I don't want mpga's, I want mp3's!

May 7, 2005 1:55 AM

What the heck is an mpga and why is my computer saving music files in that format? I have an iBook G4 and about a week ago, when I downloaded music from audioblogs it started saving the files as mpga's, which won't open in iTunes. If I manually change them to mp3's, they open in iTunes, but are 0:00 long. I suspect it might have something to do with having downloaded RealPlayer (which I've since uninstalled), but I haven't been able to fix this or find any useful info on Mac help forums.
posted by The Dryyyyy Cracker to computers & internet (5 comments total)

I'm pretty sure it's a mime-type issue with the servers of some music blogs.

When I change the extension to .mp3 they always play fine for me in iTunes. How are you "manually changing them to mp3's" exactly?
posted by bcwinters at 6:20 AM on May 7, 2005

Well, the way I've always saved songs from blogs is to do a "Save As" to my desktop once the song has fulled loaded (usually in a new window in Safari). In the past, on all sites, it was saved as an mp3, but only very recently it started saving everything as an mpga...even on sites where it used to save as an mp3. I would click on the file icon on my desktop and then go to "Get Info" about the file and change the .mpga extension to .mp3. This worked a few times, but now when the song opens in iTunes, it's only one second long.
posted by The Dryyyyy Cracker at 6:27 AM on May 7, 2005

I'd try option-clicking the link to the file as the way to save it to the desktop. I've had trouble (on OS X) saving music/video files that have already loaded in a Safari window.
posted by docgonzo at 8:46 AM on May 7, 2005

Thanks a bunch, docgonzo...that does seem to work, although it's way slower than loading the songs in Safari used to be.
posted by The Dryyyyy Cracker at 10:53 AM on May 7, 2005

If I recall, installing RealPlayer causes this exact same thing in Windows. Check your MIME settings in OSX or Safari (or wherever they may happen to be kept -- I'm not too well-versed in OSX) for "audio/mpeg" or maybe "audio/x-mpeg", or something similar.

Yet another reason why RealPlayer is eeeeevil...
posted by neckro23 at 2:44 AM on May 8, 2005