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How to Get Music Off Your iPod
ptorrone writes "Never did we think we'd need to do a How-To on something which should be part of the basic functionality of a portable music player, but once you put your tunes on an iPod unfortunately it's a one-way sync unless you know the tricks for getting them off. Here's how to get your stuff off for free on a Mac or PC and how to re-enable a useful tool with a Hex editor." Cory Doctorow has been writing about this on boingboing recently; he discusses Apple's message to iPod owners.
It's not that first time such 'backup' tool is available, and it's also not the first time Apple found ways to neutralize such tool by way of a new version.
Additionally, it's relatively easy (compared to ripping CDs) to do it on iPod because Apple basically owns the device and its content, and they can do a lot to force users to comply. iPod doesn't need to follow a standard format (like CDs must play in all CD players), they can set/change the format to suit.
The article is quick to point out that "We're also hopeful Apple might consider not spending engineering time and lawyer fees on chasing after applications and developers who just want to give folks an obvious feature that's being left out only to appease the RIAA. At the end of the day, Apple needs to know that we're their customers, too."
However I think the BoingBoing article sums it up nicely - " Apple didn't have any choice. If they don't play nice with the suicidally stupid record industry, the industry will stop supplying music for the iPod."
When/If these online music distributors have gained enough market shares (maybe 30% of all music album buyers?), they might able to turn around and force the record industry to make changes, because it's not nice to lose 30% sales overnight.
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This story is simply yet another plug for the folks over at Engadget.com, submitted by Mr. Torrone himself. (Hint: he's with Engadget.) They're trolling for hits, plain and simple.
At least grant us the courtesy of a disclosure statement if you're gonna let 'em plug their site under the guise of news.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
story link contains pornographic ads.
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On a Mac it's pretty easy to get everything off the iPod - fire up a shell, wander into the directory where the music is stored on the mounted iPod, and simply copy out what you want.
The tool they talk about would make it easier but even a novice can use a shell if they are just following directions.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I would hardly say that Apple trying to protect its relationship with the music content providers, which is the whole reason that the iTunes Music Store exists in the first place, not to mention the online store with by far the highest marketshare, is tantamount to Apple telling its customers to "eat shit and die".
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His preemptive rebuttals are also complete bullshit. Yes, we're the "customers", not Sony/BMG. And he himself admits that the record companies are idiots; yes, those are the idiots that Apple has to deal with. A lot of people think it was a miracle Apple/Steve Jobs got them even to agree to this "crazy experiment" in the first place.
Additionally, getting music back off the iPod is not part of the advertised capabilities or features of the service, period, and never was. Remember iTunes 4.0b12? It let you go both ways between every iPod and iTunes under the sun, with no limits. You could two-way sync every iPod and iTunes library on earth. Remember iTunes 4.0, and its internet music sharing? The record industry might not be telling Apple *exactly* the specifics of how to implement the protections, but Apple is under pressure to not make it too "easy" to "share" music on a wide scale, while still making the DRM and protections as transparent as it possibly can.
The proponents of things like iPod Download, and even the linked article, talk about things like stolen computers and hard drive failures. Well, in fairness, Apple does have a recommendation. You might hate it, and you might think it sucks, but it's to have your music library backed up somewhere other than your computer, and other than your iPod
Further, as long as the iPod is just a freaking disk, its contents will be able to be retrieved. But Apple CANNOT look as if it is passively ignoring things that are perceived by the music industry to be "dangerous", whether they are or not. Yes, Apple can try to help the music industry understand, and even pressure them in the right direction - and probably has, quite a bit, frankly. Remember, this whole online download thing is in its utter infancy.
If you want to hate or blame Apple for "selling out", and saying that they should just tell people like Sony/BMG to go fuck themselves, and if they lose them they lose them, fine...that's you call. And no one is forcing you to use or buy any of Apple's services. This is Apple's service and products, and they're running them how they feel they have to to ensure the iTunes Music Store's continued existence. Do you think they WANT to make things hard on customers? Quite the opposite! And maybe someday Apple will have the leverage to start pressing these things with the music industry - Jobs believes people should really be able to do what they want with their music. But people also want music from the major labels, so you can't piss them off right off the bat. What to do? Frankly, I think Apple is in the right here, and Cory Doctorow is the one who can eat shit and die.
