I was not even aware iTunes sold beats & samples until I read this post and checked the iTunes store myself.
I wouldn't use the iTunes store for this kind of thing at all. Infact I have to wonder why they are even offered for sale there.
Why? It appears to me that like pretty much everything else you can buy on the iTunes store, you are buying DRM'd files which only iTunes or an iPod will play. Making them entirely useless as they will not work with the kind of applications these audio samples are intended to be used with.
Royalty free does not mean DRM free.. Hence your garageband problem.
You could convert them to a more useful format like wav. But this is a bit of a chore. Whats more, as downloaded, they are already compressed with a lossy format. So although quality is still pretty good, it still is not ideal for music production use.
In my opinion.. I would do 2 things..
1, Don't buy samples from iTunes again.
2, Burn your purchased samples to an
audio cd in iTunes. Re-rip in iTunes to
WAV format. Then your samples can be used in just about any music production app you care to mention.
Hope this helps, and good luck
