Apple’s iTunes enables you to organize and encode digital music files and also burn them to CD or share them with other iTunes users on your local network.
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No, burn in this case has nothing to do with fire. Burning is the process of writing a CD.
iTunes, versions 4 and higher, also connect to Apple’s iTunes Music Store where you can purchase high-quality song tracks, or entire albums, online. We’ll talk about how it works later in the chapter.
The first time you launch iTunes, it runs through a setup assistant to locate MP3s and configure Internet playback. At any time during the setup procedure, click Next to go to the next step, or click Previous to return to the preceding step. Clicking Cancel exits the setup utility and starts iTunes.
The first step of the setup process, displayed in Figure 22.1, enables you to set Internet access options.
iTunes is perfectly suited for handling streaming MP3s. If you’ve never listened to Internet radio before, you’ll appreciate how quickly and easily iTunes enables you to find the type of music you want to hear and start listening. If you already have a streaming music player, tell iTunes not to modify your Internet settings.
iTunes also interacts with the Internet to look up information about your CDs, such as the artist and song title. The Yes, Automatically Connect to the Internet radio button, selected by default, enables this feature. To force iTunes to prompt you before connecting to the Internet, click No, Ask Me Before Connecting. Click Next when you’re satisfied with your responses.
The setup step asks whether you want to go to the iTunes Music Store or go to your own iTunes Library on completing the setup. (If you choose not to explore the music store immediately, you can still reach it through the iTunes interface; we’ll take a closer look at the music store later in this chapter.)
Click Done to begin using iTunes.
Everything you need to do anything in iTunes is found in the main window, shown in Figure 22.2.
The main control areas are listed here:
Player controls—. The player controls move between different songs, play, pause, and adjust the output volume of the currently playing track. Clicking directly on the sound slider moves the volume adjustment immediately to that level.
Status information—. Displays information about the currently playing song. The top line displays the artist, the name of the song, and the name of the album. Clicking each of the status lines toggles between different types of information. Likewise, the Elapsed Time line can be toggled to display remaining time and total time.
The progress bar shows how far the playback of the current song has progressed. Dragging the progress bar handle moves the playback back or forward in the audio track.
Finally, a stereo frequency monitor can be displayed by clicking the arrow on the right of the status display.
Search string—. Typing a few letters into the iTunes Search field immediately displays all audio tracks in the current playlist or library that match the string in any way (artist, song, album).
Action button—. The action button performs a different function depending on what source is currently being viewed. As you work in different areas of the program, this button changes to an appropriate action for that area:
Library—. When viewing the main song library, the action button toggles between two different browse modes. The first mode, shown in Figure 22.2, is similar to the Finder’s List view. Each audio track is listed on its own line. The second mode uses a layout similar to the Column Finder view: The first column lists the artist, and the second column shows the albums for that artist. Finally, a lower pane shows a list of the song tracks for that artist and album.
Radio Tuner—. The Radio Tuner’s action button is Refresh, which reloads all available stations from the iTunes Internet radio station browser.
Music Store—. With Music Store selected, the action button toggles between two different browse modes as it does in the main song library.
Playlist—. A playlist is your own personal list of music that you’ve compiled from the main library. Playlists are the starting point for creating a CD. When viewing a playlist, the action button is Burn CD.
CD—. When a CD is inserted, iTunes prepares to import the tracks to MP3 files. The action button is Import when a CD is selected as the source.
Visual Effects—. No matter what source is selected, iTunes can always be toggled to Visualizer mode to display dazzling onscreen graphics. When the visual effects are active, the action button becomes Options for controlling the visual effects.
Source—. The Source pane lists the available MP3 sources. Attached MP3 players, CDs, playlists, the central music library, and Radio Tuner make up the available sources.
Songs—. A list of the songs in the currently selected source. When in the main Library view, you can click the action button to toggle between a simple list and a column-based browser. Double-clicking a song in the list starts playback of the selected list beginning at that song. To change the visible fields in the list, choose Edit, View Options from the menu. Among the available pieces of information for each song are Name, Time, Artist, Album, Genre, Play Count, and the time it was Last Played.
