How iTunes Works

How iTunes Works

itunes is not file-sharing. At its most basic level, iTunes is a music player that can play a wide variety of digital music, can also rip music from a CD to a computer to a computer, and create CDs out of digital music from a CD to a computer, and can create CDs out of digital music on your PC. iTunes also allows you to buy music from iTunes Music Store.

Using iTunes to get music on your iPod is probably the most popular way of using iTunes. However, you can also use your iTunes library with one of the Motorola/Cingular iTunes phones, which let you download up to 100 songs to the phone. Apple's wireless-networking hub, AirPort Express, is now "AirPort Express with AirTunes" -- you can wirelessly stream iTunes music from your computer to your hub-connected home-theater speakers. With this setup, you control playback via your computer. With another iTunes stream receiver, Roku's SoundBridge Network Music Player, you control everything through the SoundBridge remote control. So you're not limited to any single option when it comes to playback. But you are limited in some other ways.

You can use the iTunes Mac software with, say, a Creative Nomad MP3 player. But iTunes for Windows only supports the iPod -- if you connect a Creative Nomad to a Windows machine running iTunes, the software won't see it. There is no version of iTunes for Linux machines.

So iTunes (or at least the Mac version) does support other players besides the iPod. But here is gets even trickier: No matter what computer you use, you can't download (or stream) music you bought at the iTunes Music Store to a non-iTunes player. Music you download from the iTunes Store is protected by the Apple DRM (digital rights management) format, which is a proprietary, protected AAC file format that Apple doesn't license to anybody. The only devices that can play those files are ones with the ability to decrypt the Apple DRM, which includes your computer running iTunes, an iPod, an iTunes phone and your speakers connected to AirPort Express.
To play iTunes Music Store files on a portable player besides an iPod, you have to first burn them to a CD as MP3 files. The DRM encoding doesn't make it to the CD. You then rip the now-unprotected files back into your iTunes library and download them to the player.

Layton, J. How the Internet Works. Retrieved from www.howstuffworks.com, April 12, 2007.

To learn more about the software and iTunes interface, check out http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/itunes.htm


I support protecting the music industry, that’s why I like how music bought from iTunes can’t be burned onto a CD. But popularity of the iPod I believe has lessened the demand for CDs.

Overall, I love what you’re able to do with iTunes – organization and management capabilities, creating playlists, how it converts a lot of different files to fit iTunes, tag editing, and what not.