Here’s the kind of question I get about once a week or so: I recently switched from an iPhone 5 to a Galaxy S6 and love it. A much better experience! Problem is, I bought a ton of music in iTunes when I was using my iPhone and now want to move it to my Samsung and it’s locked with DRM [ed: “Digital Rights Management”]. Is there any way to remove the DRM on my purchased music files so I can listen to it on my Android phone? If it makes a difference, I still have a Mac system as my main computer.
Digital Rights Management is a way for Apple, and, by extension, the music label and musician to ensure that if you buy a copy of their work digitally that you won’t then share it with 500 of your best Facebook or Dropbox friends. If you did, well, then the musician would need a day job because the revenue from a single purchase isn’t going to pay for studio time or new gear, not to mention those lavish mansions in Brentwood and the Lamborghini with which to motor down Highway 1 to those swanky Malibu parties!
So this reader asks a tricky question, because there are indeed some slick ways to remove DRM from your protected iTunes music — and I’ll step you through NoteBurner iTunes DRM Audio Converter for Mac momentarily — but it’s important to highlight that it’s for your personal use only. In fact, it’s not only likely illegal for you to break the DRM and share music with your friends, it also really stinks for the artist for just the reason I mention: this is their livelihood and if you like the band or musician, why would you want to deprive them of the chance to make a buck or two?
With that in mind, let’s have a look at just how to remove the DRM and convert your M4A audio files into regular MP3 files so you can then listen to your purchased music on your Android device. And by my way of thinking, if digital rights truly worked properly it’d be “buy once, listen everywhere” anyway, and someday that’s exactly how it’ll work.
To start, download a copy of iTunes DRM Audio Converter from the Noteburner.com site: there’s a demo version you can get to try it out.
Before we go further, though, a quick demonstration of the problem. Here’s my Purchased playlist in iTunes:
Right click on a purchased track and choose “Show in Finder” from the resultant menu and you can see the issue:
The files purchased, in this case from the Spectre motion picture soundtrack, are all “m4a” format. Not useful for your Android device!
To convert them and strip away the DRM, launch the copy of iTunes DRM Audio Converter that you downloaded already:
As the image suggests, you’ll click to add audio files for the program to convert. Do so and it’ll give you your familiar iTunes organization in its own window.
I’m going to choose “Purchased” again, and find the track Vauxhall Bridge, a particular favorite of mine:
You can select dozens or hundreds of files to convert, but I’ll stick with this individual file as a demo.
A click on “OK” and you’ll get the conversion queue window with your track or tracks listed:
Here’s a key step: before you click on the “Convert” button, click on the tiny gear icon on the top right to ensure that the conversion is going to produce exactly the files you desire.
By default, the program matches the audio track selected so it’s not necessarily what you’ll need for the Android device, as shown:
I don’t want to convert it to AAC, I’d rather just have a (lossy) MP3 audio file instead since that’s a much more common music file standard, and since I don’t much care about the file staying small, I’m going to bump it up to the highest possible quality.
Those settings now look like this:
Now I’m ready to convert the audio file!
Back to the previous window and a click on the green “Convert” button and…
This process goes pretty fast at 20x, but if you find your results aren’t as good as you’d like, go back and choose “Convert Speed” to be slower and try again.
Once it’s done, the program automatically opens up the destination folder and the converted audio file is ready to copy over to your Android device / listen to as an unprotected, non-DRM MP3 audio file:
That’s all there is to the process with NoteBurner DRM Audio Converter. It’s quite easy and in my testing it does indeed create clean MP3 files that have the digital rights management removed, so they’re ready to go into Windows Media Center or other MP3 players — even on a flash drive you can plug into your car, if it supports that. Buy once, play everywhere.
Learn more about NoteBurner iTunes DRM Audio Converter: $39.95 for a full app license. Check out their YouTube video for more usage options too, and note that there’s also a Windows version of the program you can learn about on their site too.
My Bitdefender client which has kept me safe for years just quarantined my purchased Noteburner client after just one use stating it is high threat malware infected.. not sure if anyone else can relate or have any thoughts on this? I read so many positive reviews that I didn’t think the software wouldn’t be safe.. I literally just spent the money and tried it once 🙁
That’s alarming. Check with the developer, see if they have an explanation. It’s possible their master copy got infected!
