Put iTunes music onto Limewire Napster Rhapsody

The following tutorial will show you how to remove DRM from iTunes protected AAC (M4P) music and convert M4P to (DRM free) WMA/MP3 so as to put iTunes M4P music onto Rhapsody, Napster, Limewire for syncing to a lot more mobile players.

Why Put iTunes M4P music onto Rhapsody Napster Limewire?

When you purchase music from iTunes Store, you actually get DRM protected content (in protected AAC or M4P format), which you will not be able to play on MP3/MP4 players and other non-Apple mobile players. You cannot directly transfer the M4P files to Rhapsody, Napster, Limewire, either. In such case, the option is to burn those tracks to an audio CD and then rip them once again to your computer hard drive wherein the DRM will be removed and you will get the tracks in (DRM free) MP3 or WMA format. After this you will be able to transfer them to Limewire, Rhapsody or Napster.

In case you have purchased a great amount of music from iTunes Store, you can go ahead and use TuneClone M4P to MP3 Converter which acts as a Virtual CD-ROM drive on your PC and lets you remove the DRM element without having to waste actual CD’s, with the music ID3 tags info well preserved.

Step by Step: Burn and Rip iTunes M4P Music for Limewire/Rhapsody/Napster?

1. Insert a CD-R or CD-RW disc into your CD-ROM drive.

2. Burn the iTunes M4P playlist to make an audio CD. You cannot select the “MP3 CD” option since it requires the DRM protected iTunes M4P files be converted to MP3 or WMA files for Rhapsody, Napster, Limewire.

3. After the audio CD is successfully burned, insert the disc into your CD-ROM drive again. Then you can use iTunes or Windows Media Player to import the music tracks on the burned disc as MP3 or WMA files.

Step by Step: Convert iTunes M4P Music for Rhapsody/Napster/Limewire with TuneClone M4P to MP3 Converter

1. Create a new playlist in iTunes.

2. Add the M4P songs to the playlist.

3. Launch TuneClone M4P to MP3 Converter. Click the “Settings” tab. In the pop-up window, you can specify output folder, output file name format, output format (choose MP3 or WMA), etc for the output files. Note: You can check whether TuneClone virtual CD drive is successfully installed and where it is installed in the bottom left corner of the interface.

4. Switch to iTunes. In iTunes, click the “Burn Disc” button.

5. In the pop-up window of “Burn Settings”, select “TuneClon Virtual_CD-RW” from the “CD Burner” drop-down list, click the radio button next to “Audio CD” and tick “Include CD Text” option. Click “Burn” to start burning.

6. Upon the completion of burning the disc and encoding the music, you can open the TuneClone manager screen to show all the converted music files. To locate the output folder, simply click the “Folder” tab on the interface.

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How to preserve ID3 tags using TuneClone

In most of my previous posts, I talked about how to use TuneClone’s virtual CD drive to burn DRM protected music, including iTunes music, Windows Media Player music, RealPlayer music, WinAMP music, Napster Music and Rhapsody music. Some of these media players like iTunes, RealPlayer and Napster support burning music with CD text, while others don’t. Therefore, in this post, I am going to show how to preserve the music metadata about title, artist, album, etc. while burning music with TuneClone Audio Converter.

For iTunes, RealPlayer and Napster

It is very easy to keep ID3 tags when you burn iTunes, RealPlayer or Napster music.

When you make the burning settings, make sure you tick the “Include CD Text” (in iTunes 8), “Write CD text to my audio CD” (in RealPlayer) or “Burn CD Text” (in Napster) option. The information will be well preserved after the burning and encoding process. Take a look at the screenshots below:

For Windows Media Player, WinAMP and Rhapsody

However, since Windows Media Player, WinAMP and Rhapsody don’t provide such an option, you will get the output files formatted as 01-1.mp3, 01-2.mp3, etc. This is very annoying since all the metadata information is missing.

Tuneclone Audio Converter comes to the rescue! You just need an additional step after the burning and encoding process:

Click the output songs in the manager screen and drag the counterpart original songs in Windows Media Player, WinAMP or Rhapsody to the “Track Info” panel of TuneClone one by one. The information about the artist, album, title, etc. will be automatically changed accordingly.

It would be a time-consuming process if you are burning a big collection of music. However, since Windows Media Player, WinAMP and Rhapsody don’t support CD-text burning, this seems to be the only way to get the information back.

If only TuneClone would consider adding the support for batch changing the information rather than dragging one by one!

Look forward to the improvement!