Depending on the amount of protected music you have, that could be a costly venture.Ī less-costly, but time-intensive way to strip the DRM is to burn all of the protected music to CDs, delete the protected versions, and then re-import the songs from the burned disc. When Apple began removing DRM from its library of songs in 2009, it offered users the ability to pay $.30 per song to upgrade from the protected song to a better quality 256-kbps version without DRM protection. In short, it aggressively limits the flexibility of the music you purchased.Īfter sorting your music by file kind, look for the phrase 'Protected AAC audio file' to indicate a track has Digital Rights Management (DRM). You cannot upload a protected song or album to Amazon Cloud Player or Google Play Music, play the song on an Android device, or move the song to a new computer without authorizing that computer with your iTunes account. Step outside of Apple TVs, iPhones, and iPods, though, and its annoyance quickly becomes evident. If you’re used to keeping your media and digital life within Apple’s ecosystem, you may have never noticed the impact of DRM. In this tutorial, I’ll provide an inexpensive workaround that makes stripping DRM easy by employing Apple's iTunes Match service. Now that DRM for music is largely a thing of the past, how can you cost-effectively free your music from Apple’s Fair Play protection? Select Soundflower (2ch) in the Device dropdown menu.In the heyday of illegal music-sharing services, iTunes was a beacon of light to the recording industry because Apple's service incorporated Digital Rights Management (DRM) to discourage piracy.

Open Audacity and go to the Preferences menu.

Select Soundflower (2ch) from the list of options.

Click on the Output tab at the top of the Window.

Go to Apple > System Preferences > Sound.

When you're ready, use the following step-by-step guide: As such, you'll need to download and install another third-party app-Soundflower-before you begin. Macs do not have a native way to record a computer's audio output. If you're using a macOS device, the situation is slightly more complex.

Trim the file to remove the silence from the beginning and end of the recording.

In the dropdown menu in the upper left-hand corner, select Windows WASAPI.

To use Audacity to remove DRM on Windows, follow these steps: However, we'd recommend going one step further and downloading a more powerful tool such as Audacity.

Remove drm from music files