# Does a regular mp3 player work with iTunes



## deadfulscream (Aug 9, 2008)

Hi there...I have a somewhat stupid question...does a regular mp3 player work with iTunes, or do I have to just download Limewire for Mac and use it that way...thanks in advance to anyone that can help me out with this.


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## psxp (May 23, 2006)

deadfulscream said:


> Hi there...I have a somewhat stupid question...does a regular mp3 player work with iTunes, or do I have to just download Limewire for Mac and use it that way...thanks in advance to anyone that can help me out with this.


ITunes is for Apple Ipod and iPhone products ONLY.


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## CanadaRAM (Jul 24, 2005)

A non-Apple MP3 player will not play iTunes Music Store DRM tracks (AAC with Fairplay). It may or may not be able to play non-DRM AAC tracks, and won't be automatically recognized to sync or transfer tracks.

(Early versions of iTunes did support some non-Apple players - but I think that has been weeded out since then)

However if you have *MP3* files in the iTunes library, you could manually go into the iTunes library and copy and paste the MP3s to the player's memory or disk.


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## kevleviathan (Apr 9, 2008)

Checkout Songbird for an itunes-like media manager that works with many MP3 players.


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## Quicksilver G4 (Jan 29, 2008)

It depends on what you want to play, if you want to play MP3 or other formats supported by the MP3 player, I've seen, heard and used that some Creative players and RIO players work with iTunes.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

psxp said:


> ITunes is for Apple Ipod and iPhone products ONLY.


Wrong. I used to use my Rio 600 and Rio 800 with iTunes all the time, although syncing was not an option. But there was certainly no problem connecting and importing tracks from iTunes. The Rio came out before the iPod became popular.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

deadfulscream said:


> Hi there...I have a somewhat stupid question...


It's not a stupid question at all. It's not like Apple goes out of its way to make this clear, and other manufacturers are not very up-front about it particularly if their player is NOT compatible.



> does a regular mp3 player work with iTunes


Don't know quite what you mean by "regular" -- the iPod is far and away the market leader, IT is the "regular" music player and the other ones are the "non-standard" ones.

BUT

Contrary to what has been said by some here, there are quite a few non-Apple MP3 players can be seen by the Finder and/or iTunes, and non-DRM'd tracks (probably only MP3 format, most third-party players don't deal with AAC format) can be moved onto such a player manually or with the help of a third-party program. But sadly there's no _guarantee_ of compatibility with a non-Apple player, and I think it's safe to say that I'm not aware of any MP3 players that offer _full_ iTunes compatibility (ie syncing, store support, that sort of thing).

Not that I'm fond of monopolies, but frankly if you don't have an iPod you're missing out. There's actually a number of good reasons why Apple has like 80% marketshare in this arena. If possible, you may want to rid yourself of your third-party MP3 player and get an iPod of some type.

PS. For reasons I will not get into here but perhaps in future, actually buying music from the iTunes Store is, honestly, vastly superior to Slimewire. You would THINK that "free" beats out "a dollar" every time, but you'd be surprised.


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## deadfulscream (Aug 9, 2008)

Sorry about the confusion, I have a Sandisk mp3 player...I haven't even checked out iTunes yet, I'm going to tonight when I get home from work. With the discount that I get through work on Apple products, getting myself an ipod is looking better, just don't know which one to buy.


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## kevleviathan (Apr 9, 2008)

chas_m said:


> Not that I'm fond of monopolies, but frankly if you don't have an iPod you're missing out.


On what?



> There's actually a number of good reasons why Apple has like 80% marketshare in this arena.


Which reasons?


> If possible, you may want to rid yourself of your third-party MP3 player and get an iPod of some type.


Depends... there are many good alternatives to iPods.



> PS. For reasons I will not get into here but perhaps in future, actually buying music from the iTunes Store is, honestly, vastly superior to Slimewire. You would THINK that "free" beats out "a dollar" every time, but you'd be surprised.


DRM is bad. Anything you buy from the iTunes store is a bad decision in terms of future-proofing. I'm fine with rentals/subscriptions using DRM but songs that you outright purchase for 99cents each should not be DRMed. If you ever buy a non-Apple MP3 player those songs won't work.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

deadfulscream said:


> Sorry about the confusion, I have a Sandisk mp3 player...I haven't even checked out iTunes yet, I'm going to tonight when I get home from work. With the discount that I get through work on Apple products, getting myself an ipod is looking better, just don't know which one to buy.