Playlist controls—. Four playlist controls are available: Create Playlist, Shuffle Order, Loop, and Show/Hide Song Artwork. As their names suggest, these buttons can be used to create new playlists, control the order in which the audio tracks are played back, and show/hide song artwork.
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Most music you purchase from the iTunes Music Store comes with artwork, but you can add artwork to other song files. To add artwork, click the Show or Hide Song Artwork button and choose the song you want to be associated with the artwork. Then, drag any image file in .JPG, .PNG, .GIF, or .TIFF to the space at the lower left of the iTunes window.
Time display—. At the bottom of the iTunes window is information about the contents, playing time, and total file size of the currently selected source. The default mode displays approximate time—clicking the text toggles to precise playing time.
Open Equalizer window—. The Equalizer, shown in Figure 22.3, enables you to choose preset frequency levels by musical genre or to set them manually by dragging the sliders. The mode defaults to Flat, which means that all the controls are set in the middle of their range.
Visualizer toggle—. Turns the visualization effects (“music for the eyes”) on and off.
CD eject—. Ejects the currently inserted CD.
The iTunes player controls work on whatever source you currently have selected. After a song plays, iTunes moves to the next song. You can also control the playing via keyboard or from the Controls menu:
Did you Know?
Some of these functions are also available from the iTunes Dock icon. Click and hold the Dock icon to display a pop-up menu for moving between the tracks in the current audio source.
To randomize the play order for the selected source, click the Shuffle button (second from the left) in the lower left of the iTunes window. If you want to repeat the tracks, use the Loop button (third from the left) in the lower-left corner to toggle between Repeat Off, Repeat Once, and Repeat All.
Did you Know?
The iTunes window is a bit large to conveniently leave onscreen during playback. Luckily, two other window modes take up far less space. Quite illogically, you access these smaller modes by clicking the window’s Maximize button.
After clicking Maximize, the window is reduced to the player controls and status window. Even this window is a bit large for some monitors, though. To collapse it even more, use the resize handle in the lower-right corner of the window.
To restore iTunes to its original state, click the Maximize button again.
The iTunes Visualizer creates a graphical visualization of your music as it plays. While playing a song, click the Visualizer button (second from the right) in the lower-right corner of the iTunes window, or select Visuals, Turn Visualizer On (Command-T) from the menu to activate the display. Figure 22.4 shows the Visualizer in action.
The Visuals menu can control the size of the generated graphics as well as toggle between full-screen (Command-F) and window modes. To exit full-screen mode, press Esc or click the mouse button.
While the windowed Visualizer display is active, the Options action button in the upper-right corner of the window is active. Click this button to fine-tune your Visualizer settings.
Encoding, or ripping, CDs enables you to take the tracks from a CD and save them in the MP3 (MPEG Layer 3), AAC, AIFF, or WAV format.
You can choose these options in the Import pane of the iTunes preferences, as shown in Figure 22.5.
Here are the basic distinctions between these formats:
MP3 files offer the option of compact file sizes and broad compatibility with MP3 players, but sound quality varies widely depending on the data rate.
AAC files give you better quality than MP3s in a smaller file size, but may not be supported by all MP3 players.
AIFF files are CD-quality, but much larger than both MP3 and AAC files.
WAV files are large like AIFF files, but work better for those using Windows computers.
The Settings pop-up menu enables you to choose a data rate in kilobits per second. The higher the data rate, the better the quality of the encoded music. For MP3s, anything lower than 128Kbps is different from (and inferior to) the quality of a regular audio CD. The iTunes Music Store sells 128Kbps AAC files, which are much better quality than 128Kbps MP3s. Remember also that the higher the data rate, the more disk space a music file occupies on your hard drive.
In the Import pane, you can also choose whether to play songs while importing them and whether to keep the track numbers with the filenames so that the album order can be maintained later.
iTunes makes it easy to import song files in common digital audio formats. In this section, we show you how to create MP3s from your CDs. (See the discussion on burning preferences in the section “The iTunes Preference Options” later in the chapter to learn about the options for burning in formats other than MP3.)
