Have you ever purchased a bunch of songs on iTunes, and then tried to transfer them to an MP3 player, or burn a mix CD for the car? If so, then you've felt the pain that DRM brings.
Advanced legal converting technology includes virtual burning and virtual recording that can covert DRM audio to open MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, AIFF and other types of audio formats, without cracking the DRM protection. These two approaches provide better solutions for converting DRM audio files without cracking any protection or breaking DRM regulations.
The most popular DRM audio converter utilizing virtual burning technology is NoteBurner Audio Converter. It can convert iTunes M4P, AAC, protected WMA to MP3 and unprotected WMA.
Plarform: Windows XP, Vista Price: USD 34.95
NoteBurner Audio Converter can also convert any other type of audio format to MP3, WMA and WAV.
Customers are complaining that DRM is too restrictive. They're buying software to remove the DRM code from their songs, and certainly some are turning to music sharing services like LimeWire and Bittorrent. So music vendors, afraid that frustrated music buyers may revolt, have begun to offer DRM-free music. Here's a roundup of online music sellers that are offering DRM-free music.
DRM-Free Music Vendors
iTunes Plus - Apple now offers iTunes Plus, a subset of their music catalog that is DRM-free. Songs in iTunes Plus format cost 99 cents (same as regular iTunes music) and have high-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, which sounds geeky, but it simply means that the sound quality is twice as high as the regular DRM'd music in iTunes. There are no burn limits and you can transfer iTunes Plus music to Mac or Windows computers, iPods, and many other digital music players. You can also upgrade one of your DRM'd songs to Plus format for 30 cents.
So there's no DRM, the quality is higher, and the price is the same. What's the catch? Well, there are actually three catches, which may or not bother you. First, not all music can be purchased in iTunes Plus format, because some recording labels do not (yet?) offer DRM-free music. To the best of my knowledge, only EMI is offering the DRM-free option on iTunes. Second, the songs are in in AAC format, not the more portable and popular MP3 standard. If you have an iPod or a music player than can play AAC's, then you're good to go. But most non-iPod players don't support AAC. (You can right-click on the song in iTunes and convert to MP3, with some loss of sound quality.) And third, even though the iTunes Plus tracks are DRM-free, they still contain your name and account information inside the file. Some people groan that this is a privacy issue, but why would these whiners be upset, unless they wanted to illegally "share" this music?
Amazon MP3 - Amazon announced last year that they'll make available MP3 formatted songs that are DRM free. They're selling the music at $.99 each, or as low as $5.00 for an entire album. The DRM free music allows you to download to iPods or other types of MP3 players, and is compatible with iTunes and Windows Media Player. And you can burn, baby burn, all you like. Amazon MP3's digital music catalogue offers DRM-free tunes from all four major labels (Universal, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner Music) with over 3 million songs to choose from.
BlackBerry users can now have access to Puretracks' DRM-free music store, with tunes available from four major labels, plus myriad indie labels. Puretracks has developed a version of its over-the-air music download store that is compatible with a number of BlackBerry handsets. The lucky winners are users of the 8100 Pearl, the 8300 Curve, and the 8800 series smart phones.
Music from Universal, Warner, EMI, Sony BMG, and independent labels will be encoded as AAC and AAC+ files. That's half what the iTunes Music Store encodes its AAC files at.
Andrea Ziegler, the chief operating officer of Puretracks, noted that, "The Puretracks Mobile music service we have developed for the BlackBerry platform is an innovative mobile music store for North America that employs DRM-free files. For wireless users, this equates to inexpensive airtime costs, smaller storage requirements, and higher music quality."
Other companies that are selling DRM-free music include Walmart, Yahoo, and eMusic. Each one has various agreements and prices.
Warner Music has offered its catalogue without digital rights management (DRM) software for the first time. The music giant has signed a deal with MP3 site 7digital to sell DRM-free music in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Spain. Warner joins EMI in no longer selling music online with DRM code.
The move will be a snub to Apple's iTunes service, which has angered some in the music industry by using its dominance of the online music market to set prices. The addition of Warner's MP3 catalogue means that over 80 per cent of 7digital's 3.5 million tracks are now DRM-free.
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