A lot of Zune owners do not realize that they can get neat free stuff from iTunes. There are a lot of great free stuff available through the iTunes store - podcasts, for example. Also, a lot of music websites provide free music - but they auto download to iTunes. Not a problem as we will explain below.

First, you have to understand that the Zune supports AAC.  This is also the default file format used by iTunes when you rip a CD.  In other words, both Zune and iTunes use the AAC file format (though iTunes does use other formats as well - eg MP3).  So if you have a collection of music already in iTunes and have just been given a Zune - rest assured that you can play them on your Zune!

To show you how easy is is to get iTunes music onto your Zune we will go through a simple example.  Lets go to Soundclick where there are thousands of songs offered under creative commons license (and so, free to us):

There are literally hundreds of thousands of songs available across 17 different genres for us to download to our Zunes for free. For example, if you love the Latin genre there are over 2500 free Latin-genre songs that can be downloaded to your Zune! The trick is to know how to do it! First, Look at the long list of songs available. Choose one and then click through to the3 download page:

When you click on “download” you will get a box opening that gives you the option to open with iTunes. Select that option:

And voila! It will now be in your iTunes libarary:

When you install the Zune software, it automatically scans and adds songs from the iTunes folder. The Wowzune team recommends that you always rip your CDs in iTunes so they’ll work on all your music players (including your iPod/iPhone). You don’t have to do anything special - just rip them in iTunes, and the Zune software discovers them the next time you start it up.

The only problem comes when you try to play DRM-protected songs  as are all the songs that are purchased from the iTunes Music Store. Zune can’t play those songs!  (OK, there is a way to strip the DRM off by burning to CD and then re-ripping). But if most of the music you have stored there has been ripped from your offline CD collection, or from various sites around the web, then these will not be DRM protected and you will be able to play them on your Zune.

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