To import song files from a CD and encode them in digital format, find the CD you want to use and then follow these steps:
Insert the CD into your Macintosh’s optical drive.
iTunes queries an Internet CD database to get the names of all the tracks on your disk. If you chose not to have this happen automatically during iTunes setup, select Advanced, Get CD Track Names from the menu and click the Stop button.
Click the CD name in the Source pane to display all the available tracks.
Select the tracks you want to encode by checking and unchecking the boxes in front of each song title. If no tracks are selected, the entire CD is imported.
Click the Import action button at the upper right of the iTunes window, as shown in Figure 22.6, to encode the selected tracks. As the tracks are importing, a small graphic appears to show whether it has been imported or is currently being imported.
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The CDDB Internet database contains information on hundreds of thousands of CDs. In the unlikely event that your CD isn’t located, it is listed as Untitled.
If iTunes couldn’t find your song information, or you aren’t connected to the Internet, you can edit each song file’s stored artist/title information by hand by selecting the file and choosing File, Get Info (Command-I) from the menu.
You can even submit your updated information back to the Internet CD database by choosing Advanced, Submit CD Track Names from the menu.
After you add songs to your music library, iTunes enables you to easily assign ratings to them. Simply locate the My Rating column in the song listings and click on the placeholder dots to add from one to five stars for each song. To sort by rating, simply click the My Rating header.
By default, the encoded files are stored in Music/iTunes/iTunes Music found in your home directory. An entire CD can take from 5–74 minutes to process, depending on the speed of your CD-ROM drive. To pass the time, you can continue to use iTunes while the tracks are imported. When the import finishes, your computer chimes, and the music files are available under the Library source listing.
If you’re working with an existing library of song files rather than a CD, you can easily add them to your library. Choose File, Add To Library from the menu to choose a folder that contains the files. Alternatively, you can simply drag a folder of files from the Finder into the Library song list.
The process of importing music files takes time. Each file is examined for ID3 tags (which identify information such as artist and title of a song) and is cataloged in the iTunes database.
The key to many of the remaining iTunes features lies in creating a playlist. As mentioned earlier, a playlist is nothing more than a list of songs from your library. To create a new playlist, follow these steps:
Click the Create Playlist button in the lower-left corner of the iTunes window, or choose File, New Playlist (Command-N) from the menu.
The new playlist (“untitled playlist”) is added to the end of the list in the Source pane. Select the playlist and rename it. Now you’re ready to add songs to the playlist.
Select Library in the Source pane.
Verify that the song you want is in the main library. If it isn’t, you must first add the song to the library.
Select one or more songs in the Songs pane.
Drag your selection to the playlist in the Source pane.
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Using the Smart Playlist option, you can automatically create playlists based on criteria such as genre or your personal song ratings. Simply choose File, New Smart Playlist from the menu; set your criteria; and name your playlist. As an added bonus, Smart Playlists can also be set to update themselves with the Live Updating option as new material is added to your music library.
The selected songs are added to your playlist. Click the playlist to display the songs. You can drag the tracks within the song pane to choose their order.
After you’ve added music and created playlists, you may want to share your music with others on your local network. You can share your entire library or selected playlists. You also can share but require a password to limit listeners to those you invite. The settings for these options are located under the Sharing pane of the iTunes preferences (shown in Figure 22.7), which you can access under the iTunes application menu.
The first of the Sharing options is a check box for your computer to look for music shared by other iTunes 4 users on your local network. If checked, any libraries or playlists located will appear in blue in the left-hand side of the iTunes window, as shown previously in Figure 22.2.
If you want to share your music, you can choose to share the entire library or specific playlists. You can also give your collection a catchy name or leave it as the default, as shown earlier in Figure 22.7.
If you want to share with only those you invite, check the Require Password box, type the word or phrase you want to require, and click OK at the bottom of the preference window to activate. Now, those who try to access your music will see a pop-up window, as shown in Figure 22.8, that asks for the password.
Finally, you can see at the bottom of the Sharing preferences pane how many users are currently listening to your shared music.
One feature of iTunes that is getting a lot of attention is the iTunes Music Store, which allows you to browse available songs and albums, listen to short samples, and then purchase song files online. To access this feature, click the icon labeled Music Store located just above your playlists on the left side of the iTunes window. While in the music store, the area that typically displays your local music files is replaced by a list that you can navigate as you would a Web page, as shown in Figure 22.9.
