Currently use windows media player, however prob getting iPhone in next month so presumably will have to get iTunes? Anything I should know. All my current music is mp3/wma format, will this have to change. What about if I then go to Android or similar after contract expires etc??

Used iTunes for a long time and, for me, it ‘just works’.

If you tell iTunes where to find your music, it will happily do the job of converting it into the appropriate formats for you. As with anything, you can improve your confidence of technology by backing up first.

Rachel

Bin using iTunes for 11 years now without issue.

wot he said ^^

Been using it since I shifted to Macs for computing about 10 years ago. Find it very user friendly on OSX, but I’ve heard it’s not so good on Windows for some reason.

Install iTunes and tell it where your current music library is…assuming you are happy with the encoding of mp3, then set iTunes up to encode in mp3 as well – so when you burn cds they will come in as .mp3 and not .aac.

Then just open iTunes and play your music…it’s pretty much that easy…iTunes may ask for permission to import your existing music into it’s library – I’d suggest no unless you want 2 copies of your existing library…as long as you add your existing music library folder to iTunes it will work fine.

can the iPhone play mp3?

Yes, iPhones and iPods are mp3 players, so they can.

Itunes is very easy to use, and very reliable. Would use it instead of windows media player even if I didn’t need it for my ipod.

never had a problem with itunes and really can’t see why some people have such an issue with it?

for android there is something called doubletwist that apparently talks to itunes, never really tried to use it so can’t be more helpful.

can itunes transfer wma to mp3??

or does iTunes only automatically transfer to aac?

or does iTunes only automatically transfer to aac?

Install iTunes and tell it where your current music library is…assuming you are happy with the encoding of mp3, then set iTunes up to encode in mp3 as well – so when you burn cds they will come in as .mp3 and not .aac.

But can it convert WMA?

Why would an Apple product convert to a microsoft format?
The answer is no.

Be very careful when you install itunes if you have all your music set up nice and neat or in some arrangement that you like. I guess the biggest issue people tend to have with itunes is that it takes control of any music it finds on your computer. It’s apple’s now.

There’s a tick box when you first install to stop it doing that, make sure you tick it if you don’t want this to happen. If you don’t care then no problem.

Why would an Apple product convert to a microsoft format?

I meant transfer from WMA to an alternative.

Yes we have a video.

Yes, it can convert that format to mp3…it did with mine. Just make sure you have the rip setting (I think) set to mp3 before you start.

There’s a tick box when you first install to stop it doing that, make sure you tick it if you don’t want this to happen. If you don’t care then no problem.

Yep. Make sure you tick the boxes to avoid it renaming/reorganising your music and the other one to stop it importing/copying all your music into the iTunes folder.

Do that and it will just play all your existing mp3s from their existing folders with no hassle.

Yes, make sure you untick “Keep iTune Media folder organized”
Otherwise it will rename you files according to the tags. Files that don’t have tags get renamed unknown!

Also, the copy to iTunes media folder will give you 2 copies of everything, so use wisely.

Yes we have a video.

Thank you, Vyvyan.

😆

Since discovering Spotify, I’ve not touched iTunes in years…

I would say tick the “keep itunes folder organised” box, it does it really well, and is well organised.

If your music isn’t tagged, then tag it, actually spending a bit of time getting everything sorted in the first few weeks of using itunes just makes the whole experience nicer in the long run. Adding the correct genres ect to all your music, makes play lists and listening options so much more expansive.

And If you have music ripped from cd’s into mp3’s, I would suggest ripping them again into apple lossless format, larger file size but better quality. If you don’t want to redo your old stuff, at least do future rips in that format (I don’t think it converts files imported from other folders, just when ripping cd’s).

If your music isn’t tagged, then tag it, actually spending a bit of time getting everything sorted in the first few weeks of using itunes just makes the whole experience nicer in the long run

Is this the modern day equivalent of stopping in to arrange your record collection into alphabetical order?

I highly recommend:

TuneUp

It is an add-on for iTunes that identifies your unlabelled music by listening to it and comparing against a database, gets hold of cover art, fixes missing tags, tracks, titles, genres. all good stuff.

[video]http://vimeo.com/17008069[/video]

Is this the modern day equivalent of stopping in to arrange your record collection into alphabetical order?

No, its the modern equivalent of making sure the records in a jukebox match up with the numbers you press to play them. and then adding extra functionality like being able to play music by genre or era or other common associations.

Its about actually using the possible functionality of modern technology to explore your music collection in different ways, instead of being being stuck in the past.

Sounds like an exciting process for sure

Is this the modern day equivalent of stopping in to arrange your record collection into alphabetical order?

MP3’s are slightly harder to browse through than a bunch CDs.
Especially if they’re not tagged.
I guess if you only have about 6 Dire Straits albums it doesn’t really matter.

Is this the modern day equivalent of stopping in to arrange your record collection into alphabetical order?

I think it’s more akin to putting all your CDs/vinyl/tapes/8-tracks back in the right boxes so you can find them again.