Syncing music to iPod is a one-way street
Summary
To get tunes into iPod for your enjoyment, you generally either sync your iTunes library with your iPod, or use iTunes to manually copy songs to the player.
Products Affected
iTunes, iPod, Windows, Windows XP, Windows Vista
But if you want to copy music from your iPod to your computer (maybe a friend put a song on your iPod or you want to back up your music), you can't do that.
Synchronization occurs in one direction only—from a computer to your iPod. This means you cannot transfer music, automatically or manually, from your iPod to a computer, and you cannot use iPod to copy a music library from one computer to another.
However, if you are legally allowed to copy music files (such as if you own the music), you can configure your iPod as a hard disk to move your music.
For iTunes Store purchases, you can use iTunes 8 to transfer purchased content from an iPod to another authorized computer. You might want to do this if you regularly use more than one computer (at home and at work or school, for example) to buy items from the iTunes Store, and you want all your purchases in both iTunes libraries.
Here are the steps to transfer purchases from your iPod.
- Make sure that you are using the latest version of iTunes 8 and iPod software.
- Authorize your computer by choosing Store > Authorize Computer in iTunes.
- Attach the iPod that contains purchases to the computer.
- Choose File > Transfer Purchases from iPod.
Additional Information
It's always a good idea to regularly back up your iTunes Library. See this document for steps to create a backup.