The iPod Nano is a pretty good buy. Videos look great, you can scroll through cover flow of albums, and it's light, small and easy to use. We have four of them for the four members of our family. Also easy to convert TV shows, podcasts, YouTube videos, movies, WMA's, DivX files, or whatever you're little heart desires.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

kevleviathan said:


> Which reasons?


If you'll send me a PM I'll be happy to explain, but for once I'm going to resist the temptation to threadjack. 

Suffice to say the OP agreed with me in a PM.



> DRM is bad. Anything you buy from the iTunes store is a bad decision in terms of future-proofing.


See, this is why I don't want to get into this here. You are so biased against iTunes/iPods you are not even aware that the iTunes store sells non-DRM'd music, that Steve Jobs LED THE CHARGE for removing DRM from music files, and that Apple increases the number of non-DRM'd music they offer every week.



> If you ever buy a non-Apple MP3 player those songs won't work.


On top of everything else, this isn't true either. It's comically simple to remove the DRM from purchased songs, thus protecting your investment. Only an idiot wouldn't back up their purchases in non-DRM form, particularly when iTunes itself ENCOURAGES you to do this.


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## kevleviathan (Apr 9, 2008)

I AM aware that iTunes sells DRM-Free tracks, however they are more expensive and they don't have nearly enough of them. Meant to write "Any DRMed tracks that you buy". I'm very happy that Steve is with us in the fight against DRM but their store is still full of it. The Amazon music store is excellent - 100% DRM free.

I don't consider backing songs up to CD a viable option for "removing DRM" because it incurs a massive quality loss to re-rip the songs, not to mention a huge pain in terms of time.

Now I know there are some tools to circumvent the protection in M4A files but these are a bit of a grey market thing and iTunes hardly suggests you to work around its own copy protection.

Now having said all that I am an iPhone owner. I'm not biased either way. I use what's best for my given needs. Are iPods good? Sure. They do have limitations though and there are many players out there that are just as capable and then some. I don't agree with DRM and until the iTunes store is 100% DRM free it's not something I can fully be comfortable with.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

kevleviathan said:


> I AM aware that iTunes sells DRM-Free tracks, however they are more expensive


No, they're not. Again, you are wrong.



> I'm very happy that Steve is with us in the fight against DRM but their store is still full of it.


Take that up with the record companies, not Steve. It's THEM that keep DRM tracks in iTunes -- Steve made it EXCEPTIONALLY clear that he'd prefer to sell music without DRM.



> I don't consider backing songs up to CD a viable option for "removing DRM" because it incurs a massive quality loss to re-rip the songs, not to mention a huge pain in terms of time.


No loss of time at all -- you should ALWAYS back up your purchases to CD or DVD.

Not necessarily any quality loss -- the tracks were BOUGHT lossy, burned to CD in lossless format, and can be ripped back in another lossless format. Result: zero quality loss.



> Now I know there are some tools to circumvent the protection in M4A files but these are a bit of a grey market thing and iTunes hardly suggests you to work around its own copy protection.


iTunes DOES INDEED suggest you back up your purchases to CD (even offers to step you through it!), knowing full well that doing so removes the DRM. Sorry, wrong again.


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## kevleviathan (Apr 9, 2008)

chas_m said:


> No, they're not. Again, you are wrong.


Oh did they change this? I know they USED to be more expensive.





> Take that up with the record companies, not Steve. It's THEM that keep DRM tracks in iTunes -- Steve made it EXCEPTIONALLY clear that he'd prefer to sell music without DRM.


That's fine... I never said he was encouraging it. I'm all for calling the labels out.





> No loss of time at all -- you should ALWAYS back up your purchases to CD or DVD.


I back my files up to hard drives, I don't need to do discs as well. This is a digital age, I don't need hundreds of CDs floating around. Also I was more referring to the fact that, should you need to re-rip all those backups, it would take an ungodly amount of time (well at least for a medium/large collection).



> Not necessarily any quality loss -- the tracks were BOUGHT lossy, burned to CD in lossless format, and can be ripped back in another lossless format. Result: zero quality loss.


Clever, although this will greatly reduce the number of songs my poor 8GB iPhone can hold. I'd rather use the Fair Use removal tools to keep the songs in their original bit-for-bit state.



> iTunes DOES INDEED suggest you back up your purchases to CD (even offers to step you through it!), knowing full well that doing so removes the DRM. Sorry, wrong again.


You really know how to twist words to suit your needs don't you? I never said iTunes doesn't ask you to backup files to CD. I'm well aware that is suggested practice. I was making a sarcastic comment that iTunes (I suppose more accurately the record labels) doesn't want you using tools like QTFairUse to remove copy protection by capturing the decoded audio stream from your RAM.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

I think chas can pee farther than kev, but not by much.


