Chapter 13

The Multimedia Joy of iTunes

In This Chapter

Playing music with your iMac

Arranging and organizing your music collection

Tuning into the world with Internet radio

Sharing your songs across a network

Creating eye candy with the Visualizer

Buying the good stuff from the iTunes Store

Sometimes, words just aren’t enough. iTunes is that kind of perfection.

To envision how iTunes changes your iMac, you have to paint the picture with music — music that’s easy to play, search, and transfer from device to device. Whether it be classical, alternative, jazz, rock, hip-hop, or folk, I can guarantee you that you won’t find a better application than iTunes to fill your life with your music. And podcasts. And video. And TV shows. And online education. And Internet radio. (See how hard it is to pin down this wonderful application? Along with your iMac, iTunes really does form the hub of your digital lifestyle.)

In this chapter, I lead you through all the features of my absolute favorite member of the iLife suite … and it’s going to be pretty doggone obvious how much I appreciate this one piece of software.

What Can I Play on iTunes?

Simply put, iTunes is a media player; it plays audio and video files. These files can be in any of many different formats. Some of the more common audio formats that iTunes supports are

• MP3: The small size of MP3 files has made them popular for file trading on the Internet. You can reduce MP3 files to a ridiculously small size (albeit at the expense of audio fidelity), but a typical CD-quality, three-minute pop song in MP3 format has a size of 3–5MB.
• AAC: AAC (short for Advanced Audio Coding) is an audio format that’s very similar to MP3; in fact, AAC files offer better recording quality at the same file sizes. However, this format is less compatible with non-Apple MP3 players and software. (Luckily, you can still burn AAC tracks to an audio CD, just as you can MP3 tracks.) The tracks that you download from the iTunes Store are in AAC format.

  The iTunes Store’s iTunes Plus tracks are also in AAC format, and these tracks are also not copy-protected, and they’re encoded at a higher-quality 256 Kbps rate — hence their higher price.

• Apple Lossless: Another format direct from Apple, Apple Lossless format provides the best compromise between file size and sound quality: These tracks are encoded without loss of quality. However, Apple Lossless tracks are somewhat larger than AAC, so this format is generally the favorite of the most discerning audiophiles.
• AIFF: The standard Macintosh audio format produces sound of the absolute highest quality. This high quality, however, also means that the files are pretty doggone huge. A typical pop song in AIFF format has a size of 30–50MB (about 10MB per minute of audio).
• WAV: Not to be outdone, Microsoft created its own audio file format (WAV) that works much like AIFF. It can reproduce sound at higher quality than MP3, but the file sizes are very large, virtually identical in size to AIFF files. (Think 10MB of hard drive space per minute of audio.)
• CD audio: iTunes can play audio CDs. Because you don’t usually store CD audio anywhere but on an audio CD, file size is no big whoop (but once again, 10MB of hard drive space per minute of music is a good approximation).
• MP2: A close cousin of the far more popular MP3 format, MP2 is the preferred format in radio broadcasting and is a standard audio format for HDV camcorders. It produces file sizes similar to MP3 format.
• Movies and video: You can buy and download full-length movies, TV shows, music videos, and movie trailers from the iTunes Store … and, with an Apple TV unit connected to your home theater system, you can watch those movies and videos from the comfort of your sofa on the other side of your living room (or even from your bedroom on the other side of your house). The movies you buy and rent from the iTunes Store are copy protected and can be retrieved only with your Apple ID.
• Podcasts: These audio downloads are like public-access radio and TV programs for your iPod, but iTunes can play and organize them, too. Some podcasts also include video and photos to boot.
• iTunes U: iTunes offers educational materials (such as slideshows, presentations, and class recordings) from a wide variety of colleges and technical institutions — and virtually all are free for the download!
• Ringtones: iPhone owners, rejoice! iTunes automatically offers to create ringtones for your iPhone (and iPad and iPod touch) from the tracks you’ve bought on the iTunes Store. (You can also create ringtones with GarageBand, using songs you’ve added to your iTunes library or tunes you’ve composed yourself.) You can even use these ringtones on your iMac, with the FaceTime and Messages applications.
• Audiobooks: No longer do you need cassettes or audio CDs to enjoy your spoken books. iTunes can play them for you, or you can send them to your iPod, iPhone, or iPad for listening on the go.
• Streaming Internet radio: You can listen to a continuous broadcast of songs from one of tens of thousands of Internet radio stations, with quality levels ranging from what you’d expect from FM radio to the full quality of an audio CD. You can’t save the music in iTunes, but streaming radio is still great fun. (In fact, I run my own station… . More on MLC Radio later in the chapter.)

