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This morning I was l listening to a newly ripped CD in iTunes when I came to the “secret song.” Bands sometimes put secret songs at the end of their albums. Usually, you have to either forget the CD was playing, or just fast forward until you start hearing music again. But, what if the secret song is awesome? What if you want to have it as its own separate file? iTunes actually makes this quite easy.

Isolate the Track

First, you have to figure out what time the secret song starts playing. So, listen to your song, and write down the last second of silence just before the song starts. Then “Get Info” on the song by either clicking Command I, right clicking, or selecting File / Get Info in the menu bar. An information window will appear, in which you want to be in the Options tab.

Here you are presented with a start and stop time for the song in question. Enter the time you wrote down into the Starting Time box and click OK on this window.

Create MP3…Again

Now, you have to right click your song and select Create MP3 Version, or at least that’s what mine said, since I have my options set to import all songs as MP3s in iTunes. Yours may say AAC or another file type depending on how you have iTunes configured.

This imports the song over again and essentially chops off the beginning of the song that was before the start time that you set in the options tab.

Name the New Track

You’re almost done. Now just “Get Info” on your new song, select the Info tab, and rename it to the title of the song, or simply “Secret Song” works too. You might want to increment the song number while you are at it. Don’t forget to go back to the original song and uncheck the Starting Time in the Options tab, or you will have duplicate secret songs with different names. Optionally, you could use this technique to also trim off the end silence in the original song, or simply just adjust it’s Stop Time.

There are actually more uses for this tip. Now, you can basically split any audio file in iTunes quickly and easily, not just the secret songs you may have hiding at the end of your CDs. So, go now and set your secret songs free from the shackles of silence.

Product [iTunes 8]