I thought it would be easy, and quick to leave iTunes. I just wanted to break up, and start my new relationship with Windows Media Player/Center. Why? Easy.
When we moved into our new place, there was no room in the living room for the “Media PC”, to be hooked up to the stereo anymore. (We used to stream iTunes from it to the surround sound, and out other PCs). So, I looked for a smaller PC, and determined it wasn’t worth it.
I then remembered that the XBox360 streams music from Windows. Unfortunately, the 360, and iTunes don’t like each other, at all.
So, I made the decision to convert all of my music to Windows Media player, which sounded like it’d be easy. They’re just music files, right? Not so much.
See iTunes creates their own propriatary filetype (AAC, or M4P), when you rip a CD through them, which I’ve done with hundreds of gigs of music. That creates a problem, as Windows Media can’t play/read AAC or M4P files.
So I had two options: 1) Re-rip hundreds of CDs, which took months to rip in my spare time, or 2) convert the music.
I opted for the music conversion, and found a program called “Protected Music Converter”, which boasts that it can “quickly and easily convert music files to mp3”. I thought “Great, it’s exactly what I need!”
I started running it at 9PM last night. It’s not 9:15AM, over 12 hours later, and it’s only converted 457 tracks. That’s only .63 tracks per minute. At this rate, it might have been faster to re-rip them.
It’s gonna be a long weekend. Good thing the software’s automated, and making the mp3s on its own. Once it’s done, I just need to copy them over to my new terrabyte hard drive that I bought to house the music collection last week. (Bringing my total storage capacity to just over 8 terrabytes. I’ve got an obsession.)
Will update with a final “it took this long” post when it’s done.