Playing an Audio CD

If you have an external optical drive (or an older iMac with a built-in SuperDrive), playing an audio CD in iTunes is easy. Insert the CD in your drive’s disc slot or tray, start iTunes by clicking its icon on the Dock, and click the Play button. (Note that your iMac might be set to automatically launch iTunes when you insert an audio CD.) The iTunes interface resembles that of a traditional cassette or CD player. The main playback controls of iTunes are Play, Previous Song, Next Song, and the volume slider, as shown in Figure 13-1.

Click the Play button to begin listening to a song. While a song is playing, the Play button toggles to a Pause button. Clicking that button again pauses the music. If you don’t feel like messing around with the mouse or trackpad, you can always use the keyboard. The spacebar acts as the Play and Pause buttons. Press the spacebar to begin playback; press it again to pause.

Click the Next Song button to advance to the next song on the CD. The Previous Song button works like the Next Song button but with a slight twist: If a song is playing and you click the Previous Song button, iTunes first returns to the beginning of the current song (just like a CD player). To advance to the previous song, double-click the Previous Song button. To change the volume of your music, click and drag the volume slider.

As with other Macintosh applications, you can control much of iTunes with the keyboard. Table 13-1 lists some of the more common iTunes keyboard shortcuts.

Table 13-1 Common iTunes Keyboard Shortcuts

Playing Digital Audio and Video

In addition to playing audio CDs, iTunes can play the digital audio files that you download from the Internet or obtain from other sources in the WAV, AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, MP2, and MP3 file formats. (Read all about these different formats earlier in this chapter.)

Enjoying a digital audio file is just slightly more complicated than playing a CD. After downloading or saving your audio files to your iMac, open the Finder and navigate to the stored files. Then simply drag the music files (or an entire folder of music) from the Finder into the Music entry in the iTunes Source list. The added files appear in the Music section of your iTunes Library. Think of the Library as a master list of your digital media.

To view the Music Library, select the Music entry in the left column of the iTunes player, as shown in Figure 13-2. Heck, you can also drag a song file from a Finder window and drop it on the iTunes icon on the Dock, which adds it to your Music Library as well. (In a similar manner, you can view your movies and TV shows by clicking their entries in the Source list. Right now, however, the focus is on music, so I discuss playing video in more depth later in the chapter.)

If the Sidebar at the left side of the iTunes window isn’t displayed as it is in Figures 13-1 and 13-2, choose View⇒Show Sidebar, or press +Option+S.

If you drop the file on top of a playlist name in the Source list, iTunes adds it to that particular playlist as well as the main Library. (More about playlists in a bit.) If you drop a folder of songs on top of the Playlists header, iTunes creates a new playlist using the name of the folder and adds all the songs in the folder to the new playlist.

To play a song, just double-click it in the Music list. Alternatively, you can use the playback controls (Play, Previous Song, and Next Song) that I discuss earlier in this chapter (refer to Figure 13-1).

The Source list of iTunes can list up to eight possible sources for music:

• Library: This section contains Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, iTunes U, Apps (for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad), Ringtones (for both mobile devices and your iMac), iPod Games, and Radio. (Think Internet radio, which I discuss further in the upcoming section, “Internet Radio.”)
• Store: I discuss the iTunes Store in the later section, “Buying Digital Media the Apple Way.”
• Devices: If an iPod is connected, it appears in the list. (And yes, Virginia, other models of MP3 players from other companies will also appear in the list if iTunes supports them.) If you connect an iPhone or iPad to your iMac, it shows up here as well.
• Genius: Click the Genus heading and click the Turn On Genius button to allow iTunes to automatically create playlists from songs in your iTunes music library. You can also allow Genius to recommend music, movies, and TV shows based on the titles you already have in your iTunes Library. (More on this feature later in the chapter.)
• Playlists: Think of playlists as folders you use to organize your music. (More on playlists later in this chapter.)
• Audio CD: Load a standard audio CD, and it appears under the Devices heading … anything from the Bee Gees to Justin Timberlake.
• Shared: If another Mac or PC on your local network is running iTunes and is set to share part or all of its library, you can connect to the other computer for your music. (Shared music on another Mac appears as a separate, named folder in the Source list.)
• Home Sharing: You can turn on Home Sharing to share your iMac’s media library across your wireless network with up to five other computers (PCs and Macs), as well as devices like iPhones, iPads, and the iPod touch. (More on Home Sharing later in the chapter.)

If you’ve invested in an Apple TV, it appears in the list as well, allowing iTunes to share media with your Apple TV, which in turn sends it to your ED- (enhanced definition) or HD- (high definition) TV.

Notice also that the Library displays information for each song that you add to it, such as

• Name: The title of the song
• Time: The length of the song
• Artist: The artist who performs the song
• Album: The album on which the song appears

If some of the songs that you’re adding don’t display anything for the title, album, or artist information, don’t panic; most MP3 files have embedded data that iTunes can read. If a song doesn’t include any data, you can always add the information to these fields manually. I show you how later, in the section “Setting or changing song information manually.”

