to your computer.

If you make changes in iTunes after synchronizing a device, those changes are automatically made in the device when you synchronize again. If you add or delete content in your iTunes library, that content is added or deleted in the iPod when you sync again.

If you store photos in an iPhoto library (on a Mac) or in a program (such as Adobe Photoshop Album in Windows), you can set up your iPod with the option to copy your entire photo library. Your iPod is then synchronized automatically so that any changes you make to the photo library are copied to the device. Content items stored remotely (such as songs shared from other iTunes libraries on a network) aren't synchronized because the files aren't physically on your computer.

Follow these steps to start synchronizing your iPod with your iTunes library:

1. Connect the iPod or iPhone and select its name when it appears in the Devices section of the Source pane.

   iTunes displays the sync options to the right of the Source pane, with the Summary page (under the Summary tab) open. The Summary page shows how much space on the device is occupied by content and how much is still free. (See Figure 3-5.)

2. If the iPod or iPhone isn't already synchronizing, click the Sync button in the lower-right corner to synchronize it.

   The iTunes Status pane tells you that iTunes is syncing the device.

3. Wait for the synchronization to finish and then click the Eject button next to the iPod or iPhone name in the Source pane.

   You should always wait until the iTunes Status pane (at the top) displays that the synchronization is finished.

4. Disconnect your iPod or iPhone from your computer.

That's it. Your iPod is now synchronized.

Figure 3-5: The iPod Summary tab.

If your iTunes library is too large to fit on your iPod, you can still keep your iPod automatically synchronized to a subset of your library. For example, you can update the iPod automatically but only with selected songs, movies, TV shows, videos, audio books, or podcast episodes. To use this method, you must first deselect the items in your iTunes library that you don't want to transfer, because all the items in your library are selected by default.

To deselect an item, click the check box next to the item in the List pane so that the check mark disappears. To select an item, click the check box so that the check mark appears.

Alternatively, you can change your iPod's Music settings to include just the items that are defined in playlists, including Genius playlists, and/or just specific artists. Syncing by playlists, artists, and genres is a great way of syncing vast amounts of music without syncing the entire library.

Here's how this works: After connecting your iPod or iPhone to your computer, select its name when it appears in the Devices section of the Source pane (refer to Figure 3-5). Then click the Music tab of the sync options to call up the Music sync options page.

To choose playlists, artists, and genres to sync with the iPod or iPhone, click the Selected Playlists, Artists, and Genres option at the top of the Music sync options page. You can then select each playlist from the Playlists list, each artist from the Artists list, and (if you scroll the Music sync options page) each genre from the Genres list. Finally, click the Apply button to apply changes, and click the Sync button if synchronization hasn't already started automatically.

iTunes copies only what you've selected in the Playlists, Artists, and Genres sections of the Music sync options page, separating the wheat from the chaff. Neat, huh?