Recently I went to iTunes and downloaded for the first time about 6-7 songs from their service. I do not own an iPod myself, as I have an iRiver flash player, but I figured that I could download the music and then put it on my flash player through my flash player software. Boy was I wrong.
After spending approximately $7.00 with tax, I see the files and they played wonderful on my PC. However, when I put them on my MP3 player they wouldn't play. I checked out the file extension and it said, M4P. I renamed it to mp3 but still it wouldn't work. I search all over their software and couldn't find a way to change it to mp3.
I then came across a little caveat that wasn't noticeably placed in their software. It said that music from iTunes cannot be ripped to mp3 or WMA format and essentially, this means if you don't have an iPod, then you cannot put it on your mp3 player without jumping through a lot of hoops.
So I found out if I copied the files onto a CD, then ripped them back into iTunes as mp3, then I could get them on my flash player. The problem with that is, why should I have to jump through that many hoops for music I've already paid for? Furthermore, Apple markets iTunes as this easy service that anyone can use. Yeah, as long as you have an iPod you can. While that may be their whole scheme is to lock you into a product, they are deceptive in saying that you can take your music anywhere with you, but they don't make it obvious that you need an iPod to do it.
Basically, if you have a non-iPod player, steer clear of this service. I recommend Napster as you can download as WMA and then change the file extension to mp3. Also, you don't have to worry about the number of times you can burn the music because once you buy it, it's yours to deal with.
Apple is a ripoff in the first order.
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