Getting Started with your iPod

The music you love is just a click away.

You’ll find millions of high-quality, DRM-free songs on the iTunes Store all for just 69¢, 99¢, or $1.29. Browse around. Have a listen. See what’s new, what’s hot, and what other fans are listening to. iTunes recommends music based on what you already like, so you can always find something new to enjoy. When you download select albums, you’ll experience iTunes LP — a beautifully designed, interactive world right in your iTunes library. Many are created by the artists. While you listen to your favorite songs on your Mac or PC, dive into the lyrics and liner notes, view photos, watch videos, and enjoy other bonus materials.

Buy or rent movies and start watching them in minutes.

From comedy to drama, romance to classic, independent to thriller — movies, movies, and more movies await you on the iTunes Store. Browse thousands of releases from every major Hollywood studio. Buy or rent them in standard or high definition and watch on your computer, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or television via Apple TV. When you buy select movies, you’ll discover a world of special features called iTunes Extras including interviews, trailers, and photos you can watch in iTunes on your Mac or PC.

Keep up with your TV shows.

And you thought you loved TV before. iTunes brings you your favorite TV shows, uninterrupted, whenever you want, however you want. Even in HD. You can rent or own the latest episode as early as one day after it airs — or rent or purchase past episodes you missed. Choose from thousands of commercial-free episodes. For shows that air daily, a Multi-Pass lets you enjoy a month’s worth of episodes. Just download and watch on your computer, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or television via Apple TV.

Find free podcasts.

The iTunes Store is your source for hundreds of thousands of podcasts. What’s a podcast? Much like a radio or TV show, it’s a video or audio series about anything and everything. You’ll find podcasts from independent creators, as well as big names such as HBO, NPR, ESPN, The Onion, CBS Sports, and The New York Times. Check out the categories — you’re bound to find a podcast you’ll like. You can listen, then click to subscribe. Podcasts download to your iTunes library automatically, so you’ll never miss an episode. You can listen to them on your computer, iPod, iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. And best of all, they’re free.

I have to put this out there to get it off my chest. I hate iTunes. In my opinion, the interface is not intuitive, and the labeling of controls is misleading. Whew, I feel better. Now I’ll just wait for Steve Jobs to storm into my house and neutralize me.If I have problems with iTunes, then I’m sure there are plenty of other people who do, also. So here I am with ”How Do I Download Songs onto iTunes” so you can get them on your iPod and you can go about your iDay.I’m going to assume that you already have iTunes (download here) installed – we’re using iTunes 8.2 on a Windows XP Home laptop. I’m also going to assume that you have an iTunes Store account. If you don’t, refer to this article to learn how to get one.

Adding Songs from iTunes Store

Let’s look at adding music from the iTunes Store first. Once you have iTunes open, just click where it reads iTunes Store.

Shortly, the iTunes Store will be visible in the right-hand window. Hmmm, Jets Overhead has a free single, that sounds interesting. Because it is free. Now, I will click on that selection.

iTunes will open up to a page that tells you about the band and song as well as some comments from people who have downloaded the song. That’s nice. What we’re interested in, is at the bottom of the page. This is where we get the song. Look for the Get Song button. Just click on that.

If you are already signed in, the song will start to download. This can be checked by looking in the left-hand side of iTunes for the Downloads label. There it is! Downloads equal one. Now where did it go? Into the Library of course, under Music. Just click on Music and you’ll see the song on the right-hand side.

Adding Songs from a CD

I’m using a CD made by a band with a guy I sort of know, Jeffry Houser. He’s an Adobe/ColdFusion guru who is also a good musician. The band was known as Far Cry Fly. Anyway…

Put the CD into your computer’s CD/DVD player. iTunes should automagically ask you if you want to import the contents of the CD. Click on good old Yes. Has clicking indescriminately on Yes ever let us down? Oh, yes, I guess it has.

iTunes will begin importing all the music off of the CD. You can tell which song is being imported and which ones are completed by the icons next to the songs.

The check mark in the green circle means great success in importing the song. The squiggle in the orange circle means that the import is in progress. Eventually, all the songs will be imported. “Where did they go?” you ask, with childlike wonder dancing in your eyes like so many little sprites rejoicing in your innocent thoughts. Well, into the Library of course!

Voila! There they are!

Adding Songs from a Directory on Your Computer

You can either do this song by song or you can add a whole directory of music. The whole directory method is the best approach if you’ve already legitimately and legally created back-ups of your lawfully purchased music collection. So, here’s how that goes.

Click on File> Add Folder to Library.

A new window opens up that allows you to navigate to the folder you want to add.Ah, there it is! Corb Lund and the Hurtin’ Albertans. I urge you to check them out. Definitely a favourite of mine. Select the folder by clicking once on it and then click on the OK button. How was that? Was it… OK? Tee hee.

Ala Peanut Butter Sandwiches and pow! Your folder of music is added to the Library.

Those are the three ways to add music to your iTunes library, so bookmark this page in case you ever find yourself wondering, “How do I download songs onto iTunes again?” Now that you’ve got that power, go crazy and fill that library up and rock out. Or in my case, country out. That doesn’t work, does it?

If this little tutorial has helped you out in anyway, please let me know. Now, I’m going to send a link to this article to my daughter, since she’s been bugging me for months to show her how to do this stuff. Don’t tell her I just figured it out myself.

For more tutorials on iTunes, check out our MakeUseOf Big Book of iTunes free PDF download.

www.Apple.com/iPod/Start

Since the introduction of the iTunes Store, individual songs were all sold for the same price with no subscription fee (in contrast to most existing online music stores at the time of introduction, which charged a monthly fee for access to their catalog). Music in the store is in the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format, which is the MPEG-4-specified successor to MP3. Songs with DRM are encoded at 128 kbit/s. As of the January 2009 Macworld Expo, Apple has announced that all music in iTunes will be available without DRM, and encoded at the higher-quality rate of 256 kbit/s. Previously, this model, known as “iTunes Plus”, had been available only for music from EMI and some independent labels. Previews, ninety seconds in length, are available free, prior to buying a song. iTunes had the option between fully loading previews before playing, or simply streaming the preview; the former feature was removed with the release of iTunes 8.

Feature length movies and television episodes are available for purchase. Movies tend to be priced below a DVD of the same film while television episodes are approximately double the cost of a song.

Finally, some games are available for some models of iPods for various prices, but none as expensive as a feature length film. In addition, the iTunes Store now offers Apps, which are applications used for various purposes (games, maps, movie showtimes, etc.) that are compatible with the iPod Touch and iPhone, although some Apps are specifically for the iPhone only. Some Apps cost money (called “Paid Apps”) and some are free (called “Free Apps”). Developers can decide which price they want for apps. When someone downloads an App, 70 percent of the purchase goes to the developer(s), and 30 percent goes to Apple.

At the Macworld 2008 keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced iTunes movie rentals.Movies are available for rent in the iTunes Store on the same day they are released on DVD.They are only viewable for 24 hours after users begin viewing them. This feature is not yet available in all countries but it is available in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.