Transfer iTunes songs to non-Apple music player or mobile phone

I have a little Sansa mp3 player, but my mom has an iPod. I have been downloading music from the iTunes store, but I can't put them on my player. I realize that the songs from iTunes are .mpeg files (or something like that) and that my music player plays .mp3 files, but is there any way that I could work around this, or possibly convert my .mpeg files?

My iPod broke, so I want to buy a new mp3 player, but I was thinking that this time I might try a different brand because iPods are usually a little more on the expensive side. But I still have all my iTunes songs i already bought and was wondering if it was a huge hassle to transfer them to something else and if it might be worth it to spend the extra money on the apple brand..

The songs you purchased from iTunes store are DRM protected. In order to transfer iTunes songs to a non-Apple music player or mobile phone, you will need to get the iTunes music converted first.

If you have a blank CD disc at hand and there are not many songs that need to be converted, you can try this way:

1. Insert the blank CD into your computer disc drive.
2. Create a new playlist in iTunes and add songs to the playlist.
3. Burn the playlist to the CD (choose Audio CD in the Burn Settings window).
4. Rip the burned CD back as MP3 files in iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Then you can transfer the MP3 files to your non-Apple music player or mobile phone.

What if you have lots of songs (say 1000+) that need to be converted? You still use the above burn-and-rip method? You know, a real CD disc can only hold about 79-min music. If the average length of each song is 4 minutes, then the total length would be 4000+ minutes. And you will need more than 50 discs for burning. What a waste of money! What's more, it is a waste of efforts to insert and eject CD discs again and again. So it is inadvisable to convert a large library of iTunes music using this method.

The software TuneClone also adopts the burn-and-rip method. However, TuneClone cleverly avoids the problem by applying the virtual CD burning technology. The conversion theory of TuneClone is very simple. It installs a virtual CD drive to users' computers. Then while burning iTunes playlists to an audio CD, you just choose the TuneClone virtual CD drive instead of a real CD disc. So you have saved the cost of real CD discs.

Besides, TuneClone automatically detects whether the length of the playlist exceeds 79 min. If so, it will ask you whether or not to burn multiple audio CDs. After you choose Audio CDs, the burning and encoding process will get started and TuneClone will automatically divide the playlist into several folders. You can actually switch to other jobs before the conversion is completed. So you have saved time as well.