how do i copy WMA (protected files) to mp3 for MAC?

Nodferatu

hey everyone, i have a pc and all my music is on windows media player and so all the music files are in a WMA format and are 'protected' by the DRM (Digital Rights management). i want to convert all my music to mp3 files for my mac (just ordered one). i will be using itunes from now on. i know mac/itunes use AAC/MP3. the problem is every software program i find on the internet and install is a trial or not full version. does anyone know any software that lets me convert protected wma fles to mp3? for free no registration or software purchase needed. surely there must be something out there that lets me do this? i really dont want to go and rip 400+ cd's one by one again to the new mac computer. will take hour, any help please?

ZENER

The obvious question is why you ripped them to protected WMA in the first place but, as they say, hindsight is 20/20

A quick Google came up with this process.

Hope it helps !

Ken

Nodferatu

ZENER wrote: »

The obvious question is why you ripped them to protected WMA in the first place but, as they say, hindsight is 20/20

A quick Google came up with this process.

Hope it helps !

Ken

good question, i been using windows for years and years, i am moving over to mac now so what i meant is my current music files are all wma as its what i used from day 1. now i want to put them onto a mac as im moving across from windows to mac. had i been buying a new computer with windows, this wouldn't be a problem. may sound like a stupid question, but is all music you rip onto your pc or laptop no matter what audip player winamp itunes etc are all music files protected? or is this just windows problem! im not very knowledgeble on this area!

Fysh

Nodferatu wrote: »

good question, i been using windows for years and years, i am moving over to mac now so what i meant is my current music files are all wma as its what i used from day 1. now i want to put them onto a mac as im moving across from windows to mac. had i been buying a new computer with windows, this wouldn't be a problem. may sound like a stupid question, but is all music you rip onto your pc or laptop no matter what audip player winamp itunes etc are all music files protected? or is this just windows problem! im not very knowledgeble on this area!

It depends on the format you use - one of the big things that MS pushed to consumers with the WMA format was better compression (ie for a given sound quality, a WMA file should be smaller than an MP3 file) but another thing that MS pushed to publishers was the ability of WMA and Windows Media Player to use DRM, without necessarily making this obvious to the end user.

Personally I use CDex on Windows for ripping all my CDs. However, it's probably not much use to you if you're migrating to the world of FruitMachines

One thing you could do, however, is install iTunes on your Windows machine and follow these instructions[/ur] for importing your existing WMA files - iTunes will transcode them into either mp3s or AAC files for you. You can then do something along the lines of this to export your iTunes library on Windows and import it into your new Mac's iTunes library when you're all set up. (Bear in mind, both the articles linked to should be broadly correct but as they're quite old they may be wrong on certain details).