DRM Removal Methods

By Dan Hope

In the world of digital music, the most confusing aspect of buying and playing music is getting the right file format. Songs bought from different companies will have different DRM protection that can restrict you from playing songs on your MP3 player. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. Record companies use it to prevent people from copying music.

But DRM protection can also keep consumers from playing purchased music and other MP3 downloads on their own MP3 players. As a result, many people have been looking for a way to circumvent the problem and in the process have found several different methods of DRM removal. The two most common types of protected music downloads are AAC and WMA . The protected AAC format is used by Apple’s iPod and the iTunes Music Store. The protected WMA format is used by most other music subscription services. Therefore, the most common DRM removal programs help users convert AAC to MP3 or convert WMA to MP3.

Even though it is illegal to create programs that remove DRM, there are several software companies that claim to be able to remove DRM protection legally. This article discusses several different methods for removing the DRM protections that keep you from enjoying your music on any media player.

CD burning and ripping

The most commonly known method for converting AAC or WMA to MP3 is by burning and ripping the files on a CD. Take your playlist, no matter what format it is in, and burn it onto a CD. Then have the iTunes Music Player, Windows Media Player or other media player import, or rip, the songs off the CD and save them in MP3 format. When the music is imported off the CD, the tracks are no longer DRM protected.

This method of DRM removal is tedious and costly since you have to waste a lot of CDs in order to do it. And it could take forever if you have a lot of music.

Virtual CD drives

One of the most popular DRM removal alternatives to burning and ripping CDs is using a virtual CD drive. These CD burners are not physical drives, they are software programs that mimic the actions of CD drives. CD burner emulators are able to “burn and rip” songs and other information right on a computer’s hard drive without using CDs. They convert AAC or WMA to MP3 in exactly the same way as burning CDs, but they are much faster and much cheaper because they do not require real CDs. There are many different CD emulator programs available through the internet. TopTenREVIEWS has included one of the best, NoteBurner in our review of Audio Converters .

Conversion and dubbing software

The next option for removing DRM protection is to bypass CDs and directly convert the file itself. Music conversion software can convert protected songs in AAC and WMA, or any other format, to other universal formats, making them useful for people that want to use their iTunes Music Store tunes on non-iPod MP3 players. Conversion software is the least likely to be able to crack DRM protected songs, but they are still useful for alleviating compatibility issues. One popular example of conversion software is Switch Plus, and you can read our review of Switch Plus on the Audio Converter site.

Dubbing software doesn’t remove DRM protection from music downloads by converting the file directly. Instead it plays AAC or WMA files and records it in a new format. It may sound the same as conversion software, but the major drawback is that it takes much longer than simply converting the file. Dubbing software must listen to the song in real-time, meaning that it could take hours and hours to go through a long music playlist and record the downloaded music in a new format. Some programs can accelerate the process for non-protected music files, but protected AAC files are still recorded to MP3 in real-time. TopTenREVIEWS has published a review of the most popular dubbing DRM removal software, TuneBite , on our Audio Converter site.

Even if you have purchased your music legally through the iTunes Music Store, Napster, Rhapsody or other MP3 download service, you can still have major problems with getting your music to play on your devices. DRM removal methods and MP3 converters can help you get around the problem so you don’t have to stop rocking to your favorite music.

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