£100 itunes voucher for £22

[John Byrne]

Just go on ebay theres loads of em on there

 

[Superphil]

Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes

All are DRMed and only play in iTunes or on iPods, though.

You can get "lossless" files from iTunes called "iTunes Plus", which have no DRM either. Conversion of those to MP3 is as good as any MP3 quality. Also, pretty dam good if you just burn to a CD.

Then again, if you are of the opinion that Apple, iPod and iTunes cannot ever be any good for anyone, ever, anywhere in any shape or form, at all ever, then just go back to downloading shoddy quality free music and hope that occasionally the files you get are complete, and free of virus and spyware.

 

[TonyW]

You can get "lossless" files from iTunes called "iTunes Plus", which have no DRM either. Conversion of those to MP3 is as good as any MP3 quality. Also, pretty dam good if you just burn to a CD.

Then again, if you are of the opinion that Apple, iPod and iTunes cannot ever be any good for anyone, ever, anywhere in any shape or form, at all ever, then just go back to downloading shoddy quality free music and hope that occasionally the files you get are complete, and free of virus and spyware.

OK, shamed to admit this... but I've never used iTunes, or any other music download service for that matter.
But, this looks a good way to start.
Thing is, I haven't got an ipod, a decent MP3 player, but not an ipod.
So... if I download lots of stuff from iTunes, is it easy enough to convert it all to good quaity MP3 files to use on my player?
And can I use Windows Media Player to convert them, or will this iTunes Plus software do it all for me?

Sorry for the muppet level of the questions, but I just don't know

 

[Bluejuice]

Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes

All are DRMed and only play in iTunes or on iPods, though.

Thanks,

I'm mildly impressed but all this DRM shit puts me off. When I'm buying from dance music specialists for tracks to mix with there's none of this hassle involved. When I buy something I want to own it, I don't want to lease these tunes from apple

 

[Bad Ash]

Then again, if you are of the opinion that Apple, iPod and iTunes cannot ever be any good for anyone, ever, anywhere in any shape or form, at all ever, then just go back to downloading shoddy quality free music and hope that occasionally the files you get are complete, and free of virus and spyware.

You're obviously looking in the wrong places...

As long as the quality is reasonable the majority of people wont notice. Loads of my old mp3s are 128kbs and it doesn't really bother me otherwise I'd re-rip/download them.

 

[ManOnTheRun]

Cheers for the heads up Bozza ...

 

[Superphil]

Any "iTunes Plus" files will convert no problem, using iTunes of any other music file conversion software.

For the iTunes DRMd files you need to do one of the following;

1. Trawl around the web a bit and find yourself a file converter that will convert the DRMd iTunes files to MP3, but they are out there, even if they are a tad "not quite legal" as it were, but they do the job well enough.

2. Burn the DRMd files to a CD as an Audio CD true iTunes, then convert that CD to MP3 using your prefered MP3 software, or iTunes. Not the very best quality, but if you're using an MP3 player you're unlikely to hear the difference.

Realisitcally, if you are happy to listen to MP3 files in any format, on any device, then you are unlikely to be concerned about the sound quality issues that encoding or re-encoding bring up.

 

[Superphil]

You're obviously looking in the wrong places...

As long as the quality is reasonable the majority of people wont notice. Loads of my old mp3s are 128kbs and it doesn't really bother me otherwise I'd re-rip/download them.

Know what you mean, and I have done so on occasion, most of the time it's OK. But then you are half way through Love Metal by H.I.M. and all the tracks end after 20 seconds, likewise with Crucified Barbaras "In Distortion We Trust". Perhaps it's my own fault for listening to such crap, but at the time they weren't avaialble on iTunes

Qualitiy wise, 128 is fine for playback on an MP3 player, I think pretty much all of my MP3s, and AACs are at that rate, don't really bother to check to be honest.

 

[Cian]

You can get "lossless" files from iTunes called "iTunes Plus", which have no DRM either. Conversion of those to MP3 is as good as any MP3 quality. Also, pretty dam good if you just burn to a CD.

Then again, if you are of the opinion that Apple, iPod and iTunes cannot ever be any good for anyone, ever, anywhere in any shape or form, at all ever, then just go back to downloading shoddy quality free music and hope that occasionally the files you get are complete, and free of virus and spyware.

You can only get them for EMI published music. This means about 80% of the music on iTunes is only available with DRM. And they charge you more for the DRM-free tracks, something you neglected to mention...

Music files cannot have viruses and spyware in them - its physically impossible. And anyway, the only music I download is from other commercial, legal download services which do not use DRM, and use common place formats (mp3 rather than AAC). Namely eMusic, Juno, DJDownload and Vonyc. The rest of my music, I buy on CD or (rarely) vinyl.

Also, the older tracks on iTunes sound like they've been run through a cheese grater - anything that was encoded early on in the services existance is absolutely terrible quality. Bitrate != quality, better encoders can get significantly better quality in the same bitrate - and their early encoders were atrocious.

 

[Bozza]

These are available again. In case anyone cares after all the above bollocks...

 

[Kylies Stunt Arse]

Nice one, cheers Bozza.

 

[Rookie]

tried it first time around and it worked well impressed. Cheers Bozza for brining it to the world of NSC

 

[tinx]

I'm on my 3rd one now, great stuff.

 

[Deductions]

Why pay when you can just download for free.

 

[tinx]

Cos you can get stuff on itunes which you can't find elsewhere, its my buffer for obscure stuff not available form other sources. dead handy

 

[Cian]

Why pay when you can just download for free.

Because iTunes isn't illegal, thats why.

 

[John Byrne]

Anyone know if they are getting anymore?

 

[John Byrne]

BACK IN STOCK!!!! hurray!!!