Our son has just gone to boarding school and we discovered he couldn’t take his music with him (the music on our family iTunes account). Well, he could but he would never be able to sync or add to it again. So we’ve been stung….not realising when we created our account that this would be the case.
We want him to have all his existing music but also purchase more in the future.
What’s the best way to do this? He’s too young to have a credit card so setting up his own iTunes account is not an option. Nor do we want him to have access to our credit card while he’s at a boarding school!!!!
We considered Spotify as an option but then he wouldn’t own the music.
Does anyone have any other ideas about to best handle this situation? We realise we may need to repurchase some of his music he already owns on iTunes in order to keep it with him. Grrrrrrr!!!!!!
—–
Claire
MacMost Q&A Forum • View All Forum Questions • Ask a Question
iTunes: How Does Our Son Take Music With Him When He Moves Out?
Comments: One Response to “iTunes: How Does Our Son Take Music With Him When He Moves Out?”
Comments Closed.
iTunes did away with copy protection many years ago. So unless your music purchases are very old, you should have no problem giving your son his music on his Mac or PC in iTunes.
You can do this many ways. You can use Home Sharing to transfer the music to his computer. Or, if the music is already there (he is using his computer with your iTunes account) then just sign out of the iTunes account and the music remains.
You can also simply transfer the music files from your computer to his, drag and drop them into iTunes, and they will be added to his account.
So there are many ways to do it, depending on where the music is now, and what he has on his computer.
Don't know where you heard the "would never be able to sync or add to it again" -- that isn't true.
As for setting up his own iTunes account, that's probably not true either. If his is 13 or older, then he certainly can have his own iTunes account. You don't need a credit card. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2534 You can even add funds to the account with iTunes gift cards, which can be purchased with cash at tons of stores. They have them in my local grocery store.
If he is under 13, then you can still set him up with his "own" iTunes account -- just create a second account for yourself and let him use it. You can consider it "his" while legally it is "yours" -- but that's true of a lot of things at that age, right?
As for Spotify, that's a good option too, though not all music is available there. Sure, he doesn't "own" the music -- but that's kinda true of music bought in iTunes, or any online service, or on CD. You license music, you don't own it (you can't play it publicly, you can't re-distribute it, you can't do a lot of things with it -- you don't own it).
I grew up with the idea of "owning" music -- really "collecting" is the proper term. But this next generation may not care so much. As long as they can access and play the songs they want, when they want, having a physical or digital copy in their collection may not matter so much to them.