Clicking any column heading in the Library list causes iTunes to reorder the Library according to that category. For example, clicking the Name column heading alphabetizes your Library by song title. I click the Time heading often to sort my Library according to the length of the songs. Oh, and you can drag column titles to reorder them any way you like (except for the checkbox column at the far left, which remains fixed).

You can browse your Music Library in a number of ways. First, click the Music entry (beneath Library, in the Source list) to select it. By default, the application uses Songs mode (active in Figure 13-2), where each song is one entry. Then click the

• Third mode button to sort your Library into tracks by album
• Fourth mode button to group tracks by artist
• Fifth mode button to browse by musical genre

You can also view your iTunes Radio and Internet Radio stations, or see your iTunes Match library in iCloud. All three modes require an Internet connection, and I cover them later in the chapter.

Browsing the Library

After you add a few dozen songs to iTunes, viewing the Library can become a task. Although viewing a master list is nice for some purposes, it becomes as cumbersome as an elephant in a subway tunnel if the list is very long. To help out, iTunes can display your Library in another format, too: namely, browsing mode. To display the Library in browsing mode, click the View menu, hover your cursor over the Column Browser item, and click the Show Browser item, or press the +B keyboard shortcut.

The Browse mode of iTunes displays your library in a compact fashion, organizing your tunes into these sections:

• Genres
• Artists
• Albums
• Composers
• Groupings

When you select an artist from the Artists list, iTunes displays that artist’s albums in the Albums list. Select an album from the Albums list, and iTunes displays that album’s songs in the bottom section of the Browse window. (Those Apple software designers … always thinking of you and me.) You can also specify which sections you want included in Browse mode from the View⇒Column Browser menu item. Click a section name to toggle the display of that section.

Finding songs in your Music Library

As your collection of audio files grows large, you might have trouble locating that Swedish remix version of “I’m Your Boogie Man.” To help you out, iTunes has a built-in Search function. To find a song, type some text into the Search field of the main iTunes window. While you type, iTunes tries to find a selection that matches your search text. The search is quite thorough, showing any matching text from the artist, album, song title, and genre fields in the results. For example, if you type electronic into the field, iTunes might return results for the band named Electronic or other tunes that you classified as electronic in the Genre field. (The section “Know Your Songs,” later in this chapter, tells you how to classify your songs by genre, among other options.) Click the magnifying glass at the left side of the Search field to restrict the search by Artists, Albums, Composers, and Songs.

Removing old music from the Library

After you spend some time playing songs with iTunes, you might decide that you didn’t really want to add 40 different versions of “Louie Louie” to your Library. (Personally, I prefer either the original or the cast from the movie Animal House.) To remove a song from the Library, click the song to select it and then press the Delete key on your keyboard.

You can also remove a song from the Library by dragging it to the Trash on your Dock.

Watching video

Watching video in iTunes is similar to listening to music. To view your video collection, click one of these entries in the Source list:

• Movies
• TV Shows

Whether you select Movies or TV Shows, iTunes displays your videos as thumbnails or in Cover Flow view. Music videos appear as a Smart Playlist, and they also appear in the Music library.

From your collection, you can

• Double-click a video thumbnail or an entry in the list.
• Drag a QuickTime video clip from the Finder window to the iTunes window. Video files that can be viewed using QuickTime typically have the file extensions .mov or .mp4.

iTunes plays video in the box below the Source list, within the iTunes window, in a separate window, or in full-screen mode, depending on the setting you choose from the View⇒Video Playback menu item. In full-screen mode, move your pointer to display a control strip at the bottom of the screen. The control strip sports a slider bar that you can drag to move through the video, a volume control, Play/Pause, and Fast Forward/Reverse buttons.

Keeping Slim Whitman and Slim Shady Apart: Organizing with Playlists

Your iTunes Music Library can contain thousands upon thousands of songs: If your Library grows anywhere near that large, finding all the songs in your lifelong collection of Paul Simon albums is not a fun task. Furthermore, with the Library, you’re stuck playing songs in the order that iTunes lists them.

To help you organize your music into groups, use the iTunes playlist feature. A playlist is a collection of some of your favorite songs from the Library. You can create as many playlists as you want, and each playlist can contain any number of songs. Whereas the Library lists all available songs, a playlist displays only the songs that you add to it. Further, any changes that you make to a playlist affect only that playlist, leaving the Library untouched.

To create a playlist, you can do any of the following:

• Choose File⇒New Playlist.
• Press +N.
• Choose File⇒New Playlist from Selection. This creates a new playlist and automatically adds any tracks that are currently selected.
• Right-click a song and choose Create Genius Playlist from the menu that appears. iTunes builds a playlist of songs that are similar in some way (typically by matching the genre of the selection or the beats per minute, but also based on recommendations from other iTunes members).

