Now you can browse the iTunes Music Store and search for songs you like in the higher-quality, cheaper, and DRM-free Amazon MP3 store!

Just select some songs you like while browsing the iTMS and run this script, and your browser will open up searches for each selected song. If you don’t have any songs selected, it’ll just search for the first song in the list.

Why would you want this? Well, the iTMS has a very nice browser and some convenient integration with your playlist (especially with the new Genius sidebar). This way you can take advantage of that nice browser, but still buy a high quality, DRM free, MP3 version of the songs you want.

It’s kinda like going to Best Buy to try out a computer and then buying the computer on Amazon. Except with music.

This post is part of an ongoing series about how to subvert iTunes and make it more agreeable to those of us who dislike DRM, high prices, and general customer-mistreatment. Read the whole series!

We’ve already discussed putting oddball video formats into iTunes, but what if you want to put those same files onto an iPod for watching on the road?

Well, there’s lots of details and things to think about regarding video formats, resolutions, bitrates, and all that. But, in the end, life is too short. So here’s a short list of software to make your life easier, whether you’re on a Mac or a PC.

This is only one post in a series on how to get iTunes to do what you want, rather than what Apple thinks you should want (high priced, DRM laden content). Read the whole series!

In keeping with our “Subvert iTunes” theme this week, Nik’s Picks is featuring two programs which beat iTunes at its own game: Xcast and Democracy Player.

Whether you call them “podcasts” or “netcasts,” one of the best sources of original content is just these ‘casts. Unfortunately, iTunes’ handling of ‘casts leaves something to be desired.

Firstly, the iTunes interface kind of, well, sucks for video playback. It’s a LOT better in iTunes 7, but video still feels just a little tacked-on.

Secondly, it’s not uncommon for iTunes to forget where you were in a ‘cast, and start downloading a handful of ancient episodes. If you’ve got a smaller iPod (say, a nano), this can pretty quickly fill it up. And using a third party “podcatcher” (great term until they get sued) eliminates the benefits of having ‘casts nicely categorized in iTunes, since they instead get jammed up in with all your other music. And who, I ask you, wants that?

So how can you work around these problems?

This article is part of a continuing feature on how to make iTunes work better with free content and your own content, so that you don’t have to be trapped by the many restrictions placed on you when you buy from the iTunes store. Click here to read all the articles in the series.

The iPod is, perhaps, one of the world’s greatest audio book players. It supports Audible’s audio books, and the iTunes store provides plenty of audio books (which are, incidentally, all provided by Audible). Of course, both of these sources are crippled with DRM and full of restrictions, so you may want to make your own audiobooks.

Doing that is pretty easy if you have an audio book on CD. Just encode the CD’s tracks as MP3s and you’re done. Right?

Not if you you want the audio book to show up in the Audiobooks section of iTunes and your iPod.

This post is part of an ongoing series about how to subvert iTunes and make it more agreeable to those of us who dislike DRM, high prices, and general customer-mistreatment. Read the whole series!

The grand poobah of the TWiT Network, Leo Laporte, has put out a call to change Podcasts into Netcasts. This is a response to Apple’s over-litigious behavior over third parties’ use of the word “pod” in reference to music, podcasting, etc. You can read all about it on Leo’s own site.

As a show of support, I have put together a hacked version of iTunes strings file that transforms iTunes from a Podcast subscribin’ program, into a Netcast program.

Personally, I despise DRM, and therefore despise the iTunes Store (formerly the iTunes Music Store). Not only is it overpriced and DRM-laden, but the quality leaves much to be desired. You can get better quality audio and video with a CD or a TiVo and a simple analog->digital bridge (I have a little Dazzle-branded box) and a copy of Handbrake.

And so, in honor of iTunes 7’s release, I will be posting a few articles about how to get your content into iTunes, so that it works as well as (or better than) what’s already in there. Read the whole series!

First up: Video.

iTunes has decent video support, and it’s much better in the latest version. But here’s the thing, you may prefer to encode your video in DivX, XviD, 3viX, Windows Video (WMV) or some other format which iTunes and Front Row won’t accept. (The same is true of most video you can download elsewhere on the ‘net, legally and otherwise.)

So how do you get these oddball formats into iTunes (and, by extension, Front Row) without having to buy your videos all over again from the iTunes store?