Seriously. This stuff has been common knowledge since the first generation iPod. There have been numerous softwares to accomplish the same thing and many of them can be found at iPodlounge.com
A simple google search will turn up more than enough results. Was it really nesse3sary to put this on the front page of Slashdot?
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There's also CopyPod for Windows which allows you to select individual albums/songs. http://www.copypod.net/index.php
I think one important aspect to Apple's constant user downgrades of the iPod/iTMs is that they stop customers from doing what Apple tells them to do: Back up their songs.
Oddly, Apple's iTMS wants it both ways. They say they are selling you a license for the song, not the physical song. But when you lose a song, they treat it like you lost physical property, even though you paid an apparently perpetual license fee that allows you to have the song and play it.
If something happens to your iTunes library, Apple will not let you re-download those songs again even though the "Fair Play" DRM insures that their could be no piracy involved, since the songs would be locked to the same computers as the original. Tough luck, says Apple, it's your fault for not backing up. Naturally, one would think that the iPod's large disk drive and auto synch would be the perfect way to back up songs, but the schizophrenic Apple won't let you copy your songs off iPod. (Yes, there are ways, but Apple may close that back door at any time.) iPod owners are constantly having to ask on Forums how to recover their accidentally erased iTMS library from their iPod because Apple doesn't officially allow anyway to copy their songs from your iPod to restore their music. Ridiculous.
Their is literally no customer advantage to the Apple downgrades. And copying your legal songs is not illegal. I'm glad that Corry is staying on this.
Just use the iPod support plugin in Winamp. Not only does it let you sync and listen to your iPod in Winamp, it allows you to "Copy Selection to Hard Drive". There are still some kinks in it. It has a habit of creating literal album names for directories (which is a problem for DJ Shadow's "Endtroducing...". Windows doesn't like them ellipses).
Of course worse comes to worst I navigate into the iPod in Windows Explorer, CTRL+C all the directories and CTRL+V it onto my Harddrive. No big deal.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Just to clarify, it's not actually that hard to get music off an iPod. Sure, iTunes won't let you copy music off it, but on a PC, it's this simple:
Voila! - All your mp3s are there - you can even play then straight off the iPod (in something like WinAMP) if you like.
Admittedly, on a Mac you have to resort to the Terminal (basically all the music files are hidden in Finder), but it's not exactly rocket science!
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I don't know when we started being so collectively condescending to the average computer user, but there was a time when you might tell a user to copy a file on their computer and reasonably believe they could do it. These days, most people approach the user like you might approach your retarded cousin who was raised by ferrets on a remote island: don't tell them anything, you might frighten or confuse them (unfrozen-caveman-lawyer style).
Personally, I have faith in people, and when someone asks me how to copy files off their iPod, I show them how to do it with the normal shell commands or file manager interfaces. The belief that people need a WYSIWYG GUI application to move files between storage devices is, I think, a result of the incorrect and insulting attitude that developers are so much smarter than their users.
That's not what the article says, the article REFUTES that point, sheesh.
feh. stuff.
What we really need is a how-to instructing geek nation how to get their iPod back after some scumbag stole it!
These days, most people approach the user like you might approach your retarded cousin who was raised by ferrets on a remote island: don't tell them anything, you might frighten or confuse them (unfrozen-caveman-lawyer style).
That's because there are a whole fuckton of people out there who don't know, don't care, and refuse to learn even the most basic thing about computers (like copying files or not clicking on random attachments). The revel in their ignorance. Faced by such willful ignorance, the documentation guys took one step back, gave the one finger salute, and started writing in babytalk, knowing that nobody reads the stuff anyway.
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When I had an ipod, I used EphPod to deal with my music (because iTunes doesn't run on Win ME). EphPod is pretty good on its own, and it has the "feature" that allows you to download from the ipod to your computer. You click and drag. Pretty simple..
You can do it just fine on a PC as well.
I don't know, maybe i'm just completely missing something here, but this article seems incredibly stupid to me. I just don't understand why you'd have to do any of this at all. Why would you not be able to get them off the iPod? In Windows you can press F3 and type *.mp3 in the stupid search box and it will list every MP3 on your iPod and you're free to copy them where-ever you like. You don't need EphPod or a hex editor or any of that, and you never did. -_-
Doesn't all music on an iPod come from a computer? Why not get it from there? The only point I can see to this is the argument of hard drive crash, but there's no need to damn Apple for not providing tools they never said they would.
