farmer1

My own stupidity ment I downloaded a song in AAC format. So I thought argh I will have to convert it to mp3. But no iTunes won't convert it because it's protect.

Why can't I convert MY music, I payed for the damn thing, its not like I want to share it with people I just want to get it on my mp3 player.

Secondly how do I set iTunes up to download mp3s and not AAC? ANd no I don't want to read the help. LOL

Ian

angrynorth

It won't, it uses protected AAC like the others use protected wma.

farmer1

But why? Kazaa is out there for the people who want to do stuff illegally. Surely the fact that I have actually paid for my music, when it is so easy not to. Suggests that I can be trusted to have unprotected music.

angrynorth

Tell it to the record labels.

They won't allow a legal service that doesn't carry a protection code.

At least with iTunes its fair. Try downloading one from napster and see it expire and stop working, try to move it to another machine and it will cripple it, burn too many CD's and its gone too.

Also you can use Hymn to remove the DRM without losing your purchase info.
http://hymn-project.org/

angrynorth

Just found a Windows version for you with GUI rather than command prompt.

http://stilleye.com/hymn.net/

farmer1

Thanks

Will give that a go.

ozzy

Maybe iTunes should offer different formats and let the customer choose which suits their MP3 players?

Stefan

P.S. or you could just buy an iPod

angrynorth

How's about the other MP3 manufacturers get off M$'s "cough" and support an open format?

ozzy

MP3 is an open format. I don't use WMA myself; never have and never will.

Stefan

angrynorth

MP3 is open but not of the stores sell in MP3 format because you can't tell whether the track was purchase or not.

I would like to see more MP3 manufacturers supporting AAC instead, or as well as wma.

I fully agree on not using wma though. That is purely evil.

JackClark

I've not tried it but can't you just burn a CD then rip it in MP3 format?

ozzy

Sorry, misread the post.

Yes you can burn the tracks to CD and rip them back to MP3.

angrynorth

Yes you can

farmer what MP3 player have you got?

lightning101

Just use an AAC ripper and convert to MP3, you may find this compresses them further though. And yes the crack is out there already LOL.

lightning101

Oh yeh its called QTfairuse. It patches quicktime and allows MP3 conversion.

Markus

I've not used ITMS, mainly as it's not available in Canada (could get round that as I have a UK credit card, and thus could purchase from the UK store), and mainly as, and I'll be honest, if there is a particular track I want, I'll download it from limewire, now, I *think* Canadian law states that this is ok, as long as it's only for personal use and you're not distributing the track, might be wrong though.

98 percent of my MP3's are from CD's I own.

As others have said, if you want to get round it, grab a CD-RW, burn to CD, rip the track, should then be MP3, then simply erase the CD-RW and repeat to fade. Bit of a pain.

stevencotton

bleep.com sell high quality MP3 with no DRM, if you like that kind of music

angrynorth

Any luck with Hymn farmer?

Steve that bleep.com is a nice site. I've bought off there before and I will do again, some of the warp records catalogue is excellent.

farmer1

I sett the Hymn thing up as stated after getting it wrong a few times. LOL. Anyway it said that it had completed de-restricting. But when I came to convert it, it still said it was protected.

I currently only have a creative rhomba. Suppose it's time to make the leap to the iPod. Does anybody know if the latest ones have backlit screens? Sorry for being lasy, I know I could just look at the tech specs.

Ian

JackClark

Yes they do. A rather poofy blue.

angrynorth

I don't think its poofy Jack. Looks immensely cool at night

See here.



And the remote is another story