How to burn more than 7 of an iTunes playlist

November 14, 2005 3:06 PM

Burning more than 7 copies of an iTunes playlist.

Ok, a small group of friends runs these occasional "comp" competitions. I picked out a theme, "collected" some songs from the web and bought some through iTunes. Made a playlist. Burned 7 copies - I need 11, but at 7 iTunes' DRM kicked in and told me no more.

How can I work around this? I've tried taking a CD I burned and using WMP to rip and then re-burn them, but I get an error message.

Is there any EASY, FREE way? Windows XP - please made your responses child-like in simplicity. I am an idiot, or wouldn't be in this mess.

posted by tr33hggr to computers & internet (22 comments total)

Can't you burn one and then just duplice that audio CD w/ Toast or something?
posted by xmutex at 3:07 PM on November 14, 2005

Add a one-second track of silence at the end?
posted by Tuwa at 3:07 PM on November 14, 2005

Can't you burn one and then just duplice that audio CD w/ Toast or something?

I have no Toast, but I think I tried that with WMP.
posted by tr33hggr at 3:09 PM on November 14, 2005

There's an application called Hymn that will de-DRM your iTunes Music Store tracks.
posted by danb at 3:18 PM on November 14, 2005

Use Nero, and select the "CD Copy" option. This makes a direct copy of a data CD from one CD to another; it doesn't care what kind of data is on there.
posted by matildaben at 3:19 PM on November 14, 2005

jooc why not just reimport the CD into iTunes? the playlist limitation is (afaik) on the files themselves; when you reimport them, they won't be DRM'ed anymore.
posted by mrg at 3:29 PM on November 14, 2005

mrg: He doesn't own the CDs. He's trying to burn songs bought from the iTMS. CDs that you own and import yourself don't have any DRM.
posted by danb at 3:34 PM on November 14, 2005

danb: I think mrg is talking about reimporting the CD of the playlist he just burned.

Though I agree making a CD copy in Toast might be the best solution.
posted by ArsncHeart at 3:39 PM on November 14, 2005

Can't you just make a new playlist that's exactly like the old one (or maybe some mild permutation) and burn that? I thought I remembered hearing that iTunes's DRM only cares about each instantiation of a playlist.
posted by gleuschk at 3:43 PM on November 14, 2005

Hymn looks like a good option. Any experience?
posted by tr33hggr at 3:53 PM on November 14, 2005

Sorry, I have no Toast; I do not believe it is free, no?
posted by tr33hggr at 3:53 PM on November 14, 2005

You can use Disk Utility to copy a CD. Put the CD in your computer, then open the Disk Utility application in /Applications/Utilities.

You'll see the disk in the left-hand side, with a CD icon next to it. It may be beneath some other items, but that's not important. Click on the CD icon item itself, then go to File > New > Disk Image from diskXsXsX (name), where the Xes are numbers.

Give the image a name, and save it to your desktop. The computer will scan the disk to this image file. After it does this, you can drag the disk image into Disk Utility and click the Burn icon to make as many copies as you want. Delete the disk image and drag it out of the Disk Utility when you're finished.
posted by odinsdream at 4:05 PM on November 14, 2005

Isn't Toast for the Mac? Try Nero, it's for the PC and I believe you can download a free copy for 30 days. It also has the CD Copy option. Alternately, you may have gotten a copy of Roxio CD Creator when you bought your computer or CD-R drive.
posted by matildaben at 4:09 PM on November 14, 2005

ArsncHeart: Good point, I misread that.

tr33hggr: Toast is not free. Furthermore, the new Toast version (8, I think) also recognizes protected iTMS files and has the same restrictions as iTunes.

Also, Hymn works fine; I've used it myself for the exact same purpose. (I'm on a Mac, but the program is cross-platform.)
posted by danb at 4:11 PM on November 14, 2005

When you burn an audio CD w/ iTunes using songs purchased from the ITMS, how is the DRM retained? It seems like at that point the CD is full of just audio, which then should be duplicatable (oh yeah, duplicatable) by any standard CD duplicating software. Leglaity, of course, notwithstanding. Am I wrong here?
posted by xmutex at 4:21 PM on November 14, 2005

Wait, I'm confused about this. Which of the following is true?

(1) Any playlist that contains files from iTMS may only be burned 7 times.

(2) Any file purchased from iTMS may only be burned to 7 total CDs, regardless of what playlist it is burned from.

If it's (1) and not (2), I don't see why gleuschk's suggestion won't work. That was my first thought, anyway.
posted by keatsandyeats at 4:25 PM on November 14, 2005

it's 1. I was talking about taking the CD containing the burned playlist and then reimporting it, for further clarification..
posted by mrg at 4:47 PM on November 14, 2005

Hymn doesn't work for ITMS 6.0+, I think they're working on it.
posted by tetsuo at 4:54 PM on November 14, 2005

jooc why not just reimport the CD into iTunes?

There might be (significant) loss of quality, at least if the encoder is different than the one that some of the files were originally encoded with. This is the same logic behind why people shouldn't reencode their mp3s as oggs, for instance. If the files are imported with some kind of lossless encoding (or just as wavs; I'm not sure what options itunes has here) this won't matter, though it will take up some hard drive space.
posted by advil at 5:18 PM on November 14, 2005

Let me piggyback a question... Does anyone know of a Hymn equivalent for Rhapsody?
posted by epimorph at 5:47 PM on November 14, 2005

Burn 1 copy through iTunes then duplicate the burnt CD with NERO or another cd burning software package. (You most likely received a copy of nero when you bought your burner/computer)

There is no need to reimport anything back into iTunes, this will just be time consuming and decrease the quality of the recording.

Using Nero Express, you simply choose the "Copy CD" option. Rinse, repeat.

This way you avoid wasting valuable iTunes DRM permitted burnings, and you still have multiple copies of your new compilation.
posted by snarkle at 5:52 PM on November 14, 2005

I don't know which tracks you bought but in the future, check other online music stores. Many of them are cheaper and some don't have DRM. I use emusic.com. No DRM; price as low as 18 cents a track depending on the qty you buy; 22 cents a track if you buy 90 at once ($20).
posted by dobbs at 8:06 PM on November 14, 2005