# Apple / Mac won't upload a CD to Itunes - here is the solution!



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

So, in the early 2000s there was a kind of CD that was supposed to be the music industry's answer to Napster and illegal file-sharing. Sony spent millions of dollars developing this "write-protect" CD. Within minutes of its release, some teenager discovered that if you put a quarter penny's worth of masking tape around the edge of it, you can still upload the music. So it wasn't widely adopted, and a lot of CD drives for computers can upload them anyway.

However some CDs were produced, and Apple / Macintosh CD drives won't upload them.

As I am new to Mac, I have not been able to upload these CDs to my computer. _*It's important to note that I'm not illegally sharing anything - though I once used Napster (mea culpa) I now buy all of my music legally. I do not endorse illegal file-sharing, and this is not meant to help such practices*_ (and whoever really wants to do that won't need my advice on how to upload CDs).

I could probably figure out how to do the masking tape thing, but something about doesn't feel right to me. I think the problem is that Apple is trying to imply that I'm doing something criminal by uploading my own lawfully purchased music. I googled this problem and found no answer - I even found discussions about whether Apple is trying to keep this hushed up. I don't know about that.

Anyway, I'm proud to report that I've found the simple solution: just plug a non-Apple external CD drive in to your Mac through a USB port, and everything uploads flawlessly. So simple. I should've thought of it months ago. Now I'm happily uploading my Piazzolla, my Gideon Kremer - even my Yes.

I'm posting this here because I know from experience that Google's spiders crawl through our conversations here (welcome them, friends, and welcome our overlords whom they serve) and hopefully we are safely beyond the reach of Apple's long arms here. Perhaps in the future some people with this problem will find their solution more quickly than I have.

If you're curious, these CDs have a little extra stripe around the outside of the business side. If you have any of the following CDs (among many others, surely - these are just the ones I happen to have) you can look and see what I'm talking about:

- Modern Jazz Quartet - Blues on Bach
- John Adams: Naive and Sentimental Music - Salonen and the LA Philharmonic
- Prokofiev, Shostakovich: Violin Concertos #1 - Vengerov; Rostropovich: LSO 
- Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica - Russian Seasons
- Astor Piazzolla: The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night
- Bali: Music from the Morning of the World
- Dawn Upshaw - Knoxville, Summer of 1915, etc.
- Piazzolla: Maria de Buenos Aires 
- Berg: Lyric Suite - Kronos Quartet
- D. Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonatas - Scott Ross
- D'Indy: Jour d'été à la montagne, Symphonie 'Cévenole' - Collard; Janowski: Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
- Bruch: Works for Clarinet and Viola - Meyer, Caussé, Duchable; Nagano: Lyon Opera Orchestra
- Chopin: Etudes - Lugansky
- Purcell: Music for Queen Mary - Gardiner: Monterverdi Choir and Orchestra, Equale Brass Ensemble
- Yes: Fragile

(A lot of Apex and Nonesuch products there, but at least some Nonesuch CDs do not have the write-protect stripe.)


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