“Over 50 million Apple iPods, and lots of competing digital music players, have been sold by now — as well as over a billion songs and tens of millions of videos, since legal media sales took off a few years ago,” Walter S. Mossberg and Katherine Boehret write for The Wall Street Journal.
“But many folks — even some who own iPods and other players — are still confused over how legal digital music works. So here’s a quick-and-dirty guide to the digital music world, in question-and-answer form. We’ve included the questions we are asked most frequently, plus a few other topics,” Mossberg and Boehret write.
List of questions answered:
• What’s the difference between the Apple iPod and all the other portable music players? Some of them seem to have more features.
• If I buy an iPod, must I buy music from Apple’s iTunes store? Conversely, can I buy music from Apple, and play it, if I don’t have an iPod?
• Will songs purchased from iTunes play back on non-iPod portable players? Will songs purchased from competing services play back on iPods?
• Is there any way around this? Can I legally modify or convert encrypted songs so they will work on portable players for which they weren’t intended?
• What is the difference between Apple’s iTunes store, and competing services like Rhapsody and Napster 2.0? Does one carry more music?
• How do I use multiple iPods with one iTunes library on my PC, if I want different music on each iPod?
• Can I copy the songs on my iPod to my second or third computer?
• Can I share the music in my iTunes software with others?
• What can I do with an iPod, other than play music on it?
Full highly-recommended article with answers here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Cathy V.” for the heads up.]
This article is especially perfect for some “tech journalists” who seem to have a great deal of difficulty with these simple concepts (please see related articles below).
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Related articles:
Another iPod+iTunes FUD article keeps the disinformation flowing – May 14, 2006
SmartMoney publishes compendium of iPod FUD – May 11, 2006
Tech writer: Apple’s iPod+iTunes ‘closed’ system will move into a niche like Macintosh computers – March 31, 2006
In Cleveland, ‘tis the season for Apple iPod FUD – December 10, 2005
New York Times: most non-Apple devices cannot play Advanced Audio Codec (AAC) – October 06, 2005
Apple’s vs. Microsoft’s music DRM: whose solution supports more users? – August 17, 2005
The New Zealand Herald serves up a steaming pile of iPod FUD – August 11, 2005
FUD campaign against Apple’s iPod+iTunes fails to stick – April 08, 2005
good old mossy eh.
Ok, we need to email the article link to all those “tech” writers out there. Dvorak, the whole CNET staff, all those market watchers……
Can we email this article to all the politicos in Scandinavia and France and anywhere else where they want to try and crush iTunes???
http://getkickedoffaplanewearingthis.blogspot.com/
That was a great primer. I’ll send this article to the folks who keep asking about the iPod and iTunes.
. . . of WireTap and apps like it. Using WireTap is a lot easier than burning a CD if there are only one or two songs involved.
Excellent article on the truth about iTunes and the iPod and how it all works. When Mossberg writes something at least he finds out the facts first before typing out a bunch of FUD. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to know how it works.
Mossberg should write an article about all of the FUD releases that come across his desk from the WMA/iPod killer crowd. You know, the spinmeister bullshit that other tech writers swallow hook, line and sinker.
Someone must be mass mailing this crap because tech writers the world over all spout the same lines within hours of each other.
I suspect the Microsoft FUD machine. Walt would know for sure.
Q: How do I use multiple iPods with one iTunes library on my PC, if I want different music on each iPod?
A: In the Preferences section of iTunes, you can set up each iPod so it synchronizes only with particular playlists, not your whole library. Just set up a playlist for each iPod, and set it up to sync only with that playlist.
Or, you can set up each iPod so it doesn’t automatically synchronize with iTunes at all, and simply works in manual mode. Then, you can manually drag different songs into each iPod.
This is good, but they skipped a very simple, second option–
Create separate user accounts for each iPod.
Some people don’t do this because it can create unnecessary multiple copies of the same music files, but there is a way around that too–
Rather than a music library folder for each user, simply use an alias to a shared music folder. The downside to this is that each user can affect the files. For example, if the first user deletes a file, it is gone for the second user as well. Clearly when utilizing this option, the two users need to have some sort of cooperative effort worked out not to trash files if they choose to delete them from their own library.