In the music store, you can view lists of today’s top songs and albums; look through new releases; browse by genre; or perform searches by song, artist, album, or composer name. When you find something that interests you, you can listen to a short clip of the song to see whether you want to purchase the full version. At the time of the this writing, individual songs cost 99 cents, and full albums were around $10.
As you click links to move around in the store, buttons at the top of the Music Store portion of the window, as shown in Figure 22.10, tell you where you are and allow you to move back and forward and to return to the home page.
Although some people might enjoy browsing the iTunes Music Store in the Web browserlike interface, others might find other options easier to use. In the left column are the options Power Search and Browse and special categories for new releases, just added, charts, and audio books (refer to Figure 22.9), which provide more structured interfaces for searches.
Did you Know?
While the iTunes Music Store is “active” in iTunes, the search box at the top right can be used to search the store rather than your local files.
Power Search, as shown in Figure 22.11, provides fields for Song, Artist, Album, Genre, and Composer. This allows people who know precisely what they’re looking for to locate it efficiently. However, be a bit cautious about using this search if you aren’t sure how to spell the name of something—the Power Search doesn’t show close matches.
The results for the power search can be sorted by song name, time (or length of track), artist, album, or relevance. (You can also sort by price, but at this time all prices for individual songs are the same!)
The Browse option, as shown in Figure 22.12, is like a more straightforward version of the main music store interface. When you choose a genre in the left-hand column, artists for that genre appear in the middle column. Choosing an artist displays albums in the right-hand column. Selecting an album displays the song tracks in the album in the bottom pane, where you can listen to a sample or make a purchase.
Did you Know?
If you don’t know which album contains the song you’re looking for, select All from the Album column to see a sortable list of all songs by your chosen artist that are available in the iTunes Music Store.
Although the Power Search and Browse options are effective ways to locate songs you want, there will probably be times when a song you desperately want to buy isn’t available from the music store. If that happens, you can select the option Requests & Feedback from the main iTunes Music Store pane. In the window that appears, type a short message about what you’re looking for so that Apple will know what artists and/or songs it should try to include. You can also use this section to send feedback about errors you come across, such as misspellings or miscategorizations.
Now that you know how to find a song, let’s see how to buy! The first step is to create an account, which you initiate by clicking the Sign In button at the upper left of the Music Store pane. This opens the window shown in Figure 22.13, where you can create an account from scratch or simply use your .Mac account or your AOL account (if you set one up).
To create an account, you will need to fill out a form with your email address, a password you want to use, and your credit card information. When you are finished creating your account, you can sign in to make your purchase.
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Apple has made a strong attempt to keep your iTunes Music Store account, which is tied to your credit card, safe from others who use your computer. When you finish using your account, you can click the Sign Out button. To reactivate your purchasing privileges, you will have to sign in again with the email address you signed up with and your password. If you or (someone else) should happen to mistype your password three times in a row, your account will have to be reset before login can continue.
To reset your account, you need to go to iForgot Web site at https://iforgot.apple.com/ and enter your Apple ID. You have the option to have the password sent to the email address you provided when you created your account or to answer a security question to reset your password. Then, you need to change your password to continue your login to the iTunes Music Store.
When you are logged in to the music store, you can locate a song you want to purchase and click the Buy Song button at the end of the row. To make sure that you haven’t accidentally clicked the buy button for the wrong song, you will see a message asking you to confirm that you want to buy and download the selected song, as shown in Figure 22.14. (You have to option to check a box not to be warned about buying songs in the future, but, remember, if you accidentally choose the wrong item, this message is your chance to correct your mistake.
When you confirm your purchase, the file will begin to download, and its status will appear in the Status Information area at the top of the iTunes window. After you’ve downloaded your first song, another playlist appears in the Source pane. Called Purchased Music, this playlist is just like any other playlist: songs purchased from the music store appear in it, but you can delete them from the playlist, and they will still remain in your library.
