Years ago, one of my friends sent me an iPod Touch as a birthday present. From then on, I have been using this iTouch as a music player, appreciating its high quality of audio playback very much. Every month, I’d like to budget a few songs on iTunes Store. Till now there have been nearly 2000 songs downloaded to my iTunes music library.
Recently, I got a 16GB Sony Walkman MP3 and wanted to switch all the songs from my iPod Touch to this brand new device. The songs occupied too much capacity of the iPod Touch and there was little space left for installing iOS apps. So I decided to use the Walkman as my music player and use the iPod Touch for great and interesting apps from the App Store.
Here came my headache! Unlike other common MP3 files stored in my computer, the purchased iTunes songs could not be copied to my Walkman MP3 via USB cable. What should I do? Since I had paid nearly 2000*$0.99 for these songs, why couldn’t I use them on another device of mine? Did I have to purchase all of them once again? I wouldn’t do that!
I asked my friends for help. One of them suggested that I first burn the songs onto a CD disc in iTunes and then rip it back as MP3 files. Then I would be able to import the destination MP3 songs into my Walkman. I gave up this advice as there were about 2000 songs needed to be burnt. It would be a very lengthy process. Besides, I needed to purchase nearly 100 CD discs first, since each disc could hold about 20 songs (about 79 minutes) only. I wouldn’t do that either!
Another friend provided me with another way. That was, I could select all the songs in my iTunes library, right click and then click “Create MP3 Version” to convert all music to MP3. I did try this method, but it turned out that hundreds of songs were not converted. This really messed up my iTunes library. I had to check which songs were converted and which were not. Without any hesitation, I sorted the songs by Date and trashed all the newly generated MP3 files from the library.
What was reason why some songs could be converted while others not? After searching the Internet, I found that all the songs that could be converted were actually iTunes Plus music. The songs unable to be converted were protected by Apple DRM.
While most downloaded files initially included restrictions on their use, enforced by FairPlay, Apple’s implementation of digital rights management, iTunes later initiated a shift into selling DRM-free music in most countries, marketed as iTunes Plus. On January 6, 2009, Apple announced that DRM had been removed from 80% of the entire music catalog in the U.S. Full iTunes Plus availability was achieved on April 7, 2009 in the U.S., coinciding with the introduction of a three-tiered pricing model; however, television episodes, many books, and films are still FairPlay-protected.
That is to say, the Create MP3 Version method can only be used to convert iTunes Plus music. I still had to find a way to convert the songs with DRM. To my delight, the software TuneClone attracted my attention and helped me in the end. This $34.95 TuneClone Audio Converter was very clever in that it installed a virtual CD-ROM drive on my PC, letting me remove the DRM element without having to waste actual CD’s.
Transfer iTunes Music to Non-Apple Devices with TuneClone
Thanks to TuneClone, I was finally able to switch all the iTunes music from my iPod Touch to my Walkman. Apart from that, I would feel free to use my legally purchased songs without any restriction thence. And I’d like to say it is well worth the $34.95 if you have a large library of iTunes songs needed to be transferred.
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