Tips for the Music Store


More Shopping Avenues

Looking for more ways to discover new music? Here are a few shopping avenues to explore. You can access all of the following options from the music store's home screen.

iTunes Essentials. In the iTunes Essentials area of the store, you'll find meticulously categorized lists of tunes selected by the staff of the music store. Categories run the gamut from "Motorcycle Music" to "Romantic Moods," and each category is divided into several subcategories that let you drill ever deeper into the groove at hand.

Celebrity Playlists. If you're interested in what your favorite musicians listen to, check out Celebrity Playlists, where top artists share their favorites.

iMixes. As page 48 describes, you can publish your own playlists for other music store customers to check out and rate. To check out and rate other shoppers' iMixes, click the iMix link.

iTunes Originals. In the iTunes Originals area of the store, you'll find exclusive tracks, song compilations, and artist interviews.

Just for You. This area of the music store's home screen lists songs that Apple thinks you'll like based on previous purchases you've made.

Radio Charts. You can get a list of top songs from more than 1,000 radio stations in over 100 cities. First, click Radio Charts in the Choose Genre area (or in Browse mode). A list of cities appears. Click a city name, and an often-diverse list of stations appears. Click a station to see its top tunes. It's a fun way to see what people are listening to in your home town, in a popular college town, or just someplace far away.

Billboard Charts. Similarly, the Billboard Charts category lists the top tunes from Billboard magazine. You can get lists of top tunes going back to the 1940s, as well as current country and R&B favorites.

Free Downloads. Apple offers a free download (of its choosing) every week, and occasionally offers a free compilation album, too.

Parental Controls

Concerned about your kids buying music and sapping your credit card? Or about them buying music or downloading podcasts that contain explicit content?

By using the Parental option of the Preferences dialog box, you can control what the munchkins can access. Choose Preferences from the iTunes menu, then click the Parental button.

Next, choose the options you want. For example, to prevent access to music store content labeled as explicit, click Restrict Explicit Content. Finally, click the lock icon and enter your password.

To remove restrictions, click the lock icon again, enter your password, and then uncheck options as desired.

Stopping Stutters

Saddled with a slow connection? Improve song previewing by tweaking iTunes' preferences.

Choose Preferences from the iTunes menu, click the Store button, and then check the box labeled Load Complete Preview Before Playing. From now on, iTunes will load the entire preview before playing it. You'll wait longer to hear the preview, but at least it won't be interrupted.

This option also works with podcast and video previews.

Authorizing and Deauthorizing

Unlike the music files that iTunes creates when you rip a CD, the music tracks you buy contain some playback and copying restrictions designed to prevent music thieves from sharing the songs through Internet file-swapping services.

When you buy a song, the iTunes Music Store embeds your Apple ID in the music file that downloads to your hard drive. To play the song, you must authorize your Mac, a one-time process that simply involves typing your Apple ID and password. You can authorize up to five Macs (or Windows PCs) per Apple ID.

If you've already authorized five computers to play your purchases and you want to play them on a sixth computer, you'll have to deauthorize one of the other five. Choose Deauthorize Computer from the Advanced menu, choose Apple Account in the subsequent dialog box, and then type your Apple ID and password. You must be connected to the Internet to deauthorize a computer.

Parting with your computer? If you're parting with your Mac for any reasonselling it, giving it away, or even just sending it off for repairsbe sure to deauthorize it first.

Deauthorizing everything. You forgot to deauthorize a computer that you no longer haveand you've reached your five-computer limit and thus can't authorize your newest Mac. What do to? Wipe the slate clean.

You can deauthorize all the computers that are tied to your music store account. To do so, go to your account information screen by signing into the music store and clicking the account button in the upper-right corner. On the Account Information screen, click the Deauthorize All button.

Important

You can deauthorize all your computers only once a year, so don't use this option unless you really need to.


Burning What You Buy

You can burn purchased songs to audio CDs, but iTunes imposes a minor restriction on your burning endeavors. If a playlist contains purchased music, you can burn a maximum of seven CDs containing that playlist.

Chris Breen, editor-in-chief of Playlist magazine, has done some interesting research on how iTunes tracks the number of times you've burned a playlistand on steps you can take to work around the seven-CD limit. I've linked to the articles at www.macilife.com/itunes.

And incidentally, you can't burn DVDs containing videos that you've purchased from the music store. You can burn backups of the video files themselves (and you should), but you can't, for example, use iDVD to create a DVD that contains some episodes of Lost that you've bought.

Binge Buying? Get a Cart

When you go into a store, chances are you don't just buy one thing. Most of the time, you grab a shopping cart so you can haul all of your purchases to the cashier at once.

iTunes provides a shopping cart, and using it is a better way to shop when you're picking up several songs.

When the shopping cart is active, iTunes doesn't download each purchased song immediately. Instead, it slings the songs into a shopping cart. When you're ready to check out, a couple of clicks buys the songs and begins their download.

Shopping for multiple tunes is more convenient in shopping-cart mode. Navigating the music store is faster, too, since iTunes isn't downloading a song in the background while you shop.

To use the shopping-cart mode, choose Preferences from the iTunes menu, click Store, and then click the option labeled Buy Using a Shopping Cart. The Buy Song button that appears next to each song now reads Add Song: click it to add a song to your cart.

To buy the songs in your cart, click the Shopping Cart item in the Source list, then click the Buy Now button near the lower-right corner of the iTunes window.



The Macintosh iLife '06
The Macintosh iLife 06
ISBN: 0321426541
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 229
Authors: Jim Heid

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net