Over the last few months I have been flooded with hundreds of emails. One recurring theme was a request for OurTunes without the need for iTunes.

Today I would like to announce the official branching of this project. We will continue to work on reverse engineering iTunes but James Sedgwick has developed the beginning of a completely new application to manage music over a network.

And it is currently in the alpha stage.

Thats right ladies and gents, it works. More development is needed but it works. Developers who want to help out on this project can contact me through saveourtunes [at] gmail [dot] com as usual.

Wanna know more?

Of course you do.

For the software to work both computers need to be running a copy and there are no connection restrictions unlike the sharing in iTunes.

We even have a screenshot (here is the full sized one)

As always spread the word!

Several people have recently suggested downgrading to iTunes 6 as a stopgap solution until the new version of OurTunes is working. To that end I have found a simple guide to getting rid of iTunes 7 and reinstalling iTunes 6.

But wait, there is more.

I put together a nice little zip file with OurTunes, iTunes 6 and the instructions on how to downgrade! Get it here (I could use some mirrors for those of you with websites, the file is just about 36 MB and that adds up pretty quickly)

Pretty sweet eh?

How to Downgrade

Step 1: Backup
Back up your iTunes 7 settings, so that you can keep them around in case you want to go back.

Go into your My Documents folder, then your My Music folder. Copy the iTunes folder inside there to somewhere else. That’ll save your settings.

Note: That’s the default location, if you’ve moved things around it’ll be somewhere else. If you need help finding it, search for files ending in .itl on your hard drive.

Step 2: Uninstall iTunes 7
Now, uninstall iTunes 7. Go to your Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, iTunes and hit Uninstall.

Reboot as it asks you to when it’s done.

Step 3: Install iTunes 6.0.5
Install iTunes 6 by running the installer.

Step 4: Try to run iTunes 6
You should get this error message:
The file “iTunes Library.itl” cannot be read because it was created by a newer version of iTunes.

Step 5: Restore your old library
Go back into My Documents/My Music. Now go into the iTunes folder. Rename your iTunes Library.itl as iTunes Library.itl.old. Go into the Previous iTunes Libraries folder (which would be in MyDocuments\MyMusic\Previous iTunes Libraries). Take the newest file (for me this was iTunes Library 2006-09-14.itl) and copy it back up to the iTunes folder. Rename it iTunes Library.itl. Run iTunes 6 and you should be all set, with your library restored.

Thanks to blog.dominik.net for the original downgrade instructions.

Download the files

The other day Apple and EMI announced that the iTunes store will start selling DRM free music, for a slightly higher cost.

Like Justin over at SPE said, I am kinda happy about it. This means that moving music bought from iTunes between computers doesn’t require activation!

Still, the pricing is a bit odd. ‘Normal’ music for $0.99, DRM included, or ‘New and Improved Music that sounds the exact same but you can listen to it anyway you want’ for $0.30 more?

Huh?

Yeah it may be a higher quality encoding without DRM but …

Huh?

Apparently the only difference that EMI sees between ‘protected’ (DRMed) music sales and ‘unprotected’ (aka easily sharable) music sales is thirty cents.

Or I could go ahead and use JHymn to remove the DRM from songs that I already bought.

Back to the task at hand. Saving OurTunes.

I am terribly sorry about the lack of updates and getting back to people through email. There was a death in my girlfriend’s family and just about everything was put on hold for the last five days or so.

One of our dedicated reverse engineers, the main one right now, spent his *entire* spring break working on this project.

That is right. Spring break. While you guys were drinking and carousing he was drinking and coding.

Progress was made, beers were drunk, we still have a ways to go.

The dude, we shall call him Stopgo, has to go back to school. He feels that we are getting closer but there is still a lot of work to do.

He coded up a few nifty tools for the project but we need people who know assembly!

Please contact us through saveourtunes {at} gmail {dot} com if you can help!