I've never bought an album from iTunes before, so I thought I might throw a few questions into the Hatrack knowledge pool.
I have three single tracks from a particular album that I have been considering. If I were to buy the album--which costs $10.00--would I still pay the full $10, or would I get a $3 discount?
Which brings me to my real question:
Is it really only feasible to buy entire 10-dollar albums when there are ten or more tracks in them? Or will I get a refund for already having a few of the tracks?
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
you don't get a refund. if you buy the album, you buy the whole album.
That said, you can buy the 7 tracks you're missing individually(99 cents a song) and save yourself the $3. If the album had more tracks though(up in the 20 range) this option wouldn't be viable, and it would end up being cheaper to buy the whole album outright.
Posted by 777 (Member # 9506) on :
Thanks for the advice! It's going to save me a few bucks.
Posted by Coccinelle (Member # 5832) on :
From my very limited experience albums are priced by the number of songs on them so if the album has 7 songs, it's $7, if it has 25 songs, it's $25.
edit: Of course, I just looked at a few albums and found out that this isn't always the case. Posted by Kamisaki (Member # 6309) on :
Nope, $10 is the default price for most albums, but there are exceptions. If it's a double cd it'll probably be more, and a lot of older albums are less, in the $5-6 range. It doesn't have anything to do with exact song count.
Posted by Coccinelle (Member # 5832) on :
Apparently I've been looking at the "special" albums this week Fortunately, I haven't purchased any yet. I've been enthuastically downloading free podcasts.
Posted by Katarain (Member # 6659) on :
I don't use iTunes, so I'm curious...
When you buy songs from them, do you actually own the songs? Can you transfer them to another device, burn a copy on a CD in CD format, a CD in mp3 format, etc.?
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Coccinelle, did you get an iPod??
Call me!
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
You own the songs, but there are some minor restrictions on the original file. If you get them into another format, such as by burning them onto a CD, you can do whatever you want with them (as they obviously lose any file-based restrictions by being converted and burned).
The only restriction on the original file most people will even notice is that a computer must be authorized to play the file (the authorization is just done once, then works for all files downloaded with your account). Possibly someone might notice that only a few computers can be authorized (with your iTMS account information) at a given time. There's also a burn limit on a particular playlist, but no burn limit for a given song, so long as the playlist its on changes. Burning is easily done right within iTunes, so they're not trying to make it too hard to get into a non-rights managed format.
Posted by B34N (Member # 9597) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: You own the songs, but there are some minor restrictions on the original file. If you get them into another format, such as by burning them onto a CD, you can do whatever you want with them (as they obviously lose any file-based restrictions by being converted and burned).
The only restriction on the original file most people will even notice is that a computer must be authorized to play the file (the authorization is just done once, then works for all files downloaded with your account). Possibly someone might notice that only a few computers can be authorized (with your iTMS account information) at a given time. There's also a burn limit on a particular playlist, but no burn limit for a given song, so long as the playlist its on changes. Burning is easily done right within iTunes, so they're not trying to make it too hard to get into a non-rights managed format.
You can authorize up to five different computers at a time, if you deauthorize a computer you can then authorize a completely different computer. If that makes sense?
Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :
One thing about buying the whole album as opposed to the individual songs is that when you buy the whole album you get a ... PDF file maybe? containing the front cover of the CD. You know, the words, the acknowledgements, the art, etc. If you're into that kind of thing.
fugu or someone, I had a thought tonight. It's getting to be a pain to burn CD-R's whenever I want to convert the files to mp3 (from iTunes) so I was wondering if I could burn them to a CD-RW then rip them back, thereby converting them and saving me the hassle of buying tons of CD-R's. I'm going to try it tomorrow, but if someone tells me if doesnt' work before then, well, I won't.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Yes, you can. Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
(FYI, though, the CD-RW's probably won't play in your car's CD player.)
Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :
Yeah, I didn't think they would, I just want to get a couple songs I recently downloaded onto a CD I'm about to compile and didn't want to waste a CD-R just to convert a couple songs. Thanks!
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
B34N: Yes, that's correct, its just most people will never be in a position to notice.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
FWIW, I really can't understand wanting to buy an album through iTunes (unless it's some obscure thing that's not easily available elsewhere). If an album has that many songs that I like, I usually want to own all the other goodies, too. I use iTunes for picking up single songs I like.
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
iTunes songs only play on iPods. You can convert iTunes songs to mp3 without burning to a CD by using an application called Audio Hijack, which will save the audio output of *any* application to a sound file.
Posted by Da_Goat (Member # 5529) on :
Icarus, it's that reason that makes iTunes so appealing to me. I buy CDs for the music. When I buy a CD in stores, I'll usually slip the CD into my CD folder and then toss the jewel case/liner notes in a box in my bedroom. I'll only hunt it down if I want to sell it or trade it in myself. And I can probably count the number of times I've done that with my fingers. The five or so dollars I save with iTunes is totally worth the absence of the booklet.
Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :
human, is there any quality loss with that application? I've heard of things like that but only in the context that you lose quite a bit of quality.
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
I don't notice any. I imagine it grabs a digital audio source rather than an analog audio source. I don't think the audio is analog until right before it goes to the speakers. But I really have no idea.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Huh. When it's something I like, I usually read the booklet from cover to cover, look at the pictures, look at the credits, learn the lyrics, etc.
Posted by xtownaga (Member # 7187) on :
well converting from AAC (iTunes format) to MP3 will lose some sound quality. Each format is a "lossy" format, which means that not all of the sound information that would be on a CD (or other uncompressed source) is there, but the designers of the format do a lot of research and such into figuring out which parts they can get rid of without noticably losing sound quality. The problem is that each format takes out different bits of information, so that when you convert from AAC to MP3 (or WMA, oog, etc) you're going to lose a bit more. Most people will probably never notice the difference, but to others it can sound pretty bad (or so I've heard, I've never noticed anything).
Also of note, I'm pretty sure Audio Hijack is mac only (could be wrong there, not sure), though there are various programs on the PC side that work the same way. It grabs the digital audio stream coming out of a program (you need to re-open the program using Audio Hijack, or did last time I used it). It is basically going to use the same process that you'll get from burning to CD (decompress the AAC file and reencode it using a differnt format), so you'll lose the same information, but shouldn't lose any more.
Hope thats clear and such, I'm pretty tired at the moment... *returns to occasional lurking*
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
Napster subscription.
*runs away!*
-pH
Posted by Earendil18 (Member # 3180) on :
I'd love to use iTunes but I can never get to the final step 3 of 3 stage of the account creation process.
It sends me to Paypal to get my account subscription up and running, then when I click "return to iTunes" link or whatever, the sucker kicks me to the iTunes DOWNLOAD page, and iTunes itself doesn't go "Okay, now we're ready to move on to step 3!".
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