Escape iTunes With the TuneClone Audio Converter

“You are considering buying a Microsoft Zune as you broke your iPod or had your iPod stolen. And you bought a lot of songs from iTunes store because you had money left on your iTunes gift card. You still want to enjoy those purchased songs on your Zune MP3 player. Or you own an iPod while your boyfriend/girlfriend has a Zune. And you hope to share the library of M4P music songs purchased from iTunes store under your account with your boyfriend/girlfriend. Here comes the headache! The M4P music you bought from iTunes is DRM-laden! You cannot transfer the iTunes M4P music to the Zune software, not to mention playing the iTunes M4P music on your Zune player.”

So, you want to migrate from the iPod to the Zune but the main reason you haven’t made that jump is because you have your iTunes library. I’m sure that’s a very common reason for not coming over to the Zune world. (Ok, maybe not, but I’ll maintain my delusion.) This is a serious issue though and if you do want to change platforms, then your only options are mostly time consuming and wasteful.

TuneClone Audio Converter has come to the rescue! You can use this to move your library of M4P DRM protected music to the MP3 format that you can use on any player out there worth its salt. This is a useful tool for anyone looking to break their relationship with the iPod. This software does cost $34.95 to register but that price does give you what appears to be a full feature application. The best part is that it maintains all of the music file’s metadata. DigitalMediaOnline has a nice little tutorial that shows how it works.

Source from David Tucker in http://www.zunethoughts.com/news/show/90178/escape-itunes-with-the-tuneclone-audio-converter.html

How to transfer iTunes M4P music playlist to Zune WMA MP3

You are considering buying a Zune as you broke your iPod or had your iPod stolen. And you bought a lot of songs from iTunes store because you had money left on your iTunes gift card. You still want to enjoy those purchased songs on your Zune music player. Or you own an iPod while your boyfriend/girlfriend has a Zune. And you hope to share the library of M4P (protected AAC) music purchased from iTunes store under your account with your boyfriend/girlfriend. Here comes the headache! The M4P music you bought from iTunes is DRM laden! You cannot transfer the protected iTunes music to the Zune software, not to mention playing the it on your Zune player. 

Yet, there seems to be a solution. You can burn the DRM-locked iTunes music playlist to CD-R or CD-RW disc to make an audio CD and then use some CD ripper software to convert the audio CD track back to Zune accepted MP3 or WMA format. And iTunes allows you to burn the protected iTunes music files to CD-R or CD-RW disc to make a standard audio CD.

Sounds a good idea! But it would be a time consuming process if you have a library of iTunes music ready to be converted to MP3 or WMA files for playback on Zune. Moreover, the information about the M4P music files like title, artist and album will be lost after they are burnt and ripped back to MP3 or unprotected WMA format. So this method is not recommended if you have a big collection of iTunes DRMed music to be transferred to your Zune.

I’ve made a Google search for programs that can convert iTunes music to Zune WMA MP3, and TuneClone Audio Converter attracted my attention. The edge of TuneClone Audio Converter over other similar programs lies in that it applys the virtual CD burning technology to simulates the burning and ripping process. You just need to burn the iTunes playlist to TuneClone virtual CD burner. Then TuneClone will directly convert the iTunes music list to WMA or MP3 for your Zune. It is very fast and the information about each music song will be preserved perfectly. Below are several key steps to convert iTunes M4P music playlist to Zune MP3 or WMA using TuneClone Audio Converter.

1. Make settings at TuneClone

Click the “Setting” button at TuneClone. In the pop-up window, you can specify the “output folder”, “output filenames”, “output format”, etc. for the output files.
Tip: You can get the converted music folder by clicking the “Folder” button after the whole process.

2. Make settings at iTunes

Click “Edit -> Preferences… -> Advanced -> Burning”. Select TuneClone’s virtual CD-RW drive as CD burner. In the “Disc Format” option, tick “Audio CD”.
Tip 1: In order to keep the information about the music, the “Include CD Text” option should be checked.
Tip 2: The most important step is to choose the cd burner. Then the software can convert the music files automatically.

3. Create a playlist

Create a playlist, and then add the iTunes M4P music files you want to convert to Zune WMA or MP3 into the playlist. After the conversion, the WMA or MP3 music folder should be located under the folder you specified at first. The name of the music folder should be the same as that of the iTunes playlist you created.
Tip: It is exceedingly easy and fast when you want to batch convert lots of files.

After you get the output folder, now you can transfer it to your Zune software so as to enjoy the iTunes music on your Zune music player.

So, has your headache been removed now?