Buy Music from the iTunes Music Store

The iTunes Music Store is Apple’s online music purchase service, where you can choose from several hundred thousand songs and buy them individually (for 99 each at press time) or buy entire albums. You can also buy audio books from the iTunes Music Store, whose content is provided by Audible.com.

Note

The Audible.com site offers more purchase options for audio books than the iTunes Music Store. You can get low-priced monthly subscriptions, and you can also choose from several formats that allow you to more easily listen to your audio books on different digital music devices.

The iTunes Music Store lets you use iTunes to search for, preview, and purchase music, which you then download and listen to or burn to CDs using iTunes. Listening to your purchased music, and burning it to CDs, works exactly as I explained earlier in this chapter.

To access the iTunes Music Store, click Music Store in the source list of the iTunes window. You’ll see a window that looks something like this:

The iTunes Music Store interface works like a web site: you click different links or graphics to access different pages, or you select items from pop-up menus. Use the navigation bar at the top of the window to move through the Music Store:

In this example, I’m viewing the Grateful Dead’s album Wake of the Flood. You can go back to the Grateful Dead section by clicking that part of the navigation bar; you can go to the Rock section by clicking that part of the bar; and you can go to the iTunes Music Store’s main page by clicking the home icon. You can also click the Back and Forward buttons to go back and forth between pages you’ve already seen.

The iTunes Music Store lets you listen to a 30-second sample of any of its songs or audio books. Just double-click a song to hear this preview. If you want to buy something, click Buy Song or Buy Album. If you haven’t yet set up an account, you’ll be prompted to do so.

Note

As of press time, only people with a U.S. billing address for their credit card can use the iTunes Music Store. This should change soon, if it hasn’t done so already.

After you purchase songs, you’ll be able to download them and use them like any other digital music files. You can listen to them, burn them to CDs, and transfer them to your iPod or other digital music device.