ipod died what next?

[abrune1006]

My classsic ipod 40G died, what can i do to get my music out of itunes into something else? what are my options?

[kornchild2002]

Well, if your music is physically located somewhere on your computer (or an external hard drive), you don't have to do anything. Simply buy a new device and you will be able to transfer all of your content over. Keep in mind that content purchased from the iTunes Store can only be played back on Apple devices (i.e. iPods, iPhones, and iPads). So if you have a ton of that, you should buy a new iPod.

Now, if your music is located solely on your iPod (which is a never a good idea, why do people keep doing this?), you pretty much have just one option which may or may not work: buy an external enclosure for the iPod's internal hard drive so you can hook it up to your computer via USB and copy all of the content off of it. This will NOT work if your iPod's hard drive is at fault. If that is the case, all of your music is lost forever and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

[Mr. Salty]

Originally Posted by kornchild2002

Keep in mind that content purchased from the iTunes Store can only be played back on Apple devices (i.e. iPods, iPhones, and iPads). So if you have a ton of that, you should buy a new iPod.

Not true.

Music purchased from the iTunes Store a few years ago did have copy protection, but the iTunes Store hasn't used DRM (copy protection) on its files for quite a while. Users also now have the option to upgrade older DRM'd files to non-copy-protected files. Any of these non-copy-protected files will play on any devices that can play AAC files, Apple and otherwise.

It's also easy to convert non-copy-protected AAC files to MP3 format, or you can burn copy-protected songs to CD, which eliminates the copy protection, then re-rip them to MP3.

[kornchild2002]

I should have said "TV Show and Movie content purchased from the iTunes Store can only be played back on Apple devices." Yes, I know the Music and Music Video sections of the store are DRM-free. Still, if they have a bunch of older purchased music, that will only work on Apple devices and the whole "burn to audio CD and rip" method is nothing more than a long way of lossy-to-lossy transcoding media (thus resulting in further degradation of already low bitrate material).