  Your iMac needs an Internet connection to create a Genius playlist, and the larger your music library, the longer it will take iTunes to build your playlist. You’ll also need to turn on the Genius feature (choose Store⇒Turn on Genius and enter your Apple ID).

  Genius playlists can sometimes mix tracks with explicit content with less-objectionable material — especially in the comedy and rap genres.

• Drag a folder containing audio files from a Finder window onto the Playlists heading.
• Click the New Playlist button in the iTunes window (the plus sign button in the lower-left corner) and choose New Playlist. You get a newly created empty playlist (the toe-tappin’ untitled playlist).

All playlists appear in the Source list. To help organize your playlists, it’s a good idea to, well, name them. (Aren’t you glad now that you have this book?) For example, suppose you’re planning a party for your polka-loving friends. Instead of running to your computer after each song to change the music, you could create a polka-only playlist. Select and start the playlist at the beginning of the party, and you won’t have to worry about changing the music the whole night. (You can concentrate on the accordion.) To load a playlist, select it in the Source list; iTunes displays the songs for that playlist.

The same song can appear in any number of playlists because the songs in a playlist are simply pointers to songs in your Music Library — not the songs themselves. Add and remove them at will to or from any playlist, secure in the knowledge that the songs remain safe in the Library. Removing a playlist is simple: Select the playlist in the Source list and then press Delete. Bottom line: Removing a playlist doesn’t actually delete any songs from your Library.

Know Your Songs

Besides organizing your music into Elvis and non-Elvis playlists, iTunes gives you the option to track your music at the song level. Each song that you add to the Music Library has a complete set of information associated with it. (See upcoming Figure 13-3.) iTunes displays this information in the Info dialog, including

• Name: The name of the song
• Artist: The name of the artist who performed the song
• Album Artist: The name of the artist responsible for a compilation or tribute album
• Album: The album where the song appears
• Grouping: A group type that you assign
• Composer: The name of the astute individual who actually wrote the song
• Comments: A text field that can contain any comments on the song
• Genre: The classification of the song (such as rock, jazz, or pop)
• Year: The year the artist recorded the song
• Track Number: The position of the song on the original album
• Disc Number: The original disc number in a multi-CD set
• BPM: The beats per minute (indicates the song’s tempo)

You can display this information by clicking a song name and pressing +I; the fields appear on the Info tab.

Setting the song information automatically

Each song that you add to the iTunes Music Library might have song information included with it. If you add music from a commercial audio CD, iTunes connects to a server on the Internet and attempts to find the information for each song on the CD. If you download a song from the Internet, it often comes with some information embedded in the file already; the amount of included information depends on what the creator supplied. (And believe me, it’s often misspelled as well — think Leenard Skeenard.) If you don’t have an Internet connection, iTunes can’t access the information and displays generic titles instead.

Setting or changing song information manually

If iTunes can’t find your CD in the online database or someone gives you an MP3 with incomplete or inaccurate information, you can change the information yourself — and believe me, you want at least the artist and song name! To view and change the information for a song, perform the following steps:

1. Select the song in either the Music Library list or a playlist.
2. Press +I or choose File⇒Get Info.
3. Edit the song’s information under the Info tab, as shown in Figure 13-3.

The more work you put into setting the information of the songs in your Music Library, the easier it is to browse and use iTunes. Incomplete song information can make it more difficult to find your songs in a hurry. If you prefer, you don’t have to change all information about a song (it just makes life easier later if you do). Normally, you can get away with setting only a song’s title, artist, album, and genre. The more information you put in, however, the faster you can locate songs and the easier they are to arrange. iTunes tries to help by automatically retrieving known song information, but sometimes you have to roll up your sleeves and do a little work. (Sorry, but some things just can’t be automated.)

“What about cover art, Mark?” Well, I’m overjoyed that you asked! iTunes can try to locate artwork automatically for the tracks you select. (Note that embedding large images can significantly increase the size of the song file.) Follow these steps:

1. Select the desired songs from the track list.
2. Choose File⇒Library⇒Get Album Artwork.

You can set iTunes to automatically attempt the addition of album artwork every time you rip tracks from an audio CD, or when you add songs without artwork to your Music Library. Choose iTunes⇒Preferences, click the Store button, and select the Automatically Download Album Artwork check box. (By the way, if you buy tracks or an album from the iTunes Store, Apple always includes album covers automatically. Thanks, Cupertino crowd!)

Want to manually add album covers to your song info? Select one (or all) of the songs from a single album in the track list, display the Info dialog, and click the Artwork tab. Now launch Safari, visit Amazon.com, and do a search on the same album (or search an online artwork library like AllCDCovers.com (www.allcdcovers.com). Drag the cover image from the web page right into the Info dialog and drop it on top of the “sunken square” image well. When you click OK, the image appears in the Summary pane, and you can display it while your music is playing by pressing +G or clicking the Show or Hide Song Artwork button at the lower left of the iTunes window.