Just back the files you didn't get from your own CD's to data CD's and be done with it.
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On a Mac, this is fairly simple.
1) Plug in the iPod and make sure it mounts as a disk. Note the name of the disk (it will be whatever you named your iPod, likely John Doe's iPod).
2) Open a new finder window and press cmd-shift-G. In the sheet that opens up, type the following: "/Volumes/John Doe's iPod/iPod_Control/Music"
3) Your finder window will go the the music folder. It will look empty, but it's not. In the folder *above* the music folder, the music folder itself will appear as a greyed out folder. Drag this icon to wherever you'd like to put it. The copy will begin.
4) Once the copy completes, enjoy the music.
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I'm not saying you're lying but my iPod's library is entirely searchable with non-random file names. The file names on my iPod are in the thisisthesongname.mp3 format.
Just mount the iPod in firewire disk mode go searching via the terminal or make sure you set hidden files as viewable in Finder/Explorer.
Or download the handful of GUI apps that will do it for you. Apple disabled an iTunes plugin - not the ability to move files from your iPod.
You are partially incorrect. It's true that the files are put in random directories, but the filenames remain the same.
/Volumes/iPod ./ -iname *portishead*
./ -iname *portishead*`; do open $i; done
$ cd
$ find
If you wanna get fancy, you can import them by checking the "copy imported music to iTunes" and do:
for i in `find
This will reimport all of your portishead songs. I should know, I just did it because my hard drive died a couple of weeks ago and my backup was bad. This was the only way I could get some of my music back.
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Interesting, I have the same experience with people who work at Staples.
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Open Pod is an applescript for iTunes that builds a playlist from the files on your iPod, which you can then copy to your music library. This thing saved me hours of re-ripping when I deleted all the music from my hard drive to save space, not knowing that I "couldn't" copy the music back from my iPod (I was an iPod newb when this happened). I don't know if this works in Windows. I would guess not...
sudo eat my shorts
I've never had a problem getting the songs off of my iPod, especially since I use iTunes to organize my music. The music is just stored in a hidden directory on the iPod, so all you have to do is copy that directory, and then tell iTunes (or any other good jukebox) to import a directory. Tada! Music transferred. It's not like Apple made it really difficult to remove it.
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Yes, the iPod is an external drive, and you can see your music (if you enable hidden files and folders), but it is not organized well at all. There are folders like F01 through F19, each one containing a portion of your library. There is a file which contains the entire database of your playlists, and how they map to the files - it is this mapping that the programs exploit, making it useful to view your songs as "artist - title", by playlist, and copy off in that fashion.
Sure, you could just copy F19/*.mp3, if you want. Then you could re-create all of your playlists. There are just easier ways.
hymn (Hear Your Music aNywhere) formerly called PlayFair - Removes Apple's FairPlay DRM from iPod / iTunes http://hymn-project.org/
nuff said.
It has already been clearly established that the iPod is not a 'backup' medium and it is not acceptable to store the 'only' copies of your music on it. Quite regularly, answers in Apple's troubleshooting tips for iPod problems instruct the user to restore the Pod, which returns it to the completely empty default-install state.
So why would anyone be silly enough to keep the only copies of their music on their iPod, forcing them to then use this tool? With iTunes, you can't even get music onto the Pod without first importing it into the library. So it's a given that the music is already on your computer. (And where did it come from? If absolutely necessary, you can re-rip your CDs, or copy from your burned backups for iTMS or illegal music downloads.)
So tell me, is there a legitimate reason for your only copy of any song to be exclusively stored on your iPod?
I've had my iPod since 2001 and have often used to transfer songs. It's really quite simple. Just open up a Terminal (on OSX) or Cygwin (on Windows) and browse to your iPod (usually something like /Volumes/"My iPod" or /cygdrive/f.) Then it's just one line :
/temp_folder \;
find . -name "*.mp3" -exec cp {}
That will copy all the MP3 files to some temporary place. Then just drop the folder on iTunes (make sure you have the "let iTunes keep your music organized" option turned on) and it will copy everything nice and neatly to your music library.
Has anyone considered that Apple actually made it rather easy to do this?
Had they been the real evil corporation that Apple-haters tend to want to cast them as, they could quite easily have arranged for something like byte scrambling to take place as the music tracks transferred from iTunes to the iPod.
Then, getting the data back to the computer from an iPod would have been a lot harder.
It reminds me of the early days of DVD players: