Forced to remove iTunes DRM to use other music players

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Life

Buy from iTunes, die with iTunes

By Sparkus ⋅ October 28, 2008 ⋅

A couple weeks ago I read an article from PC World that suggested MediaMonkey as an alternative to iTunes. I like to play with shiny new programs so I decided to give it a shot.

After installation, I realized that most of the music I have bought and downloaded from iTunes didn’t even show up in MediaMonkey. The copyright protection tied into my music files wouldn’t let me change players, even on the same computer. Even though I bought and own the music, I wasn’t allowed to play them wherever I wished.

That really sucks.

I have over 800 DRM-locked songs that I HAVE to use iTunes to play — Never mind the hassle of transferring them to other computers.

iTunes offers a program where you can upgrade your DRM-locked files to DRM free but that option is only available for a minority of songs. Only 75 of my songs could have been upgraded. Oh, and did I meantion I’d have to pay for each upgrade? It’s something like 30 cents a song. So I would have to repay for the songs a already own. Laaaaaaame.

I did a little research on Google and there is really no free, convenient way to get around the problem. Two programs that seem to have been a good answer, QTFairUse and MyFairTunes, are out of date.

Last night I installed an old version of iTunes in order to get MyFairTunes to work, but the program just froze up after it converted a couple songs.

I know the easiest method of breaking the DRM is to just burn the songs to a CD and then re-rip them back into iTunes, but I have way too many songs to begin such a project.

So this morning I downloaded Tunebite for $26. If it works like advertised, it will be worth the money. I’ll let you know.

And if anyone is looking for a nice alternative for purchasing DRM-free songs in the future, I’d try Napster first and then Amazon.

UPDATE: After testing the program converting 10 songs, it appears to work well. My only complaint is it takes a long time to covert files. It’s a process you’ll want to leave running overnight and limit to maybe 50 songs a batch. Otherwise, the annoyance of doing a bit of library maintenence is the only other hangup.