So I decided that I would be a good citizen and not download music illegally. So when I saw that MSN music was having a sale (Buy 1, get 5 free) I thought Wow! What a steal! I downloaded a few songs and then tried to import them to my iPod. Itunes asked me if it could convert the .wma files to .aac files, and I said why sure! Please do! However, iTunes let me know that actually, it can’t do that, because the .wma files are encoded with Digital Rights Management. So Sorry!
Huh? So I google and yes, it is true, and there is no program (that I have found so far) that can take it off. The only solution I have found is to burn said mp3s to a CD and then rip them back on to the computer and import them to the iPod. All because Microsoft and Apple don’t want to work together. 👿 Why won’t they make it easy for me to do things legally? 😮
Welcome to propriety technology. Burning to CD works, however quality is reduced. but I don’t think you will notice. I know I don’t. I stick with Itunes myself since I can load it on my Ipod with out having to convert or anything like that.
There are a few programs that will do this for Linux, but other than that the CD is your only option. The blame for this lies on Apple, not Microsoft. Other online music stores WOULD distribute in .aac form, but Apple won’t let them. It’s Apple’s way of locking you into iTunes.
You do have other options, allofmp3.com for example. You can download 192kb/s mp3 files for around $0.15 each. Those crazy Russians.
Unfortunately there is no program currently out there that can “strip off” Microsoft’s current Digital Rights Management from protected WMAs.
If the MS DRM is not Janus (the current standard) then there were programs around that could, but thus far Janus has not been “hacked” if you will.
You could always use “TuneBite” which doesn’t strip off the DRM but uses your analog sound card to create an analog recording of your WMA and encode it as MP3. It syncs with Windows Media Player so all you have to do is load a song and TuneBite will create an MP3 or WAV of the song. I havne’t noticed any real degridation except the result seems to be slightly quieter than the original source. Increaseing volume comes at risk of distorting high and low frequencies.
The only problem with TuneBite is when it is creating multiple tracks you lose the first 1-2 seconds of the song. Unfortunately, TuneBite needs a little bit of time to convert the file from it’s temporary recorded form to it’s finalized MP3 form and if WMP starts playing the next song, TuneBite lags in recording. So this means if you really want the beginning second of the song, you must click and record each song individually. Annoying? YES. But at least you get your songs.
I think I have a key for TuneBite around somewhere too.
Tyler,
Do you really believe MSN would license AAC from Apple?
Get real!