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## deadfulscream (Aug 9, 2008)

hey everyone, i have to apologize, i didn't mean to cause any sort of arguments here, although i did learn that it's a good idea to back up my iTunes collection, even though it only consists of songs that i've ripped off of my own cds. (not too sure why i didn't think of that, must've been having a major brain fart) i ended up buying an 80 gig black iPod classic, and love it. (my sandisk 2 gig mp3 player just wasn't doing it for me.) i was very pleasantly surprised to find out that all the songs rare songs that i've downloaded from limewire are available on iTunes, so at least now i will have legitimate copies of songs and not feel guilty about taking money away from the artists that made these songs. (i know that what they actually make is a very small amount, but if i like the artist enough i just go to the concerts...i live in Windsor, Ont. which is about 1.5 km from Detriot, Mi., which is the best place to see a concert)...thanks to everyone that's responded to this post, and hope there's no hard feelings with anyone. i'm pretty new to mac and that's why i asked the original question, i didn't know enough about iPods and iTunes as well as Mac.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

kevleviathan said:


> Oh did they change this? I know they USED to be more expensive.


Yes, when they were initially introduced they were more expensive. You're right.



> I back my files up to hard drives, I don't need to do discs as well.


But hard drives fail. And, just as a happy side note, backing up your purchased music to CD or DVD removes any DRM.



> Also I was more referring to the fact that, should you need to re-rip all those backups, it would take an ungodly amount of time (well at least for a medium/large collection).


True dat, but it's just down to personal choice (or size of purchased downloaded music collection) whether it makes more sense (in the "I lost em all" scenario) to re-rip or to re-buy.



> Clever, although this will greatly reduce the number of songs my poor 8GB iPhone can hold. I'd rather use the Fair Use removal tools to keep the songs in their original bit-for-bit state.


I use a slightly different strategy: songs I cannot purchase without DRM, I buy on CD (without DRM). Thus, most of my music library is DRM-free.



> I was making a sarcastic comment that iTunes (I suppose more accurately the record labels) doesn't want you using tools like QTFairUse to remove copy protection by capturing the decoded audio stream from your RAM.


I apologise for not understanding your sarcasm, but I'm glad that through this conversation you have learned that DRM-free tracks are cheaper than you thought they were, and that its the record companies that are crimping consumers' style, not iTunes/Apple/Jobs per se.

Cheers!


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

deadfulscream said:


> hey everyone, i have to apologize, i didn't mean to cause any sort of arguments here


No arguments here, just healthy, passionate, vigourous conversation. 



> thanks to everyone that's responded to this post, and hope there's no hard feelings with anyone.


Speaking only for myself, I'm glad you picked up a thing or two and I wasn't trying to argue, merely set the record straight. No hard feelings on my part towards anyone and I hope they feel the same.


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

chas_m said:


> But hard drives fail. And, just as a happy side note, backing up your purchased music to CD or DVD removes any DRM.


As do CDs and DVDs. I recommend both.


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## ahMEmon (Sep 27, 2005)

kevleviathan said:


> DRM is bad. Anything you buy from the iTunes store is a bad decision in terms of future-proofing. I'm fine with rentals/subscriptions using DRM but songs that you outright purchase for 99cents each should not be DRMed. If you ever buy a non-Apple MP3 player those songs won't work.


I still buy from iTunes on a regular basis, but the very minute a track is downloaded, I use the iMovie trick to remove the DRM and convert it to whatever format is most useful to me before I do anything else with it.

I dont know if it's Kosher to share that trick here. Mods, is it ok?


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## CanadaRAM (Jul 24, 2005)

chas_m said:


> But hard drives fail. And, just as a happy side note, backing up your purchased music to CD or DVD removes any DRM.


That is only selectively true. 
Backing up to an AUDIO CD removes DRM.

Backing up to a data CD or DVD preserves the AAC files in their original state, if they are Fairplay they will continue to be Fairplay,

kevleviathan- I fail to see how a software tool which captures an audio stream decoded from a lossy files, and re-rips it to a file, can be any greater quality than writing an Audio CD from a lossy file, and then re-ripping that to a file. 

In both cases, the source audio contains the artifacts of the original lossy compression. In both cases, the final output is affected (or not) by the choice of ripping scheme and recompression. You seem to be arguing that a 1000 ml bucket can hold more than a 1 litre bucket.


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## zc11 (Jul 21, 2008)

I burn them to CD then rip them from the CD. It's a hassle, but it works well enough.


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