I have owned an Ipod for about 6 months now ... and have purchased music
thru the iTunes service. However, I find Itunes just doesn't have a lot of
the music I want. Are there any alternatives with a larger music library
that actually work with the Ipod? It seems the Ipod isn't friendly with most
of the other major music services out there. I tried using Rhapsody ... but
that's a pain and too expensive when you consider paying a monthly fee plus
fees for each song "burned" to CD. TIA for any replies.

In article <PtGdnTbMmJPSESrcRVn-vg@comcast.com>,
"RealityTVSucks" <nospam@nospam.net> wrote:

> I have owned an Ipod for about 6 months now ... and have purchased music
> thru the iTunes service. However, I find Itunes just doesn't have a lot of
> the music I want. Are there any alternatives with a larger music library
> that actually work with the Ipod? It seems the Ipod isn't friendly with most
> of the other major music services out there. I tried using Rhapsody ... but
> that's a pain and too expensive when you consider paying a monthly fee plus
> fees for each song "burned" to CD. TIA for any replies.

The answer is 'it depends'... most of the majors aren't designed to be
Mac-friendly, and all (except iTunes Music Store) sell music in Windows
Media Audio format... which won't play on an iPod.

If you have access to a Windows system (and appropriate software) you
can buy songs from another service in WMA format. From there, you can
(assuming you have software to do this), convert the songs from WMA to
MP3, transfer them to your Mac, and use them in iTunes.

(Note that this may be in violation of the user agreement with the
online music store, but is fair use in my opinion).

Alternatively, most software (including Windows Media Player on the
Windows systems) will let you burn an audio CD with your purchased
songs... then you can use that CD with iTunes on your Mac, and get the
songs over to your iPod.

While individual online music stores will each have some songs that are
not (yet) available on iTunes Music Store, I'm not convinced that any
offer an overwhelmingly larger library. (Of course, I'm in Canada, where
the online music store competition is underwhelming-- Napster, a
Canada-only store: Puretracks, iTunes Music Store Canada (which opened
about a week ago), and a French-oriented music store... none of the
other services available to US-based customers will not sell to CDN
customers).

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remove 'nospam' when replying

In article <PtGdnTbMmJPSESrcRVn-vg@comcast.com>,
"RealityTVSucks" <nospam@nospam.net> wrote:

> I have owned an Ipod for about 6 months now ... and have purchased music
> thru the iTunes service. However, I find Itunes just doesn't have a lot of
> the music I want. Are there any alternatives with a larger music library
> that actually work with the Ipod? It seems the Ipod isn't friendly with most
> of the other major music services out there. I tried using Rhapsody ... but
> that's a pain and too expensive when you consider paying a monthly fee plus
> fees for each song "burned" to CD. TIA for any replies.

You can buy just about any pre-recorded CD and rip it using iTunes.
That's what I do. So, your options are to visit your favorite record
stores.