iLife '04: The Missing Manual

Music Store Billing

The iTunes Music store keeps track of what you buy and when you buy it. If you think your credit card was wrongly charged for something, or if you suspect that one of the kids knows your password and is sneaking in some forbidden downloads before you get home from work, you can contact the store or check your account’s purchase history page to see what’s been downloaded in your name.

GEM IN THE ROUGHBack Up Only What Needs Backing Up

They say that backing up is hard to do—but mainly, it’s hard to remember what you’ve already backed up and what still needs attention.

Here, however, is a sneaky trick that makes iTunes help you make backups of all the songs you’ve bought or ripped since the last time you backed up your iTunes Music folder. This means you won’t have to burn the whole darn library to a stack of CDs or DVDs each time, and can just fill a disc with the new stuff you’ve added.

After you’ve backed up your music files to disc for the first or latest time, open iTunes and choose File → New Smart Playlist.

In the Smart Playlist set-up box, change the pop-up menus to say Date Added—is after—[today’s date]. Make sure Live Updating is turned on, and that there’s no limit set for the amount of songs on the playlist. When you click OK, give your new playlist a name, like Smart Backup.

The next time you’re ready to burn a data backup disc, back up only your Smart Backup playlist to get the only latest library additions.

Then, once you’ve burned it to CD, choose File → Edit Smart Playlist change the Date Added to today’s date, so that iTunes starts keeping track of the new stuff for your next backup.

The Customer Service Page

If you have general questions about using the iTunes Music Store, have a problem with your bill, or want to submit a specific query or comment, the online Customer Service center awaits. To get there, connect to the Internet and then choose Help → Music Store Customer Service.

Click the link that best describes what you want to learn or complain about. For billing or credit-card issues, click Purchase Information.

Note

The iTunes Music Store sends out invoices by email, but they don’t come right after you buy a song. You usually get an invoice that groups together all the songs you purchased within a 12-hour period, or for every $20 worth of tunes that you buy.

Your Purchase History

To have a look at just how addicted you’ve grown to buying songs, open iTunes, click the Music Store icon in the Source List, and sign into the store. When you see your user name appear next to the Account button in the iTunes Music Store window, click it. In the box that pops up, click the View Account button.

When you get to the Account Information screen, click Purchase History. In the list that comes up, you see all of the songs you’ve bought (Figure 4-10).

UP TO SPEEDAAC, Copy Protection, and You

Apple’s AAC files are copy protected, but not all AAC files are. Some, which you may have collected from other Web sites, are freely copyable.

How can you tell the difference?

In iTunes, click the questionable track in the music library and then press

-I. The Summary tab of the song shows the album cover, technical information about its encoding, who bought it, and where it lives on the computer. If the Kind says “Protected AAC audio file,” well, you’ve got your answer.

(In this picture, the phrase [remote] means that you’re checking out a song that’s on another computer on the network.)

Incidentally, the suffix on a protected AAC file (as viewed on your desktop, for example) is .m4p. iTunes 4 can play AAC files that were ripped in iTunes, and it can play protected AAC files downloaded from the iTunes Music Store.

But beware: you may have problems playing non-iTunes AAC tracks from another online music service or Web site.

If you see songs on the list that you didn’t buy, and you’re sure that other people who use your computer didn’t buy them, contact Apple. Because the account is linked to a credit card, you’ll want to take care of the situation right away.

Tip

Every wonder how something would play in Peoria? Now you can see for yourself what’s playing in Peoria, thanks to the Radio Charts feature of the iTunes Music Store. Just click the Radio Charts link on the Store’s main page to see what’s at the top of the pops on 1,000 stations around the country.

Figure 4-10. The Purchase History area records all of the songs and albums downloaded and charged to an Apple Account, which can be useful for bracing yourself for the coming credit card bill. The list starts with the most recent ones.