[johnfowles]

the simplest answer to both of you Tony and Char is that in theory at least anything that is coming out of your computer's loudspeaker can of course be recorded regardless of what Apple might try to do to nobble the sound so that prevent you doing so, either simplistically by placing a tape recorder's microphone near to the speaker. or by hooking up the audio output to the recorder or better still "internally" and digitally by using a recording program.To create mp3 versions I have successfully used two programs for Windows the very capable open source freeware Audacity , which I have always found to be quite easy to use and understand.And there are tutorials available for example
"Audacity: A walk through on the basics of editing audio using Audacity"

and a bought copy of Musicmatch Jukebox which for which it looks like old versions of are freely available for downloading (as always just ask Mr Google for help!!)



finally I suspect that the actual format of the sound coming out of iTunes is Apples proprietary m4a (touted as being better than mp3 by at least one Apple equipped Lightfoot fan I have corresponded with) but if you were to download an m4a there are plenty of free conversion programs available plus a few free online facilities that can convert uploaded files, thereby obviating a program installation altogether.