Downloading from Itunes

MP3 players All other MP3 players
1

I am trying to download music to my son’s shaker for Christmas. I bought some music on Itunes and for the life of me I can’t download the songs into player!!! HELLLP!! First of all, I am barely computer literate and most things are difficult enough for me to do…can someone please give me step-by-step advise on starting out!!! I am at my wit’s end and only a few days before Santa delivers this THING!!!

Red:angry:

2

Thanks to DRM, it’s not so easy.  There are a bunch of ways this might work. 

Option 1:

If the tracks are iTunes Plus DRM free tracks, you might be able to right click on them and do “Convert Selection to MP3”.  Once that’s done, drag the MP3 version right from the itunes window to an open Windows Explorer window showing the contents of your Shaker.

Option 2:

If the tracks you bought are the standard DRM-infested ones, it’s a little more complicated.

Get some blank CD-ROMs.  Highlight a dozen or so tracks, then choose File: New Playlist from Selection.  Call it Disk1 or something.  Then go to the playlist area, right click on the playlist, and choose burn to disk and put in a blank CD.  Burn, baby, burn.  Then go to Edit-Preferences-Importing and choose MP3 format instead of AAC or whatever it’s set to.  Then stick the CD back in and re-rip the tracks back into iTunes.  Then drag your new MP3 versions over to the Shaker.

Option 3:

Swear loudly.  Go to amazon’s mp3 download store and re-buy all the songs you just bought and figure out how to manage them with or without iTunes.  Deal with the ongoing headache.

Option 4:

Swear loudly.  Return the shaker or sell it on craigslist.  Buy a iPod Shuffle to make things easier on yourself.  The extra $50 can be worth several hours of torture trying to make the shaker work if you’re not sure what you’re doing. 

3

God bless!!! I thought it was just me making things more difficult! I think between my husband and I we might be able to make this work! By the way, what way is the EASIEST to buy/download music for future reference? Thanks SOOO much and Merry Christmas!!!

4

I am having the same problem with the Shaker and I gotta tell ya…Option 4 is looking like our best bet!  How can you put a product on the market that is not more compatible with ITunes???  I am very disappointed…this might be more trouble than it’s worth!

5

Thank you so much for these great directions!  I’ve been trying to figure this out for the last 2 hours!!  Your instructions were perfect.  Thank god!!!  I got my 8-year-old one of these for Christmas, hoping against hope it would be easy moving iTunes over.  HAHAHA!!!  But she’s going to be pretty happy tomorrow, now that I have it loaded with her favorites!!

6

does it help/pay to purchase conversion software like Xilisoft? i too have been at this for hours. tried to save on a disk and re-load and nothing! i am screaming at the top of my lungs. help!

7

Don’t bother with Rhapsody either.  Same problem.  Even after paying to own the songs and paying for thier service, the songs are still rights protected and won’t copy onto the Shaker.  If you don’t have a cd burner on our computer, return the Shaker to the store.  I wouldn’t want to sell my problem to someone else, just to have it become their problem.

8

I just got a reply from SanDisk about this problem:

Thank you for contacting SanDisk Technical Support.

Please be informed that the player does not support purchased songs. You can only transfer regular mp3 files to the player. These Mp3 files are not licensed.

Should you have any other concern with our products, feel free to contact us again.

Best Regards,

9

Your advice was really helpful but what do u mean when u say drag to sansa?? How do i get 2 it??

10

When you connect your Sansa Shaka, it will show up as a drive that you can drag-and-drop to or copy-and-paste to,

Thanks fdr the above tips.  My son rec’d one for Christmas.  What a pain just to get 16 songs on it!

11

I used software that I downloaded from cNet called Protected Software Converter for this problem (I, too, am amazed that they could sell a product that doesn’t work with iTunes, where I have thousands of files).  You can use this software for free for 14 days, though the trial version is a pain as you have to tell it to continue downloading after every 2nd song.  I managed to convert about 200 songs in my 14 days and I’m hoping this mini-library keeps my kids occupied for a few months.

Looks like we’ll be buying iPods for birthdays this year after buying these shakers for Christmas.  What a waste!

12

Thanks for your instructions. I was not able to convert my itune songs in itunes, but I was able to put them on cd, then upload them as MP3 in my Windows media player and then sync it to my shaker…(of course this is after repurchasing a couple songs on amazon…lol)

THANKS