There are many reasons to transfer music from your iPod to your computer, including wanting to transfer the files to a new iPod, getting a new computer and wanting your music there as well as on your iPod, storage size issues, even dealing with a hard drive crash and wanting to recreate your iTunes library. (God forbid you ever try copying your iPod files to your computer’s iTunes library after a crash if you have been using automatic synchronization. You will find that your empty iTunes library will replace your full iPod, and you’ll lose ALL your music!)

Transferring your music from your computer to your iPod has always been easy, including that ‘gee, let’s just replace all those lovely iPod tracks with an empty library!’

Unfortunately transferring in the other direction (iPod to computer transfer) has not been, unless you bought the music from the iTunes Store. Indeed, with the latest versions of iTunes, you are not only limited to transferring only purchased tracks, but iTunes allows you to only transfer all your purchased tracks, rather than being able to pick and choose which ones you want to move. Talk about being pushy.

(For those of you wanting to know step-by-step details in transferring music from your iPod to your computer using iTunes, check out “Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer - The Definitive Guide” available at iLouge.com

Fortunately third-party vendors were quick to recognize the market and jumped in with both feet, providing all sorts of options for transferring your music from your iPod to your computer, even with the new DRM restrictions.

The best of these utilities can read iPod databases files and use them to locate specific tracks as well as show playlists, ratings and play count. Indeed, some of these products can quite nicely be used in place of iTunes, for those of you not wanting to use iTunes.

Here are a few that you could consider:

> Lenogo iPod to Computer Transfer - This works with iPod, iPod Touch and iPhone!

> imTOO iPod Computer Transfer - This is another great software for transferring songs, files and video from iPod to your PC.

XPlay, another transfer utility, also works on both Macs and Windows operating systems and doesn’t require you to learn a new system. Simply plug in your iPod, and XPlay makes it appear as simply another drive on your computer. Just open the XPlay folder and your music appears just like it does on your iPod. You can then drag-and-drop your music from your iPod to your computer…and vice versa. Talk about easy. XPlay even includes a built-in WMA to MP3 converter.

Transferring music from your iPod to a computer is easy with the right tool. Check out your favorite search engine to find reviews and user comments, and the best tool for you.