The iTunes Interface

A quick overview of the iTunes interface is shown here and on the next page. Most of the controls you need are located directly on the iTunes interface. Almost every control is explained in detail elsewhere in this chapter.

In the example below, the Library is selected in the Source pane (the section on the left side of the window) and the Library's contents are shown in the Detail window (the large pane to the right of the Source pane). When you select an item in the Source pane, its contents show in the Detail window.

In the example below, a playlist is selected in the Source pane. For each item in the Source pane, you can customize the Detail window view to show the columns of information you want. See "View Options" on page 89.

Play CDs

You can play any music CD in your Mac. Make sure your sound is on and turned up.

To play a music CD

Insert a CD into the computer CD drive.

Open iTunes , if it isn't already open:

If the iTunes icon is in your Dock, click once on it.

If there is not an icon in the Dock, open the Applications folder, find the iTunes icon, then double-click it.

The CD icon appears in the Source pane, as shown below. Click the CD icon to see the song list and other information in the Detail window.

If you're connected to the Internet , iTunes will automatically go to a CD database web site, retrieve the song titles and other data, and place the information in the appropriate columns .

If you're NOT connected to the Internet when you insert a CD , song titles will appear as track numbers (as shown below). You can select the generic track names and type in real song names : Click once on a title in the "Song Name" column, pause, then click the title again to highlight it. Type a new name for the song.

To see the actual song titles, if they have not appeared

1.	Connect to the Internet (if you're not already).
2.	From the Advanced menu, choose "Get CD Track Names."

If you want iTunes to do this automatically every time you put in a CD , see the information about iTunes preferences on pages 106107.

To choose the songs on the CD you want to play

When you insert a CD , all of the songs have checkmarks next to them. If the box is checked, the song will play. To customize the list, check only the songs you want to hear. iTunes skips over songs that do not have a checkmark.

1.	Click on the CD icon in the Source pane.
2.	Click on a song in the "Song Name" column to select it.
3.	Click the Play button (the middle controller button), or double-click a title in the "Song Name" column.

The iTunes Library

When you import (rip, encode) music files from a CD , iTunes encodes it as an MPEG -4 AAC file (if you have QuickTime 6.2 or later installed) and places it in the iTunes Library. If you have an earlier version of QuickTime, iTunes encodes songs as MP 3, or whatever format you last chose in the Importing preferences pane (see page 109). Once a song is in the Library list, you can add it to a customized playlist, as explained on the following page. Simply playing songs from a CD does not add them to the iTunes Library.

File formats

The MPEG -4 AAC format compresses song files to a smaller size than the MP 3 format without a noticeable quality difference. We encoded a 3-minute, 20-second song into both formats: the MP 3 file encoded to 3.8 megabytes, the MPEG -4 file to 3.1 megabytes, a significant storage savings when you have a large library.

If you have a highly refined ear for music, set the iTunes "Importing" preferences to encode songs in "Apple Lossless" format. This format encodes CD -quality music at half the size of the original CD format.

To add songs to the Library

1.	Insert a music CD into the computer CD drive.
2.	In the Detail window, click each song's checkbox that you want to add to the Library.
3.	Click the "Import" button in the top-right corner of the window.

You may already have music files somewhere on your computer that you want to add to the iTunes Library. There are two ways to do this:

Either go to the File menu and choose "Add to Library…," then find and select your music files.
Or drag a file from any location on your hard disk to the Library icon in the iTunes Source pane, as shown below.

Tip

Each song takes up at least 3 to 5 megabytes (depending on the file format specified in iTunes Preferences) of hard disk space, so make sure you have plenty of disk space available before you go crazy importing music files!

Drag a music file from anywhere on the computer to the "Library" icon in the Source pane. The small plus icon indicates the song will be copied to the iTunes Library.