Song files from the iTunes Music Store respond a bit differently than other song files in iTunes. Songs purchased by each iTunes Music Store account can be played on five computers, and the first time you try to play a purchased music file you will have to authorize the current computer as one of those five. (This is a measure taken to make sure that the files are not traded widely among users, which would deprive artists and record companies of revenue from the works they release.) The Authorize Computer window, shown in Figure 22.15, requires you to enter the password of the iTunes Music Store account set up on that computer.
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Songs purchased from the music store cannot be shared to other users on your local network through the Sharing options discussed earlier.
Under the Advanced menu are two useful options related to the iTunes Music Store. First, because only five computers can be authorized to play your iTunes Music Store purchases at a time, Deauthorize Computer lets you remove the permission so you can assign it to another computer. Second, if you have purchased music but not yet downloaded it, Check for Purchased Music lets you see the files and download them.
When burning music to CD, as we’ll discuss in the next section, you can burn only seven CDs of a single playlist composed of purchased songs.
After a playlist has been built, you can drag its name from the Source pane to any listed MP3 player source. The files are automatically copied to the connected player. If the player does not have enough available space, you must remove files from your playlist or select the external player and remove tracks from its memory. (We’ll give special attention to using iTunes with Apple’s iPod MP3 player at the end of this chapter.)
Watch Out!
Not all Macs have a built-in CD burner. If yours doesn’t, you can add an external CD-burning drive. iTunes works with a number of makes and models from such companies as LaCie, Plextor, Que, Sony, VST, and other popular brands. You’ll want to check with your dealer or Apple’s iTunes Web site (www.apple.com/itunes) for the list of supported devices. Even if you can’t burn a CD, you can still rip tracks from an audio CD using your computer’s CD drive.
If you have a Mac with a supported CD burner, you can use a playlist to burn an audio CD laid out exactly like the playlist.
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When burning CDs, you have a choice between a couple types of CD media. The first type, CD-R, is a write-once CD. That means you can write your files to it just once, and that’s it. If you make a mistake, you have to throw the failed CD away and use another. The CD-RW media can be erased and used over and over again, up to 1,000 times. In that way, it’s like a regular drive except that CD drives run slower.
If you plan on using the files only temporarily and replacing them over and over again, the extra cost of the CD-RW is worth it. Otherwise, stick with the CD-R.
Regarding the price of blank CDs, well, the best thing to do is try a brand and see whether it works. If you get a lot of disk errors, try a different brand. The big names, such as Fuji, Imation, Maxtor, and Verbatum, should work with any CD burner. Try a few of the private store labels before buying a large bundle.
To make a CD, just insert a blank CD into your computer’s CD drive (if it came with a CD burner) or into a connected CD burner. Your MP3 music player’s instructions will tell you how to copy music to one of these devices.
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If you have an older CD player, CDs you create yourself might not work. Unless you’ve spent a bundle on that CD player, it might be worth purchasing a new CD player to have the flexibility of making your own CDs.
With the CD in place, double-check your playlist and then click Burn CD to make your custom disc. Depending on the speed of your CD burner, making a CD can take up to half an hour. When you’re finished, you can eject the CD (click the Eject button at the lower right of the iTunes window). Repeat the previous steps to make more playlists and more CDs.
Depending on your connection speed, Internet radio could be your ticket to high-quality commercial-free music. Unfortunately, most dial-in modems have poor sound quality, but DSL and cable modem users can listen to much higher quality streams. To see what’s available and start listening requires only a few clicks:
To display a list of available streaming stations, click Radio in the Source pane. After a few seconds of querying a station server, a list of available music genres is displayed.
Each genre can be expanded to show the stations in that group by clicking its disclosure triangle. Stations are listed with a Stream (station) name, Bit Rate, and Comment (description). The bit rate determines the quality of the streamed audio—the higher the bit rate, the higher the quality—and the higher the bandwidth requirements.
Double-click a station to begin playing, or select the station and then click the Play button. iTunes buffers a few seconds of audio and then starts playing the streaming audio. If iTunes stutters while playing, look for a similar station that uses a lower bit rate.
Did you Know?
Conversely to what seems logical, you can drag stations from the Radio Tuner source and play them in a playlist. The playlist plays as it normally would, but starts playing streaming audio when it gets to the added Internet radio station.
