[robains]

I recently purchased an iPOD Nano 4GB -- I love it! However, I'm pretty frustrated with iTunes.

I installed iTunes at one of my home PCs and transfered my music (on my hard drive/CDs) over to my Nano. I also purchased about 15 songs from iTunes and put those on my Nano.

So, while at work one day I had some free time at lunch and thought I'd get a few more songs from iTunes -- since my work PC didn't have iTunes, I installed iTunes and hooked up my Nano. I download a 10 more songs and want to put them on my Nano -- I get a prompt saying it will "...replace ALL the songs on my iPOD...". So I said "No" -- I spend the next 15 minutes trying to figure out how to get the songs I just purchased onto my Nano. Finally I just agreed to the "...replace ALL the song on my iPOD..." message seeing as I couldn't find another way. Sure enough all 700 song are removed and the 10 songs I just purchased and now on my iPOD.

In a word this sorta...well...ummm...REALLY SUCKS! I've purchased ALL my songs and I can't merge the song from two separate PCs onto a single Nano?? I realize copy protection is a good thing, but if this is the best scheme they can come up with I'm about ready to toss my Nano out the window.

Is there any way around this?

Rob.

[icruise]

You're sort of misunderstanding the way things work. It's not as bad as all that. However, buying iTunes music on two computers and then adding it to your iPod is a little tricky. Honestly, it may be more work than it's worth, and you have to keep in mind that you only get one download of your music. So you will either need to download it directly on your home computer or make a copy of the files you downloaded at work and bring that home with you. You don't want to have your only copies on your work computer.

If you really want to be able to buy iTunes music on both your work computer and home computer, you have a couple of options. You can turn off automatic syncing and just manage the music on your nano manually. I think this will allow you to copy over music from both computers. But frankly I don't think it's a very good idea, since you lose the convenience of automatic syncing.

A better option might be to enable "disk use" in the iTunes iPod preferences. This will allow you to temporarily copy the files (in the Finder or Windows explorer, not in iTunes) to your iPod, which you can then manually add to your home computer later. But these files will just be on the "data" section of your iPod. They won't be playable on your iPod until you bring them home and add them to your home library.

No matter what you choose, you don't want to change the association of your iPod from your home to your work computer, since as you discovered, that is meant to be a semi-permanent change and it starts you from scratch.

[nuggetman]

set itunes at work to manual sync - this way you can add songs as you want

set it to also to allow disk mode, and copy the same files to the hard drive portion of the ipod via the finder/explorer

when you get home, copy them from the hard drive into itunes (then delete them from the hard drive), and run your auto sync

[robains]

I'm obviously misunderstanding iTunes implementation of copy right laws. If this is going to be the "final" solution to distribution of music, then it simply will NOT fly with all consumers in the long run.

That said, thank you for the tips on how to get my music back in synch -- copying from my Nano to my Home PC hard drive, then adding to my iTunes library and then Updating my iPOD (pointing to a new library) did the trick.

Don't know what will happen when I have to upgrade my PC and start from scratch with all my iTunes moved to an external drive. I frequently upgrade my PC hardware and re-install the OS. Sounds like I'll have to setup a dedicated Media PC IF I want to continue to use iTunes (at this point I'm sorta on the wall especially since iTunes doesn't have 50% of the music I'm interested in) -- back to buying physical CD's. Too bad they couldn't come up with something better as Internet distribution HAD potential, but not this way.

Thanks again for your help.

Rob.

[icruise]

What you're referring to is not so much a copy protection mechanism as it is just a side effect of the "syncing" idea that iTunes uses. It worked this way long before the iTMS even existed. You simply can't sync an iPod with more than one computer at once.

I also don't understand your comment about upgrading your PC. First of all, when you buy music at the iTMS, you are expected to make backups of your music. iTunes allows you to do this very easily. You can copy the files you've download to a CD or DVD-R (by this, I don't mean making an audio CD, but rather copying the files as data to a CD-R). Or you can copy the files manually to an external hard disk or whatever. When you buy a new computer, if you still have access to your old one, you can just copy your entire library over to your new computer, or you can use the backups you have made.

iTunes has by FAR the most reasonable DRM solution of any online music store. I think you're not fully understanding how it works if you're this upset about it.

[robains]

I'm a software engineer, I can assure you this is NOT a side effect of "syncing". There is NO technological barrier to synching -- iTUNES approach is purely due to copy right issues and their fear of being sued.

Not sure what version of iTunes you use, but my iTunes requires "Authorizing a Computer" which is most likely tied into the motherboards BIOS information and/or information obtained thru WMI calls to the OS. Apparently I get 5 authorizations -- I've used up two. So any time I upgrade I will need to authorize again regardless of where my music files are located.

I not that upset -- sorry if it seems that way. Like I said, I have other options and the approach iTunes uses just doesn't work for me and I think I represent a standard music consumer (one of the few left willing to pay for what they like to listen to).

Rob.

[icruise]

Originally Posted by robains

I'm a software engineer, I can assure you this is NOT a side effect of "syncing". There is NO technological barrier to synching -- iTUNES approach is purely due to copy right issues and their fear of being sued.

You are confusing two separate issues. On the one hand, you have authorization of computers for the iTunes Music store. On the other, you have the association of an iPod with a computer. They are related, but they aren't the same thing.

To prove this, I took my iPod, which is associated with my PowerBook and set it to "manually update." I then plugged it into my desktop machine. Since it was set to "manually update" I was able to access all of the songs on the iPod. I could play, add and delete songs, despite the fact that the iPod is associated with a different computer. However, when I tried to play a song downloaded from the iTMS, I was prompted to enter my password, since my desktop isn't authorized on my account. When I entered the password, I was able to play those songs as well.

How can you explain that? If the association of an iPod to a computer is a copyright protection measure as you say, such a thing wouldn't be possible would it?

As I stated, the way Apple has implemented syncing, it is not possible to do it with more than one computer. Syncing involves not only copying the files in your iTunes music library to your iPod, but also updating the playcounts, play times, smart playlist states, etc. Doing this with multiple computers simply won't work.

It sounds like you would be happiest just manually managing your songs, so why not do so?