Section 20. Purchase Audio from the iTunes Music Store


20. Purchase Audio from the iTunes Music Store

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

18 Sign Up for the iTunes Music Store

19 Browse the iTunes Music Store


SEE ALSO

21 Purchase Music Using a Shopping Cart

22 Check for Purchased Music


After you've signed in to the music store using your Apple ID or AOL screen name , buying music or audiobooks from the iTunes Music Store is no more complicated than finding the music you want and clicking the appropriate Buy Song or Buy Album button. Purchased music goes straight into your iTunes Library and the special Purchased Music playlist, where you can play each track as soon as it's finished downloading.

KEY TERM

Audiobook The digital equivalent of the spoken-word tape. It's a special kind of digital audio file that plays for a long time as its content (the text of a book or speech) is read. The file includes additional technology such that, if you pause listening to the audio stream, iTunes remembers where you left off and picks up again at that point when you resume listening. This technology even works if you move from iTunes to iPod as you listen to the audiobook.


20. Purchase Audio from the iTunes Music Store


1.
Sign In to the iTunes Music Store

Choose Music Store from the Source pane and connect to the store. If you are not already signed in, click the Sign In button in the upper-right corner of the window and provide your Apple ID (or AOL screen name) and password to sign yourself in.

2.
Navigate to the Music You Want

As described in 19 Browse the iTunes Music Store , navigate the iTunes Music Store to find music you're interested in buying.

3.
Preview a Song

Every album has its own download page, which is divided into two sections with the album information (including cover art) and links to related tracks on the top, and the list of the album's tracks on the bottom. Double-click any track name to hear a 30-second clip of the song, chosen from the middle of the track so that you get as good an idea as possible of the texture of the song (including its chorus). Previewing tracks is free of charge.

TIP

If you have a slow network connection, the preview clips might not play very wellthey might stutter a lot and stall for rebuffering. To minimize this problem, choose Edit, Preferences (Windows) or iTunes, Preferences (Mac) to display the iTunes Preferences window, click the Store tab, and enable the Load complete preview before playing check box.

NOTE

Some tracks in an album may have a note saying Album Only instead of a Buy Song button; this means the track is available only if you buy the entire album. This condition might be the result of a licensing agreement in which the label allowed a particularly popular track to be purchased only if the customer bought the entire album it's on; these cases are relatively rare. So are cases where an album is listed as a Partial Album , or if it has a By Track Only note. These conditions can come about if tracks are particularly short or long and don't fit the 99-cent/track or $9.99/album price structure well, or if a licensing deal failed to get the rights to certain songs on an album.

4.
Purchase a Song or Album

When you decide you want to buy a song, click the Buy Song button at the right end of the song's information row at the bottom of the window. A dialog box confirms that you really want to buy the song; you can suppress this confirmation box for future purchases by enabling the Don't warn me about buying Songs again check box. Similarly, buy an entire album by clicking the Buy Album button in the top of the window and confirming the purchase in the dialog box that appears.

TIP

If you chose to suppress confirmation messages and you want to re-enable them, first click your Apple ID in the Account box, enter your Apple ID and password, and click the View Account button. In the screen that appears, click the Reset Warnings button to reset your account to show you all the routine confirmation messages when you buy music.

5.
Use the Purchased Music Playlist

The selected song, or the songs in the selected album, begin downloading into your iTunes Library . Click Purchased Music in the Source pane; this is a special playlist associated with the music store that shows you all the songs you've bought. It's a great way to get immediate access to the music you buy, as well as to keep an eye on just how much money you've spent on the iTunes Music Store (look at the Date Added column to see when you purchased each track). Tracks that are not completely downloaded yet appear in gray type; as each track finishes downloading, the type turns black, and you can double-click it to listen to the track.

TIPS

If for some reason your download of purchased music is interrupted (your Internet connection goes down, for example, or your computer crashes), you haven't lost your money or your music; see 22 Check for Purchased Music for how to recover in this situation.

Another way to review your purchases is to view your account information (click your Apple ID in the Account box, enter your ID and password, and click View Account ) and then click the Purchase History button.

6.
Adjust Erroneous Information

Many of the albums in the iTunes Music Store have an incorrect date of release set in their info tags ; this usually results from the album being encoded from a re-released versionyou will seldom see a classic Elvis Presley or Eagles album listed with the correct year. Having the correct year set for all your music is especially important when you create Smart Playlists based on musical era, as you will see in 35 Create a Smart Playlist .

Fortunately, incorrect info tags are easy enough to correct. Navigate to the purchased tracks or album in the Library view; select them all and choose File, Get Info . Enter the correct release year in the Year field and click OK .

WEB RESOURCE

http://www.allmusic.com

Refer to the All Music Guide for accurate album release information.


TIP

Sometimes, unfortunately , the only way to buy a certain track in the music store is on a "Greatest Hits" album. You might be a musical stickler who likes to have all tracks marked according to their original albums. You can set the info tags to reflect the track's original album name, release year, and track number, as reported by the All Music Guide; you can even add new album art to make it look as if the track came from the original album. See 13 Add Album Art to Songs for more about adding album art and arranging it in the proper order.




iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap
iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0672328992
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 152
Authors: Brian Tiemann

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