Want to put all of your music on your phone, but don’t want to leave your iTunes music library behind? Here’s a way to convert it to play on your N95.

When you buy music from the iTunes Music Store, the songs come wrapped with additional technology - DRM encryption - that prevent them from being played on anything but an iPod (with the exception of iTunes Plus songs).

Luckily, once you’ve purchased the songs and have them in your library, iTunes gives you the ability to convert your songs into a variety of formats that are understood by most music players - including your Nseries mobile device.

What music formats can the Nseries phones play?

An Nseries device - like the N95 - can play a variety of music formats via the Music Player application. Music Player supports MP3, encryption-free AAC, AAC+, WAV and Windows Media Audio (WMA). In order to play songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store on an Nseries device, you need to convert them into one of these formats.

Currently, with iTunes version 7.6, you can convert your songs into AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless, MP3 and WAV. Personally, I like to convert my songs to MP3 because it’s a format supported by the majority of music players. For example, if in the future I want to transfer the same songs to an N800, I know the songs in an MP3 format will play there with no additional conversion.

How do I convert via iTunes?

The conversion process via iTunes is relatively simple, once you know what to do. The nomenclature used for conversion in the iTunes preferences is confusing, which is probably the reason not many people know how to do it.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. In iTunes, go to Preferences>Advanced and then click on “Importing.”
2. In the “Import Using…” pop-up menu, choose the format you want to convert songs to - in this case I’ll use MP3 - and then click “OK” to save the settings.
3. Now that you’re back to the main iTunes interface, select the song or multiple songs in your music library (Command-click to choose multiple songs), and then from the top menu choose Advanced>”Convert Selection to MP3.”
4. Shortly after you’ll see the song in its original format and the newly converted song appear in your library.

Now that the songs are converted, how do I load them to my device?

Basically, you have two ways to get your new MP3s to your device. If you only have a handful of songs to transfer, you can manually select them and send them via Bluetooth. If there’s a considerable amount of music to transfer you may want to use the Nokia Multimedia Transfer application for the Mac.

(Note: the instructions described here are for Mac OS X users. PC users can use the same iTunes steps in this post. To transfer your songs, use the Nokia PC Suite application instead of Nokia Multimedia Transfer.)

To transfer your songs manually via Bluetooth:

1. Make sure you’ve paired your phone with your Mac.
2. Turn Bluetooth on, both on the phone and on your Mac.
3. On your Mac go to the Bluetooth icon that shows up in your menu bar.
4. Select “Send File…”
5. Then go to Music>iTunes>iTunes Music>”Artist Name”>”Album name”
6. Select the song(s) you want to transfer and press “Send.”
7. On your Nseries phone, save the songs in your memory card or phone memory. It depends on how much space you have.

To transfer your songs via the Nokia Multimedia Transfer application:

1. Download Nokia Multimedia Transfer to your Mac.
2. Install Nokia Multimedia Transfer to your Mac’s “Application” folder.
3. Before you begin, make sure that you selected “Enable iTunes Folder Transfer” during the Nokia Multimedia Transfer setup. If you did not, you can select it by clicking on the Nokia Multimedia Transfer icon in your menu bar, selecting “Device settings…” and checking the box next to “Enable iTunes Folder Transfer.”
4. Connect your Nseries device to your Mac via Bluetooth.
5. Open Nokia Multimedia Transfer and iTunes.
6. In iTunes, you will find a folder with your device’s name. Select the folder, then go to File > Add new playlist to create a new playlist in your device folder. You may create multiple playlists for your device.
7. Add the desired songs from your iTunes library to the playlist(s) you created in your device folder. Alternatively, you can add entire playlists by selecting them and dragging them into your device’s folder.
8. You can start the transfer by connecting your device to your Mac. Any new content in the device folder will be transferred automatically after connecting. If your device was already connected, click on the Nokia Multimedia Transfer icon in the menu bar and select “Start Transfers.”

The Nokia Multimedia Transfer icon will flash while content is being transferred. You can follow the progress by clicking the Nokia Multimedia Transfer icon in your menu bar. When the transfer is complete, you will be notified on screen.

On your Nseries device, update or refresh the music library in your Music Player application. That’s it. You’ve successfully converted your encrypted songs to MP3 and transferred them to your phone. You may now play the songs transferred from iTunes to your Nokia device.

Enjoy your music!

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