Ripping Audio Files

You don’t have to rely on Internet downloads to get audio files. If your iMac is equipped with an optical drive, you can create your own MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV files from your audio CDs with iTunes. The process of converting audio files to different formats is ripping. (Audiophiles with technical teeth also call this process “digital extraction,” but they’re usually ignored at parties by the popular crowd.) Depending on what hardware or software you use, each has its own unique format preferences.

The most common type of ripping is to convert CD audio to AAC or MP3 format. To rip MP3s from an audio CD, follow these simple steps:

1. Launch iTunes by clicking its icon on the Dock.

   Alternatively, you can locate iTunes in your Applications folder or from Launchpad.

2. Choose iTunes⇒Preferences.
3. In the Preferences window that appears, click the General toolbar button.
4. Click the Import Settings button that appears at the bottom of the Preferences dialog.
5. Choose MP3 Encoder from the Import Using pop-up menu.
6. Choose High Quality (160 Kbps) from the Setting pop-up menu, click OK to return to the Preferences dialog, and then click OK again to return to iTunes.

   This bit rate setting provides the best compromise between quality (better than CD quality, which is 128 Kbps) and file size (tracks will be significantly smaller than audiophile bit rates, such as 192 Kbps or higher).

7. Load an audio CD into your iMac’s optical drive.

   The CD title shows up in the iTunes Source list (under the Devices heading, on the left side of the iTunes window). The CD track listing appears on the right side of the window.

   If iTunes asks you whether you want to import the contents of the CD into your Music Library, you can click Yes and skip the rest of the steps; however, if you’ve disabled this prompt, just continue with the remaining two steps.

8. Clear the check box of any song that you don’t want to import from the CD.

   All songs on the CD have a check box next to their title by default. Unmarked songs aren’t imported. The Browse button changes to Import CD.

9. Click the Import CD button.

Here’s an additional form of ripping: If you have a USB turntable or cassette deck connected to your iMac, you can digitize your old analog recordings on albums and cassettes into shiny digital audio files. You might find just buying the same music from the iTunes Store simpler, but if your treasured music isn’t available on the Store or on audio CD, it’s the next best thing!

Tweaking the Audio for Your Ears

Besides the standard volume controls that I mention earlier in this chapter, iTunes offers a full equalizer. An equalizer permits you to alter the volume of various frequencies in your music, allowing you to boost low sounds, lower high sounds, or anything in between.

To open the Equalizer (shown in Figure 13-4), choose Window⇒Equalizer or press +Option+2. Use the leftmost slider (Preamp) to set the overall level of the Equalizer. The remaining sliders represent various frequencies that the human ear can perceive. Setting a slider to a position in the middle of its travel causes that frequency to play back with no change. Move the slider above the midpoint to boost that frequency; conversely, move the slider below the midpoint to reduce the volume of that frequency.

Continue adjusting the Equalizer sliders until your music sounds the way you like it. In case you prefer to leave frequencies to the experts, the iTunes Equalizer has several predefined settings to match most musical styles. Open the pop-up menu at the top of the Equalizer window to choose a genre. After you adjust the sound to your satisfaction, close the Equalizer window to return to the iTunes interface and relax with those funky custom notes from James Brown. iTunes remembers your settings until you change them again.

A New Kind of Radio Station

Besides playing back your favorite audio files, iTunes can also tune in Internet radio stations from around the globe. You can listen to any of a large number of preset stations, seek out lesser-known stations not recognized by iTunes, or even add your favorite stations to your playlists. You can also use the new iTunes Radio feature to create a custom station dedicated to just the genres and artists you prefer. This section shows you how to do it all.

Internet radio

Although it’s not a radio tuner in the strictest sense, iTunes can locate virtual radio stations all over the world that send audio over the Internet — a process usually dubbed “streaming.” iTunes can track down hundreds of Internet radio stations in a variety of styles with only a few mouse clicks.

To begin listening to Internet radio with iTunes, click the Internet button located at the top of the window. (If the Internet button doesn’t appear, click the iTunes menu and click Preferences, then click the Internet Radio checkbox on the General pane to enable it.) The result is a list of more than 20 types of radio stations, organized by genre.

When you expand an Internet category by clicking its disclosure triangle, iTunes queries a tuning server and locates the name and address of dozens of radio stations for that category. Whether you like Elvis or not-Elvis (those passing fads, such as new wave, classical, or alternative), something’s here for everyone. The Internet also offers news, sports, and talk radio.

After iTunes fetches the names and descriptions of radio stations, double-click one that you want to hear. iTunes immediately jumps into action, connects to the station, and begins to play it.

Tuning in your own stations

Although iTunes offers you a large list of popular radio stations on the web, it’s by no means comprehensive. Eventually, you might run across a radio station that you’d like to hear but don’t find listed in iTunes. Luckily, iTunes permits you to listen to other stations, too. To listen to a radio station that iTunes doesn’t list, you need the station’s web address.

