How can I save a GarageBand song as an mp3?

Question

This is really urgent and it's driving me nuts...I can't seem to save my song as a simple freakin' mp3!!! .wav would be ok too...I wanna send it to my friend, and he can only play .mp3 and .wav files. HELP!

Answer 1

You'll have better luck asking on the Apple Discussions pages for GarageBand:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=127

My search shows that you need to export the file to iTunes and change the format there:
> Drag the sound file into the iTunes window, if it isn’t already there.
> Set iTunes’ Importing preference to mp3 (or whatever format you want it to be changed to) and check the options for bit-rate, etc.
> With the name selected in the iTunes window, choose "Convert to mp3" from under the Advanced menu.
> When the conversion is done a new file will be created and listed in the iTunes window (Convert doesn’t actually convert, it recreates in the new format).

Answer 2

You can do this in two steps. First, pick "Send song to iTunes" from the Garageband Share menu. This will give you an AIFF version of the song.

Now that the track is in iTunes, you can convert the song to MP3.

To choose a conversion format in iTunes, open its preferences, click on the "Advanced" icon, then the "Importing "tab. Pick MP3 from "Import Using:" and whatever bit rate you want from "Setting:". Click OK.

Click on the AIFF song you just brought into iTunes, and choose "Convert Selection to MP3" from the "Advanced" menu. iTunes will do just that.

To get a copy of the converted track out of iTunes, you can drag the MP3 to the desktop (or wherever you like).