How to Free Purchased iTunes Music Store Songs from DRM

Rip the DRM from your iTunes store bought music files
by Updated January 29, 2009

So you just bought a brand new MP3 player and you now want to transfer the songs you've purchased from the iTunes Music Store onto your new player.  Well if you're new MP3 player is not an iPod, you may find yourself having trouble doing so. Apple's iTunes Music Store puts Digital Rights Management (DRM) onto the songs you purchase using its own FairPlay DRM technology. Every file purchased through iTunes is encoded with FairPlay, which turns each file into a digitally encrypted AAC audio file that prevents the purchased audio or video file from being played on unauthorized computers or devices.

To get around the iTunes FairPlay DRM technology and turn your purchased iTunes protected AAC files into DRM-free audio files, all you need is a CD burner, a blank CD-RW disc and Windows Media Player.  (Note: I'm running Windows Media Player 11 and iTunes version 6.0.5)

  1. Start by opening iTunes and going to your Purchased music, which is within the Music Store tab.
  2. Click "Burn Disc", located in the top right corner.  It will then ask you to "Please insert a blank disc" (Note: You can also create a new Playlist and Burn Playlist to Disc. You may have to do this if your Purchased songs take up more than 700MB).
  3. Insert a blank CD re-writeable disc, and iTunes will begin writing the songs to disc.  After the disc has burned the tracks successfully, close down iTunes.
  4. Open Windows Media Player.
  5. Select the "Rip" tab. (Note: The default file format is Windows Media Audio, to change this click on the "Rip" tab again and choose "Format" or you can use the menu to select Tools > Options > Rip Music tab.  Choose the file format MP3 or WAV for the most flexibility; choose Windows Media Audio Lossless for the best audio quality, choose Windows Media Audio Pro when using a low storage capacity portable device, like a mobile phone)
  6. Now click on the "Start Rip" button and the songs that have a check mark next to them will begin being ripped to a folder located in the "My Music" folder within your "My Documents" folder.
  7. Thats it.

Now that you've finished ripping your songs to your computer, you should be able to use the newly ripped consumer friendly formatted files in other computers, portable MP3 players or mobile devices. Some devices will not be able to play Windows Media Audio so you will want to be sure you've ripped the songs in the correct format for your device.

 


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6 Comments

anonymous by stephen on 12/18/2006
i want to sync my ipod with my friends libraries and take the pod back home and rip the music to my library...When i do this, i can only rip the songs that came from cd's and not the songs that they purchased. Is there a way around this? I see the files but cannot play them with any program. However, i can play them on my ipod, i just can't rip them


stephenbellin@yahoo.com email me if you know how
anonymous by Mark on 1/21/2008
song titles not transfering. I have done what you said to do in the article above and it is working but the problem is the song and band info is not transferring with the burn. How can I fix this? Thanks Mark
anonymous by still not working on 1/27/2008
it says the songs i have purchesd still can not be burned!!!
anonymous by Jacob on 3/20/2008
THANKS!! It Really worked!!
anonymous by kay on 8/6/2008
yes. but I already do this but the problem is that I can't add the album info and cover art to a track once its in Media Player.
anonymous by fornetti on 8/17/2008
i think... I do not believe this

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