3 posts tagged “apple”

The other day Apple announced that it was making about 80% of the iTunes store DRM free, with the remaining 20% to follow shortly. DRM-free iTunes means that in theory you should be able move your music to other computers and devices easily…

But… iTunes Plus DRM-free music comes in .m4a format which is based on the MPEG-4 part 14 standard. Problem is, far more devices don’t recognize what to do with .m4a than do (and its video sibling, .m4v). MP3 is a far more popular format.

So, can you convert .m4a files into.mp3 files? Yes you can, and you can do it all from within iTunes (iTunes 8)! Here’s how:

1. Click on Edit -> Preferences…. From the General tab click on Import Settings… button.

2. Change the Import Using drop down box to MP3 Encoder.

3. From the Settings drop down box select Custom… and choose a Stereo Bit Rate of 256Kbps.

4. Click OK, OK and OK.

5. Now find a file that you want to convert, right-click on it and select Create MP3 Version and an MP3 copy will be created.

Note that you’ll have now both versions of the song in your library, so you’ll have to do a little housekeeping.

Note that if you want to upgrade your previously purchased iTunes tracks to DRM free, you need to pay 30 cents per song. You can’t pick and choose which tracks to upgrade. Start by going to the iTunes Store home page, and clicking on “Upgrade My Library” under the “Quick Links” heading. Once there, you’ll see a list of all the songs and albums that are available for upgrading, with a price next to each. But the important number to look at is the price next to the buy button, since that’s how much it’ll cost to upgrade your library.

So if have an extensive music collection with many songs (i.e. 500 songs) purchased from iTunes and wanted to get them freed from DRM protection, you will have to pay USD150 for the upgrade. And in order to listen to them with your MP3 player or mobile phone music player, you still need a further step - convert the AAC music to MP3 one by one (as the steps show above). It not only messes your iTunes library up but also costs you a great deal of time and money. Therefore, if you really want to play the previously purchased music tracks from iTunes Store with MP3 players or mobile phone music players, you just need to get TuneClone Audio Converter to help to remove the iTunes DRM protection and convert the iTunes music to the popular MP3 format. Also, if you get iTunes Plus DRM-free music files and want to play them with the MP3 players or mobile phone music players incompatible with Apple AAC format, you can still use TuneClone to turn them into MP3 format, saving the time to create MP3 version for the songs one by one.

"Can I play iTunes (that I have stored on my computer) on my PS3? I know I can't just hook up my iPod to it or stream from my PC. I read something about transferring music to USB and then put that flash drive in the PS3, will this work? I want to play my iTunes on my home theater but I have no other way than to play it through my PS3. I have a yamaha 5990 receiver and it is not iPod compatible. Any options here? Thanks in advance."

As the music in iTunes is encrypted with DRM, you cannot directly transfer it to your PS3. The easiest way is to burn the music to an audio CD and then rip it back to Windows Media Player or a similar program as an MP3.

Or you can get some software to help you. TuneClone is a pretty good program to get the iTunes protected AAC (M4P) music burned to MP3.

And this page demonstrates how to remove DRM from iTunes music and convert iTunes DRM protected AAC (M4P) music to MP3 for Sony PlayStation 3(PS3) using these two methods:

1. Burn an audio CD and rip it back to MP3
2. TuneClone

And below is the tutorial page:
http://www.tuneclone.com/how-to-import-itunes-music-to-playstation3.php

So now you can listen to iTunes music while playing games with your PS3.

The music files you purchased from iTunes store are under DRM protection. You cannot play them on your own mobile devices other than iPod and iPhone. You cannot convert the DRM protected music files to MP3 or WMA directly with iTunes media player, either. However you can burn the protected music files to CD-R or CD-RW disc to make an audio CD and then use some CD ripper software to convert the audio CD track back to MP3, WAV, WMA, etc. And iTunes allows you to burn the protected music files to CD-R or CD-RW disc to make a standard audio CD. If you have only a few music files, you can use the method below:

1. Download TuneClone from http://www.tuneclone.com and install it.

TuneClone is fully compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista. A virtual CD Burner will be installed. This virtual CD-RW will be used to convert music files.

2. Make settings at TuneClone

Click the Settings button at TuneClone. In the pop-up window, you can specify the output folder, output filenames, output format, etc. for the output files.

Note: Apart from MP3, TuneClone also allows you to convert iTunes M4P to WAV and unprotected WMA.
Tip: You can get the output protection removed music folder by clicking the Folder button after the whole process.

3. Make settings at iTunes

Create a playlist, and then add the files you want to convert into the playlist.

After you have created the playlist ready to be burnt, click the Burn Disc in the bottom right of iTunes.

In the pop up window of Burn Settings, make the settings as highlighted below:

4. Start to burn

Click the Burn button to start burning.

After the burning gets started, TuneClone will automatically convert the music file to MP3, WMA or WAV. You can open the manager screen to show all the converted music files.

The most important step is to choose the CD burner. Then the software can convert the music files automatically. It is exceedingly easy when you want to batch convert lots of files.