Accessing Apple's iTunes Store

[JJuggle]

Does anyone have experience getting to the Apple iTunes store? I'm getting an error that indicates that the computer can not connect. I've read some of the info that this will happen periodically, etc, etc, but it is happening on my attempts 100% of the time.

I'm connecting via a simple DSL line. Is there some setting I should be changing?

Thanks in advance.

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And, by the way, just in case, here are some of your threadjacking side comments in advance, too.

"There's no gapless playback. What are you using that crappy technology for?
"Apple sucks!"
"iPods suck!"
"iTunes suck!"
"The iStore sucks!"
"Why would you get a digital music player that uses only one company's proprietary technology? WTF is up with that?"

[chosen]

i too had a lot of trouble, at first. but thats cuz for me , when i first got mine, there was a period where it wasnt working for anyone, including me. then it started, but i used a prepay card. is that what you have, like a little green card that has a number of dollars on it?

[abbabibble]

d'you have the latest version of itunes? if not, downloading the patch might help.

[Gilby]

Originally Posted by JJuggle

And, by the way, just in case, here are some of your threadjacking side comments in advance, too.

Maybe it's god's way of saying you shouldn't pay for your music...

[JJuggle]

Originally Posted by abbabibble

d'you have the latest version of itunes? if not, downloading the patch might help.

I did download the latest version.

I don't have a green card, but I can't even get to the store to register or whatever they require.

Originally Posted by gilby

Maybe it's god's way of saying you shouldn't pay for your music...

Don't you mean some intelligent designer's way of saying I shouldn't pay for my music?

[Gilby]

Originally Posted by JJuggle

Don't you mean some intelligent designer's way of saying I shouldn't pay for my music?

So many possibilities... adjust as you see fit.

[JJuggle]

Progress of a sort.

I have found a connection that gets me this message:

"The iTunes Music Store is not available in your country yet.
You will be able to browse and listen to previews, but you wont be able to purchase music. To browse a music store select a country below."

What, do they think I'm in Burundi or something?

[Loosemoose]

Its very possible. The iTunes store will access your PCs registry to find out which country it believes itself to be in. Check your regional settings in Control Panel, and see if there is any discrepancy between settings and actual location. Especially the location setting, as this is the computers internal 'I'm where I think I am' setting.

Loose.

[JJuggle]

Originally Posted by Loosemoose

Its very possible. The iTunes store will access your PCs registry to find out which country it believes itself to be in. Check your regional settings in Control Panel, and see if there is any discrepancy between settings and actual location. Especially the location setting, as this is the computers internal 'I'm where I think I am' setting.

Thanks, that got me slightly closer. I had languages set for U.S. (English) and Hebrew, that latter of which came alphabetically first. I unset the Hebrew and got to the store and could browse and search. The location settings seemed right.

But when I tried to set up an account I still got the message that my computer could not connect to the iTunes Store.

[Gilby]

Are you trying it all on the same computer? Some of the problem may be because you are behind a proxy.

[JJuggle]

Originally Posted by Gilby

Are you trying it all on the same computer? Some of the problem may be because you are behind a proxy.

I'm trying on both my work laptop, yes using a proxy and this is where I've had marginal success, and my home PC which is not using a proxy and where I've had no success.

[johnfoss]

One of the annoying side-threads you forgot to list:

Why not just get a Mac?

Sorry. I haven't used the iTunes store much. I prefer real CDs for several reasons, mostly to do with rights management and being able to fair-use my own CD as I see fit. Also as a high-fidelity backup copy that should last much longer than any CD-R.

So I'm at work, on my PC. I just tried accessing the iTunes Music Store through my browser, without starting up iTunes. The site asked if I had iTunes installed. Interesting it didn't know/there was no previous cookie or whatever. But this machine is relatively new, and all my iTunes action mostly takes place on my laptop. I chose the option of "No, I don't have iTunes installed" to see what would happen. Then a dialog box popped up to tell me I had to launch an external application to proceed, and I didn't recognize the name of the application. A message at the bottom of the dialog said if this seemed odd, to suspect this could be an attempted exploit. So I stopped there. My browser is Firefox.

So anyway, if you're not set on ordering the music online, I recommend giving eBay a try for obscure stuff, or the local record stores for the more common stuff (a lot of the obscure stuff may not be found on iTunes anyway).