A warning about iTunes, backups, and bought music

May 10, '04 11:07:00AM

Contributed by: Slipstream

I have a lot of music on my computer, of which most I have copied from my CDs. I've also bought several CDs from the iTunes music store. I'm sure this is probably the case for most of you. Anyway, to get to the point, I've been in the process of backing up my music for the second time. The first time I backed everything up via the finder to CDs, which was perfectly fine. However this time around I wanted a better way of doing so because I wanted iTunes to recognize the CD itself instead of it being only viewable in the Finder. I know of two options for CDs through iTunes:

The easiest way in which you tell iTunes to copy your music and you just insert one CD at a time. This is perfectly fine, however it's not the most organized way that I like. The slower way, but much more organized, is to create playlists and burn those to MP3/Data CDs.

Herein lies the warning. If you haven't bought any music from the iTunes music store, you can use the MP3 option for burning. However, if you have bought music from the store, you will want to use the Data option. I nearly found out the hard way if I hadn't had my original backups from when I first burnt them to a CD via the Finder.

The reason why I'm mentioning it is that iTunes doesn't give you a warning or any indication that it didn't burn those bought tracks. The only way to know is to view the CD and compare it with your playlist and notice that there is a size difference. I was on my 41st CD before I noticed. Luckily I hadn't gotten all the way into my bought music collection, and only had to redo 10 albums. Just a heads up for those that may not have known this.

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