Most of the tracks purchased from iTunes Store are protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management), which restricts the consumers from doing reasonable things with the music they own. Hence you need to convert those media files to a common audio format as MP3, no matter your songs are DRM protected or not. An MP3 file can be played on almost all media players or devices nowadays, so if you convert iTunes music to MP3 successfully, you will get the real freedom.

Inconvenience after buying iTunes Store music

There are a lot of inconvenience if you don't find some method to escape from iTunes protection technology. For example, you may be not able to use iTunes DRMed songs in other portable digital devices, like PSP, Zune, Mobile Phone, even you're the legal owner of those songs and those devices; the maximun 5 authrized computers limitation may make you unable to access your songs in the future once they forget to deauthorize some computers. In a word, the DRM protection affects the freedom of legal owners.

Convert function in iTunes

iTunes does support converting music. In the main pane, right click on the music, there's an option "Create XXX Version" (XXX stands for MP3 or AAC or other formats you set in Edit > Preference > Import Settings), but this only works for unprotected formats like WAV, WMA, AAC, MP3. If you want to convert songs bought from iTunes Store, iTunes will remind you "Protected files cannot be converted to other formats".

How to use iTunes to convert protected music

Though iTunes cannot convert DRM music directly through "Create MP3 Version", it has burning feature integrated. Many consumers know how to burn protected songs to CD first then use iTunes to rip it later. However, this method wastes CDs and cannot assure the sound quality of converted MP3, since physical intermedia is used. Moreover, burning and ripping take a lot of invaluable time. Any method to solve such problem? TunePat is the answer.

TunePat Audio Converter utilizes virtual CD burning technology to simulate the burning and ripping process. With this advanced audio format converting mechanism, TunePat excellently converts iTunes music to MP3 or AAC, DRM protected WMA music to MP3 or unprotected WMA, as well as converting any other audio files to MP3, AAC, WMA, or WAV format. While converting audio files at fast speed, TunePat encodes MP3, WMA, AAC and WAV files with outstanding sound quality, and allows you to strip off the DRM so you can listen to your legally purchased songs however you'd like.

 

Convert Protected WMA on PC