In iTunes, choose File⇒Open Stream (or press +U). In the Open Stream dialog that appears (as shown in Figure 13-5), enter the URL of your desired radio station and then click OK. Within seconds, iTunes tunes in your station.

Radio stations in your playlists

If you find yourself visiting an online radio station more than once, you’ll be glad to know that iTunes supports radio stations in its playlists. To add a radio station to a playlist from the Radio list, do the following:

1. Open the category that contains the station you want to add to your playlist.
2. Locate the station that you want to add to your playlist and drag it from the Radio list to the desired playlist on the left.

   If you haven’t created any playlists yet, see the section “Keeping Slim Whitman and Slim Shady Apart: Organizing with Playlists,” earlier in this chapter, to find out how.

Adding a radio station that doesn’t appear in the Radio list is a bit trickier but possible nonetheless. Even though iTunes allows you to load a radio station URL manually by using the Open Stream command from the Advanced menu, it doesn’t give you an easy way to add it to the playlist. Follow these steps to add a specific radio station to a playlist:

1. Add any radio station from the Radio list to your desired playlist.

   Any station in the list will do because you’ll immediately change both the station’s URL and name to create your new station entry in the playlist.

2. Press +I or choose File⇒Get Info to bring up the information dialog for that station.
3. Click the Summary section and change the URL by clicking the Edit URL button.
4. Enter the desired URL and click OK.
5. Click the Info tab, type the new station name, and then click OK.

Creating a custom iTunes Radio station

The recent addition of iTunes Radio makes it possible for you to listen to the artists, songs, and genres that you prefer in iTunes, without selecting a specific Internet radio station! To use iTunes Radio, click the Radio button at the top of the iTunes window, and then type the artist name, song name, or genre you’d like to add to your station.

As you download new music from the iTunes Store (and add new artists and genres in iTunes Radio), the service learns more about your musical tastes and can automatically play and recommend new music, much like the Genius feature that I discuss earlier in this chapter.

Like Internet radio, the iTunes Store, and the Apple iTunes Match subscription service, iTunes Radio requires an Internet connection and an Apple ID.

Your iTunes Radio station is automatically shared among all your Macs running OS X Lion or later (as well as any devices you own running iOS 7 or later).

iTunes and iCloud Together

iTunes is connected closely with the Apple iCloud service, allowing you to share music betwixt all your Macs and iOS devices. But how do you pull your audio and video out of that floating nimbus? Try this: Sign in with your Apple ID, select your Music Library in the Source list, and then choose View⇒Show Music in the Cloud. Bam! All the audio and video that you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store appears in your Library. Note, however, that those items don’t exist on your local drive — consider those entries as placeholders for the stuff you can download, allowing you to see (and search for) what’s available through iCloud. (And, if you’ve purchased as much from the iTunes Store as I have, you’ll save many, many gigabytes of storage space on your iMac’s drive by just downloading certain songs.)

To download a local copy of any iCloud item, simply click the iCloud icon next to the item. After the local copy is saved to your iMac’s drive, the iCloud icon disappears, and you’re ready to listen or watch your purchase.

To hide the iCloud placeholder entries from your Library and display just the stuff on your Mac’s drive, choose View⇒Hide Music in the Cloud.

Apple’s iTunes Match subscription service builds on this same functionality, allowing you to store all your music in iCloud (including the songs you’ve ripped from audio CDs and downloaded from other sources) and listen to it on any of your Macs or iOS devices! When you join iTunes Match, all the songs that aren’t available from the iTunes Store are automatically uploaded to iCloud.

At the time of this writing, the service is $25 per year and is limited to a maximum of 10 devices and 25,000 songs. Note: Purchases you make from the iTunes Store don’t count toward that 25,000 song limit.

To subscribe to iTunes Match or manage your Match storage, click the Match button at the top of the iTunes window.

iSending iStuff to iPod, iPhone, and iPad

If you’re cool enough to own an iPod, you’ll be happy to know that iTunes has features for your personal audio and video jukebox as well. iPods, Apple’s multimedia players, comprise an entire family of portable devices (ranging from $49 to about $249) that can hold anywhere from about several hundred to literally thousands of songs, as well as podcasts, photos, and video. This great gadget and those like it have become known worldwide as the preferred portable digital media player.

If you own an iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad, you probably already know that these devices can act as your music player as well. You can buy all sorts of applications for these devices on the iTunes Store, and iTunes even keeps track of these applications as part of your iTunes Library.