Same here – I removed it immediately. Likely false positive, but who knows?
I’ve been running NoteBurner for years. The latest version of the program is even better, which strengthen the customization of sorting out the output files. Awesome!
It does work. I’m using it on my 2015 MacBook Pro with OS X Sierra and it converts quite quickly and doesn’t give any malware errors (avast)
I bought this software so I could burn my Apple Music purchases onto an MP3 CD to use in my car. Works a treat.
I was having great fun making short videos to upload to YouTube and using music I purchased on Amazon. I’m a Mac guy, but I abandoned and now hate purchasing any music from Apple.
A few days ago, I attempted to look at a video clip I put together in iMovie having a music bed underneath the video (some flying scenes using my drone) and I am no longer to even watch the short video I made for my one enjoyment (didn’t even attempt to upload it anywhere) and I get this blocked message of sorts saying DRM will not allow me to use the music. What the hell? I’m not using the music for commercial purposes, nor to promote anything, and now, I can’t even watch my own clip on my Mac because it basically is locked down somehow by this DRM (Damned Restrictive Mishap).
I get on the internet to research how to defeat this and come across “NoteBurner” and I spend $49,95 to purchase it, and the software DOES NOTHING. It’s like tossing a $50 bill out the window as your are driving your car down the freeway. You’ll NEVER-EVER get a refund from the seller.
I now know what “NoteBurner” really means. It’s like taking a $50 bill and torching it with a cigarette lighter . You get burned two ways with this product because #1, it does NOT work and #2, you burn $50 buying this defective download.
Surprised to hear your experience, Luke, but NoteBurner doesn’t remove the music restrictions that YouTube has placed on your video. It can’t do that…
“NoteBurner doesn’t remove the music restrictions that YouTube has placed on your video. ”
You should have mentioned that in the review.
Also: When I tried to download a trial version from Noteburner’s site, my Norton 360 security software intervened and placed the file in quarantine with the warning that removing it from quarantine could potentially damage my computer. Below are details from Norton’s message:
Risk Name: WE.Reputation.1
Category: Insight Network Threat
Risk Level: Medium
Like I suspect most of your readers, I am not a coder or a hacker or a tecchie in any way, and need help dealing with the multitudes of file types and standards related to audio and video.
If you are taking on the responsibility of giving us direction, it would be useful to give us ALL the details about a product. In this case, YouTube’s refusal to play audio files created by Notebook is something that I’m sure will affect many potential Notebook customers. (My sole reason for purchasing this converter would be for YouTube upload.)
As I have discovered, there is the potential of installing malware when downloading the Notebook application. Did your security apps not give you some warning when you downloaded this app?
Did the fact you were compensated for this review affect your decision to leave out the YouTube incompatibility and malware issues?
Hey John, thanks for your response. NoteBurner has nothing to do with YouTube screening the audio on videos you upload and identifying them as being unlicensed music. That’s a Youtube capability and would be the same regardless of how you sourced your audio: If it’s licensed content and you don’t have a license, you’ll be flagged on YouTube.
In terms of the virus, that’s a more troubling one that I didn’t encounter when I was testing the software. I’ll drop a note to them asking what’s going on: might be that they’re hosting it on a compromised server.
Hey Dave,
First off, thanks a lot for taking the time to share this information. Very useful.
I’m wondering if you ever got an answer to the above, i.e. is there anything to worry about when trying to download this software in terms of viruses, etc.?
Also, has any other noteworthy method been uncovered to remove DRM since writing this?
I love iTunes DRM Audio Converter, it is great. its speed of converting is very fast, you don’t need wait for a long time. After converting, the tone quality of music is also awesome, and I always transfer them to my phone and tablet for enjoying, I enjoy the time.
A magical, powerful DRM Remover and Converter! I have tried many such software, but this Noteburner iTunes DRM Audio Converter is the best!
A very powerful DRM remover I’ve ever used. I bought it about two years ago and still keep using it now. Whatsmore, it updates frequently. Can see how hard they’re trying to make Noteburner better. Seems like having a promotion now.