Article
Dealing with the 5 iTunes account per iPod limit
By Jerrod H.
Contributing Editor
Published: Thursday, April 13, 2006
Articles Categories: Ask iLounge, iTunes, Music
Ask iLounge offers readers the opportunity to get answers to their iPod-, iPhone-, iPad-, iTunes-, or Apple TV-related questions from a member of the iLounge editorial team. We'll answer several questions here each week, and of course, you can always get help with more immediate concerns from the iLounge Discussion Forums. Submit your questions for consideration using our Ask iLounge Submit Form. We reserve the right to edit questions for grammar, spelling, and length.
Q: Through my family member’s iTunes Music Store accounts, and a few I’ve purchased on eBay, I seem to have exceeded a limit I never knew existed: my iPod will only accept songs from 5 of these accounts, refusing to synchronize songs from the others. Is there any way to get around this?
- Anonymous
A: This is indeed a rather subtly-advertised limitation of the iPod/iTunes system. Similarly, an iPod can only synchronize Audible audiobooks from no more than two accounts simultaneously.
You can’t (legally, at least) get around this limitation at all. However, you can attempt to exert more control over which five accounts iTunes will synchronize; by default, iTunes chooses itself.
The trick is to manually disable the synchronization of the songs belonging to accounts you’d like to temporarily disable. One way to do this is to disable the synchronization of unchecked songs, and simply un-check the songs associated with your older accounts. You could also use the “Automatically update selected playlists only” mode, and ensure that the accounts you don’t want aren’t included in your selection. For more help, see our synchronization tutorial here.
Granted, this isn’t the solution you’re looking for, as the ultimate result will be that you’ll still be carrying less than all of the songs you’ve paid for. However, at least with this method, you’ll be able to choose what you have to leave behind.
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1
I’d like to know how i can edit anything on the ipod itself.
I searched but canoot find. For ex: i want to delete certain artists, because their names are doubled on the ipod…
Posted by sjonnie1 on April 17, 2006 at 2:43 AM (PST)
2
i have my music video’s loaded on itunes but they wont transfer to my i pod. how can i convert them?
Posted by rizlady on April 17, 2006 at 2:46 PM (PST)
3
I just bought a 30g ipod video, after MANY problems, i got intunes installed, but now when i try to update my ipod, it comes up with ” attempting to write to the disk bexipod failed. The disk could not be written to or read from”
Any ideas?
On another forum, someone suggested asking you guys. also, apple told me it could be my windows xp computer needs its drives updated… i have no idea what they r on about… plz help
Posted by AngelwithAttitude on April 18, 2006 at 8:13 PM (PST)
4
ok i got video’s to transfer to my i pod but they have no sound? I have been working on this for a week now….. help…. i have done the updates i dont know what else to do
Posted by rizlady on April 19, 2006 at 1:45 PM (PST)
5
recently i had turned my ipod nano on to find that when i want to higher the volume the percentage bar is replaced by five dots. this is also the same for the time counter for all songs. so far it doesnt seem to be damaged or showing any signs of being broken but im worried. any ideas?
Posted by everhexxed on April 28, 2006 at 4:03 AM (PST)