You connect your iPod to any Macintosh or Windows PC with USB 2.0 ports with the included cable. After the iPod is connected, you can synchronize the iPod with iTunes. By default, this process is automatic: The iPod and the iTunes software communicate with each other and figure out what items are in your iTunes Library (as compared with the iPod Library). If they discover songs, podcasts, and video in your iTunes Library that are missing from your iPod, the items automatically transfer to the iPod. Conversely, if the iPod contains stuff that’s no longer in iTunes, the iPod automatically removes those files from its drive.

Go back and reread that last sentence above about the iPod automatically removing files from its drive. (I’ll wait here.) Apple added this feature in an effort to be attentive to copyright concerns. The reasoning is that if you connect your iPod to your friend’s computer, you can’t transfer songs from the iPod to that computer. Of course, you could always look at it from the marketing perspective as a feature that makes sure your iMac and iPod are always in total sync. Whatever the case, pay close attention and read all warning dialogs when connecting to a computer other than your own, or you might wipe out your iPod’s library.

You can change your settings so that iTunes auto-syncs only selected playlists. Or if you’re really nervous, you can manually manage the contents of your iPod with iTunes.

Sharing Media across a Network

Ready to share music, podcasts, and video — legally, mind you — with other folks on your local network? You can offer your digital media to other iTunes users across your home or office. Follow these steps:

1. Choose iTunes⇒Preferences to open the Preferences dialog.
2. Click Sharing.
3. Select the Share My Library on My Local Network check box.
4. Specify whether you want to share your entire library or only selected playlists and files.

   Sharing selected playlists is a good idea for those Meatmen and Sex Pistols fans who work at a cubicle farm in a big corporation.

5. If you want to restrict access to just a few people, select the Require Password check box; then type a password in the text box.
6. Click OK.

Your shared folder appears within the Source list for all iTunes users who enabled the Look for Shared Libraries check box on the General pane of their iTunes Preferences dialog. Note that the music you share with others can’t be imported or copied, so everything stays legal.

Want to change that frumpy default name for your shared media library to something more exotic, like “Dan’s Techno Beat Palace”? No problem. Display the Preferences dialog again, but this time, click the General button, click in the Library Name text box, and edit your network entertainment persona to your heart’s content.

You can also share your media library by using Home Sharing, which allows multiple devices to join in the fun. That includes both Mac computers and iOS devices (your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, running iOS 4.3 or later). Home Sharing requires a wireless network connection for all your devices, and you’ll have to enter the same Apple ID information on each device. To turn on Home Sharing in iTunes, choose File from the iTunes menu, hover your cursor over the Home Sharing submenu, and choose Turn On Home Sharing. (Don’t forget to repeat this setup on each computer.) After Home Sharing is enabled, shared libraries will appear in the Source list under the Shared heading.

Burning Music to Shiny Plastic Circles

Besides being a great audio player, iTunes is adept at creating CDs. iTunes makes recording songs to a CD as simple as a few clicks. Making the modern version of a compilation (mix) tape is easier than getting a kid to eat ice cream. iTunes lets you burn CDs in one of three formats:

• Audio CD: This is the typical kind of commercial music CD that you buy at a store. Most typical music audio CDs store up to 800MB of data, which translates into about 80 minutes of music.
• Data CD or DVD: A standard CD-ROM or DVD-ROM is recorded with the audio files. This kind of disc can’t be played in any standard audio CD player (even if it supports MP3 CDs, which I discuss next). Therefore, you can listen to these songs only by using iTunes (or another media player) on an iMac or a PC.
• MP3 CD: As does the ordinary computer CD-ROM that I describe, an MP3 CD holds MP3 files in data format. However, the files are arranged in such a way that they can be recognized by audio CD players that support the MP3 CD format (especially boom boxes, DVD players, personal CD players, and car stereos). Because MP3 files are so much smaller than the digital audio tracks found on traditional audio CDs, you can fit as many as 160 typical four-minute songs on one disc. These discs can also be played on your iMac via iTunes.

Keep in mind that MP3 CDs aren’t the same as the standard audio CDs that you buy at the store, and you can’t play them in older audio CD players that don’t support the MP3 CD format. Rather, this is the kind of archival disc that you burn at home for your own collection, or for use in a CD/DVD player or car audio system that supports MP3 discs.

To begin the process, build a playlist (or select an existing playlist that you want to record). If necessary, create a new playlist and add to it whatever songs you would like to have on the CD. (See the earlier section “Keeping Slim Whitman and Slim Shady Apart: Organizing with Playlists,” if you need a refresher.) With the songs in the correct order, right-click the playlist and choose Burn Playlist to Disc to commence the disc burning process. Click the desired recording format (again, usually Audio CD) in the Burn Settings dialog that appears.

To save yourself from sonic shock, I always recommend that you enable the Sound Check check box before you burn. iTunes will adjust the volume on all the songs on your audio CD so that they’ll play at the same volume level.

Ready to go? Click Burn and load the blank disc, and iTunes lets you know when the recording is complete.

