Copying newer music CDs, only an exe file?

[Subotai]

What the heck? My daughter wants some Selene Gomez files copied from her CD to her MP3 player. I look at the CD and it has a ClickMe.exe, an autorun.inf, and a ClickMeIcon.ico file.

Where's the audio files? I checked for hidden files. Don't tell me they've locked down CD's now by bundling them into exe's. What can I do? Just pay for the songs again? I do have CDBurner XP but it didn't find any files.

Thanks for your help.

[boxcutter3005]

If this is a retail CD, the files don't just sit on the disk to be copied over. Just use a program like itunes or whatever came with her mp3 player and "rip" them to your hard drive. Then you should have your mp3 files that you can just load on to the player.

http://lifehacker.com/5822853/how-to-rip-a-cd-with-itunes

[Nose Nuggets]

well the files on a retail audio cd are wav (uncompressed) files, not mp3 files. iTunes would convert them to aac while ripping them.

[ibanezfoo]

Or if you don't want to mess with that bloated itunes crap:

http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

[boxcutter3005]

well the files on a retail audio cd are wav (uncompressed) files, not mp3 files. iTunes would convert them to aac while ripping them.

I believe the music is in a CD-DA format, not a traditional files as the computer can see. But yes I was mistaken, itunes by default would convert them too AAC

[milky]

well the files on a retail audio cd are wav (uncompressed) files, not mp3 files. iTunes would convert them to aac while ripping them.

Depends! Windows machines use the WAV codec to read audio files on a CD, a mac will use AIFF (AIFF and WAV do just about the same thing, i.e. 16bit 44.1khz).
iTunes will rip to AAC if you did not change the import preference. It will be a waste of drive space if you import as one codec and then change to another codec to transfer to a device like an iPod. You have the original cd so leave the uncompressed media on that and import to your desired codec (mp3 as stated in the OP).
Another thing about WAV is there are a million different companies that make/use this codec, it is very inconsistent from one to the next. AIFF is AIFF and is very solid between different applications.
iTunes was only used as an example, there are a host of applications that can transcode audio files. Just be sure to set it up in a way that keeps the redundancy down, this will save you time and hard drive space! Under the iTunes tab there is a Preferences button, this will bring you to a dialogue box where you can change your codec settings to what you want I believe it's under Import settings in the newer versions of iTunes.
Another tip: after you set your desired codec create an empty playlist, inset CD, drag the CD icon in the iTunes bar to the empty playlist, this will make it a little easier for you to find whole disk you have imported, instead of sorting through your music Library. Another quick way to find music in your Library would be to use the column tabs to sort, one of the more useful ways I have found is sorting my library by date added. Right click in the columns to add or remove desired/undesired info columns.

[Subotai]

What confused me is that there is only the large .exe file, no wav files, no mp3 files, just an exe. At least that's what I could see in Explorer.

Are you telling me iTunes can extract from the exe file?

[Nose Nuggets]

What confused me is that there is only the large .exe file, no wav files, no mp3 files, just an exe. At least that's what I could see in Explorer.

Are you telling me iTunes can extract from the exe file?

the music is not in that exe file. just because thats the only file explorer is showing you does not mean its the only file on there.

i would open it up in computer management -> disk management. it wouldnt surprise me if there was a hidden partition that contained the actual music.

but yes, itunes will rip the music no problem.

[Subotai]

Yeah, I change it to show me hidden files in Explorer and didn't see anything. I'll try again when I get home.

[milky]

.exe

the .exe file carries directions for your computer (to put it simply). yes if you have some kind of disk utility you will be able to extract the audio, but then you run into the redundancy issue of having AIFF/WAF files & you will still need to transcode said audio files to your preferred mp3 format. I only mentioned iTunes earlier because it is a pretty universal (free) program, and you can set your import settings to the same codec as your listening device. so you end up with only the mp3 files on your hard drive and you don't have to hunt for duplicate songs in different format. 1 CD isn't going to break the hard drives bank, but an entire music library of AIFF/WAV and duplicate mp3 files will take up a large amount of space!

[Nose Nuggets]

Yeah, I change it to show me hidden files in Explorer and didn't see anything. I'll try again when I get home.

a hidden partician is a little different.

[Subotai]

OK, thanks everyone. It's working with iTunes. This one below has adware, so beware.

Or if you don't want to mess with that bloated itunes crap:
http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

[pbsmind]

Or if you don't want to mess with that bloated itunes crap:

http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

Used this for years, I don't recall it ever having adware. If it does ask you to install a tool bar you can say no. Just don't click next every time without reading.

I believe the music is in a CD-DA format, not a traditional files as the computer can see.

This ^^^

The reason why you didn't see the audio files is because your computer was reading the data track. Recording companies have had seperate data and audio tracks on CDs for years. The audio on CDs isn't a wave file that's just how your computer can interpet the audio tracks. CD players don't play wave files. Audio tracks on a CD work on the same premis that vinyl records do. The laser reads the divits in the disk and interpets them into audio. Just as the needle does with the divits in a vinyl record, just not as acurately because it's digital compared to analog.

[Subotai]

I clicked no on all extras, it installed some anyway. Then I found two "updater" exe's running on my PC. I scanned and found 6 adwares. So I removed everything and went with iTunes. Maybe some of the "extras" got by me in the installation. Who knows. Anyway, iTunes may be bloated, but there's no surprises.