Do you have to download music from iTunes for the iPod?

Answer 1

First clarify the question.

There are two items with the words 'iTunes' that are used by Apple.

1. The iTunes Music Store. This is a web site. It provides media including podcasts, iTunes U lectures, TV shows, Music Videos, and many genre of music such as Classical and Rock. To use it you have to sign up and get an ID and password. You download music into the computer. Many media files are free.

2. iTunes, an application that plays the media in the computer. The media can come from any source that provides compatible formats:

Video File Formats

• QuickTime Movie (.mov)
• MPEG-4 (.mp4, .m4v)
• MPEG-1
• 3GPP
• 3GPP2
• AVI
• DV

Audio File Formats

• iTunes Audio (.m4a, .m4b, .m4p)
• MP3
• Core Audio (.caf)
• AIFF
• AU
• SD2
• WAV
• SND
• AMR

The QuickTime Movie format supports audio or video tracks encoded using a variety of different codecs. QuickTime can play movies that use using the following codecs:

Video Codecs

• MPEG-4 (Part 2)
• H.264
• H.263
• H.261
• Apple ProRes
• Apple Pixlet
• Animation
• Cinepak
• Component Video
• DV
• DVC Pro
• Graphics
• Motion JPEG
• Photo JPEG
• Sorenson Video 2
• Sorenson Video 3

Audio Codecs

• AAC (MPEG-4 Audio)
• HE-AAC
• Apple Lossless
• MP3
• AMR Narrowband
• MS ADPCM
• QDesign Music 2
• Qualcomm PureVoice (QCELP)
• IMA 4:1
• MACE 3:1
• MACE 6:1
• ALaw 2:1
• ULaw 2:1
• 24-Bit Integer
• 32-Bit Integer
• 32-Bit Floating Point
• 64-Bit Floating Point

QuickTime can be expanded to utilize additional media formats other than those listed above by installing additional QuickTime components.

Media can be imported into the iTunes application, sorted into playllists and automatically downloaded into the iPod. The iPod can act as a hard drive, and files can be saved on it. These files can not be played by the iPod media software. Playable media is put into the iPod media database by iTunes.

So, if you want to play it. Put it into the iPod via iTunes application in the computer.