Feasting on iTunes Visuals

Sure, iTunes is a feast for the ears, but did you know that it can provide you with eye candy as well? With just a click or two, you can view mind-bending graphics that stretch, move, and pulse with your music, as shown in Figure 13-6.

To begin viewing iTunes visuals, choose View⇒Show Visualizer (or press +T). Immediately, most of your iTunes interface disappears and begins displaying groovy lava lamp–style animations (like, sassy, man). To stop the visuals, choose View⇒Hide Visualizer (or press +T again). The usual sunny aluminum face of iTunes returns.

You can also change the viewing size of the iTunes visuals. From the View menu item, choose Full Screen (or press +Control+F). To escape from Full Screen mode, click or press Esc.

You can still control iTunes with the keyboard while the visuals are zooming around your screen. See Table 13-1 earlier in this chapter for a rundown on common keyboard shortcuts.

Exercising Parental Authority

Do young children use your iMac? I’ll be honest here: A large amount of content within the iTunes Store, including audio, movies, and even apps, is stuff that I don’t consider suitable for kids. And what about the media that others in the family may decide to share? Such is the world we live in today, and the good folks at Apple recognize that you may not want to inadvertently allow your kids to have access to explicit content.

Luckily, you can use the Parental Control preferences settings within iTunes to build a secure fence around content that’s for “grown-ups only.” Heck, you can even banish items from the Source list entirely. Figure 13-7 illustrates the Parental pane within the iTunes Preferences dialog.

You must log in with an Administrator account to change these settings, just as you do for the Parental Controls within the Mavericks System Preferences dialog. If the settings are locked — the padlock icon at the bottom of the dialog is closed — click it and supply your administrator password to unlock them.

To enable Parental Controls, follow these steps:

1. Choose iTunes⇒Preferences.
2. Click the Parental tab.
3. Select any of the Disable check boxes to prevent access to those features.

   Disabling features inside iTunes applies to all user accounts — no matter who is logged in! You’ll notice that any features you disable disappear completely from the Source list at the left side of the iTunes window after you click OK at the end of these steps.

4. Open the Ratings For pop-up menu and choose your country.

   Because Apple maintains separate iTunes Stores for different nations, you can choose which country’s iTunes Store to monitor. If you like, you can disable the display of content ratings within your iTunes Library by deselecting the Show Content Ratings in Library check box.

5. To restrict specific content within the iTunes Store, select the check box next to the source; then open the corresponding pop-up menu to choose the restriction level.

   Note that these restrictions apply only to content on the iTunes Store and media shared with your Mac. Content within your iTunes Library is never restricted.

6. Click the padlock icon at the bottom of the dialog to close it and prevent any changes.
7. Click OK.

Buying Digital Media the Apple Way

The hottest spot on the Internet for buying music and video is the iTunes Store, which you can reach from the cozy confines of iTunes — that is, as long as you have an Internet connection. If you don’t, it’s time to turn the page to a different chapter.

Click the iTunes Store item in the Source list, and after a few moments, you’re presented with the latest offerings. Click a link in the store list to browse according to media type, or click the Power Search link to search by song title, artist, album, or composer. The Back and Forward buttons at the top of the iTunes Store window operate much the same as those in Safari, moving you forward or backward in sequence through pages you’ve already seen. Clicking the Home button (which, through no great coincidence, looks like a miniature house) takes you back to the Store’s main page.

To display the details on a specific album, track, video, podcast, or audiobook (whew), just click it. If you’re interested in buying just certain tracks (for that perfect road warrior mix), you get to listen to 90 seconds of any track — for free, no less, and at full sound quality. To add an item to your iTunes Store shopping cart, click the Add Song/Movie/Album/Video/Podcast/Audiobook button (sheesh!). When you’re ready to buy, click the Shopping Cart item in the Source list and then click the Buy Now button. (At the time of this writing, tracks are usually 99 cents a pop, and an entire album is typically $9.99. What a bargain!)

The iTunes Store creates an account for you based on your e-mail address, and it keeps secure track of your payment information for future purchases. After you use the iTunes Store once, you rarely have to log in or retype your credit card information again.

The tracks and files that you download are saved to a separate playlist called Purchased. After the download is finished, you can play them, copy them to other playlists, burn them to CD or DVD, share ’em over your network, or ship them to your iOS devices using iCloud, just as you can any other item in your iTunes Library.

iTunes can automatically download the media you purchase on another iCloud device (including another Mac and your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch). To set up automatic downloading, choose iTunes⇒Preferences to open the Preferences dialog, and then click the Store tab. After you sign in at the iTunes Store, you can choose to download music or app purchases, and you have the option to check for new downloads automatically. Click OK to save your changes.

Remember all those skeptics who claimed that buying digital audio and video could never work over the Internet because of piracy issues and high costs? Well, bunkie, hats off to Apple: Once again, our favorite technology leader has done something the right way!