You cannot burn a radio station to a CD or store it on an external MP3 device.
As you can see, building playlists in iTunes and making CD copies can be done in just a few minutes. Easy as pie! If you want to look at the power of the program, however, there are some useful options to get you better quality CDs and fine-tune the program.
You’ll find them under Preferences in the iTunes application menu (it’s in the Edit menu with the Mac OS 9.x version).
Here’s a brief look at the three preference dialog boxes available with iTunes:
General—. When you click the General icon (see Figure 22.16), you can set three categories of preferences. In the first section, you can pick a text size from the two pop-up menus and whether the musical genre (such as Country or Rock) should be displayed in your play list.
The option On CD Insert lets you indicate with the pop-up menu what to do when you insert a music CD. The default is Show Songs, but you can also decide to both play and import the contents of a CD automatically.
The Internet option simply enables you to select the same choices you made when the original iTunes Setup Assistant appeared.
Effects—. The Effects preferences, shown in Figure 22.17, allow you to enable and set the number of seconds for Crossfade Playback, an effect that overlaps the end of one track with the beginning of the next to decrease dead air time. You can also choose to enable Sound Enhancer and choose an amount of enhancement from low to high. The final option is a check box to automatically adjust the volume level to be more even between different songs.
Importing—. You learned about the Importing preferences earlier in the section “Import Options.” These settings pertain to format of music imported from CD and how iTunes behaves during import.
Burning—. The Burning preferences (shown in Figure 22.18) are specific to the kind of CD burner you are using and how you want the gap between musical tracks handled.
Sharing—. The Sharing options were discussed earlier, in the section “Sharing Music on Your Local Network.” These setting allow you to look for music shared by others on your network and to choose what of your own music to share.
Store—. The Store settings, shown in Figure 22.19, allow you to choose whether to purchase one song at a time (1-Click) or many songs all at once (shopping cart). You can also choose whether to play songs you’ve purchased immediately after they download and whether to load entire song previews before listening.
Advanced—. The Advanced options, shown in Figure 22.20, include where on your system to store your music, whether to keep the folder organized, and whether to copy files to the folder when you add them to the library.
You can also choose how to shuffle your music—by individual song or by album.
There is a setting for what degree—low, medium, or high—you want streaming media to be buffered. (That basically means “how much of a file playing over the Internet do you want to have waiting in reserve before it will begin to play on your local machine?” Because network connections aren’t always consistently fast, setting buffering to low can result in stop-and-start audio that makes listening difficult.)
Apple’s tiny digital music player, the iPod (see Figure 22.21) can serve double-duty. You can use it as an extra FireWire hard drive for your computer as mentioned in Chapter 19, “Adding Peripheral Devices,” or you can just stick with its core function, which is a handheld (or pocket-held) music device.
Making your iPod work with your Mac is an almost automatic process, so I’ll be brief about it (aren’t you glad?).
To dock your iPod to your Mac, first make sure that your Mac is running.
Take the FireWire cable that comes with your iPod (or any regular FireWire cable for that matter) and plug it into your iPod and your computer’s FireWire port. When connected, you’ll see a FireWire icon on your iPod’s display. When set up, iTunes will open automatically, and your iPod will automatically synchronize its music library with the one on your computer.
If you prefer to transfer music manually, connect your iPod as described previously and allow iTunes to launch.
Select your iPod in the iTunes source list (the list of music libraries), and click the iPod icon at the bottom right of the iTunes window, which opens the program’s preferences box.
With preferences displayed on your computer’s screen, check the item labeled Manually Manage Songs and Play Lists.
Watch Out!
You won’t be able to use your iPod with other computers without it replacing your music library if you use the standard option to automatically update your playlist when your iPod is attached to your computer. That’s because it’ll base its playlist strictly on the Mac to which it’s connected. If you want to use the iPod on different Macs, use the manual song management option described previously.
The iTunes software can quickly convert your CDs into a library of digitized music or vice versa, and give you access to thousands of radio stations that play the kind of music you want to hear and to many new releases, 24 hours a day. It’ll even sync with your iPod to make your music portable. If you’re a music enthusiast, Mac OS X is the operating system for you.