Help out an itunes newbie - for the kids!

[scramjet]

Confession: I've never used an ipod or itunes. My old Sansa does what I need and is easy to use.

Here's the story: We gave into the clamor and got my two teenage children ipods for Christmas. I figured with all the friends and cousins they have who are avid ipodders they could figure it all out.

While we were in Canada for Christmas, my niece and nephews helped my kids set up their ipods and shared some songs with them. I thought this was all going well.

When we got home the kids found that they're unable to move songs on and off using itunes on our computer. I haven't had time (or desire, really) to sit down and fight with itunes or figure out exactly what the issue is.

I know we have some devoted ituners here. Can you help me out?

Thanks!

[Mathman]

These two things may help:

1) you can't move songs from the ipod

2) Make sure you have the latest itunes update and that the ipod is showing in the side menu of itunes so you know it is hooked up.

I am assuming you are not a Mac user (I am) so some other NWO people may be able to give you more help.

[New Wave Dave]

It sounds to me like your niece and nephews in Canada have figured out how to "authorize" all the iPods to play each other's iTunes. That means your kids' iPods can play all the songs they got from the niece and nephews, and the niece and nephews' iPods can play all the songs they got from your kids.

But it now sounds like your home computer won't play play just the iTunes your kids got from the niece and nephews. If that's the case, what you need to do is get your neice or nephew on the phone and have them walk you (or your kids) through how to authorize your home computer to play their iTunes songs.

I'm guessing the neice and nephews have already authorized their own home computer to play the iTunes they got from your kids.

But I'm probably wrong.

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Huh uhh... not Katherine.

[wherewereuin82]

PC or Mac?

If it's a PC, it treats the ipod like another drive. Open all the hidden files on the ipod and the music that's there will show up in a folder. They should show up as 4 letter combination file names. Send it all to itunes.

If it's a Mac, you'll have to download a program to do that.

[Jefe]

Scramjet, from what you've posted so far it seems you have two teenagers with iPods and 1 computer. If so read this:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1495

I have a Windows machine with a 2 Gig Nano and a 160 Gig iPod classic. I find method 3 in above article works fine for me. Once you have iTunes loaded and follow the directions in the article and sync both iPods, the songs on each iPod will be in separate iTunes libraries. One needs only to hold down the shift key when starting iTunes to be able to pick the appropriate iTunes library for the appropriate iPod.

Once the separate iTunes libraries exist, you can remove any song from your iPod by simply deleting it & the song will be gone after your next sync. If you want to keep a song on one iPod but also copy it to the other, you just need to drag the song onto the desktop. From here you can load it onto the other iPod once you close out the first iTunes library and bring up the second iTunes library. All you need to do is click on "File" and choose "Add File To Library" or "Add Folder To Library" if moving an entire album's worth of music.

Hope this helps

[plagiarism]

I've been able to get songs off my ipod with WinAmp. You don't have to deal with the 4-letter file names that wherewereuin82 mentioned. I bought the full version, don't know if it works with the free version.

[scramjet]

Thanks for all the suggestions. Yes, I'm talking about a Windows machine. The issue does seem to be that if you plug in an ipod that has songs that aren't in the library itunes doesn't like it. I tried showing the hidden files, but still couldn't see anything. Interestingly, when I plug in the ipod some little app related to photoshop comes up. I can see all the 4-letter filenames there. I wonder if I can do anything that way. I've only been able to spend a few minutes on it since I posted the question. Maybe tonight.

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[DJ Lestat]

Here's a simple method to get songs on the ipod to your hard drive which you can then throw back into itunes and setup the new ipods on your computer.

http://lifehacker.com/software/ipod/how ... 105256.php


~~~~~~Always remember you are unique....just like everyone else.~~~~~~

[scramjet]

Thanks! I'll try this. I had tried to view the invisible files using the folders options, but that didn't work.

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