DRM-protected files can’t be imported into GarageBand, where you might want to add a song snippet to a personal podcast that you send to friends and family.

 

Digital rights management (DRM) prevents a music file from being played by an unauthorized user or player. The recording industry thinks DRM is necessary to stop piracy, but as Steve Jobs put it in his February 6, 2007, public letter titled Thoughts on Music, “DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.” DRM’s restrictions effectively do nothing but annoy the people who bought the music.

 

Since Jobs’s letter, the iTunes Store has gone on to offer DRM-free songs, but the iTunes Store’s DRM-free library, called iTunes Plus, is limited (although always growing). If you already have a DRM’d iTunes song, you can pay 30 cents per song to convert to a DRM-free version—if one is available. Or you can create your own.

 

You can burn your DRM music to CD (the songs on the disc won’t have DRM) and then import the songs from the CD into iTunes. Or you can use one of the two methods we’re going to show you here. These methods don’t actually take your files and remove the DRM—your DRM files will remain intact. These how-tos create new, DRM-free files.

 

Circumventing DRM is considered a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If you plan on sharing your songs on the Internet, you’re breaking the law, but the Audio Home Recording Act states that you can legally make copies of audio recordings for noncommercial personal use. Be smart and use common sense. Don’t abuse your fair-use rights.

 

Use iMovie to Create DRM-free Music

 

iMovie lets you add DRM music to your videos. What you’ll do here is create a video, add your DRM song as a soundtrack, and then use iMovie’s Export feature to save only the audio from the video, creating a DRM-free song.

 

1. Entitlement

You’re going to create a movie using just titles.

 

In iMovie, click the Titles button (T) or press Command-3. In the Titles browser in the lower-right, drag and drop the Centered titles to the Project window, located at the upper-middle of iMovie. The Preview window on the upper-right shows the text in your title. You can select the text and delete it, if you want. Or just leave it. It doesn’t matter.

 

2. 60 seconds

One minute is the limit, but don’t panic if your song is longer.

 

Right-click (or Control-click) the title in the Project window and select Set Duration, or press Command-R. This is where you can set how long you want the title to last. The limit is 60 seconds. If your song is shorter than 60 seconds, enter the length of your song. If your song is longer, enter 60.

 

3 Copy, paste, repeat

Adjust titles for the length of the song.

 

Select the title in the Project window. Copy it (Command-C or right-click and select Copy) and then paste (Command-V or right-click and select Paste) after the first clip. Repeat this until you get the desired length—it’s OK if you go over the length of the song. For example, if the song is 4 minutes and 58 seconds, paste four additional copies of the 60-second title.

 

4. Add the Song

iMovie adds the song as a soundtrack to your movie.

 

Click the Music and Sound Effects button (the one with the musical note on it). In the Music and Sound Effects browser, navigate to your DRM-protected song in iTunes. Once you find your song, drag it to the beginning of your movie in the Project window, and drop it in. iMovie will automatically add it to your movie.

 

5. Export the Audio

For best quality, select one of the 44.1kHz options in the Use menu.

 

Now you’re ready to save the audio file. Click the Share menu and select Export Using QuickTime. Name the file and decide where to save it. In the Export option at the bottom of the Save window, select Sound To AIFF. Click the Option buttons if you want to fine-tune the settings, or click on the Use pull-down menu and select a setting. Click Save when you’re ready.

 

6. Convert The Audio Fine

Drag the file into iTunes to convert it to a smaller format.

 

When iMovie exports the audio from your movie project, it saves only the song. Were your titles longer than the song? No worries—iMovie doesn’t add excess silence. It just saves the song.

 

Find your song. Now you can drag it into iTunes to convert it to MP3 or AAC. You might consider using Apple Lossless, which has bigger file sizes than MP3 or AAC, but it’s still smaller than the AIFF file you exported from iMovie. And Apple Lossless preserves the audio quality.

 

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Rerecord Your Music

 

Using software such as WireTap Studio ($30, www.ambrosiasw.com) or Audio Hijack Pro ($32, www.rogueamoeba.com), you play your DRM music on your Mac while the software records it in real time (note: the developers of these apps don’t promote their software for this use). In this how-to, we’re using Audio Hijack Pro.

 

1. Settings

Set up Audio Hijack Pro for recording from iTunes.

 

Launch Audio Hijack Pro. In the left pane, select iTunes. Under Format, click the menu and select one of the presets, or select Custom to fine-tune your format settings. Under Files, designate where you want to save your files, how to name your files, and what you want the software to do when the recording is done. You can tweak the settings under Limits if you want to (we left it alone). Under Silence Monitor, we created a Custom setting that stops the recording when there’s silence for more than 1.5 seconds. That way, the recording will stop automatically when the song is done.

 

2. Record

Select All, then deselect songs you don’t want to record.

 

Click the Record button. iTunes will launch. In iTunes, select all of your songs—that’s right, all of them (Command-A or Edit > Select All). With all you songs color-coated, right click and select Uncheck Selection. This should remove the check mark in the box to the left of the song title. Now find the song you want to free from its DRM shackles, and click the box so it’s checked. When you play the song, Audio Hijack Pro automatically starts recording.

 

Since Audio Hijack Pro isolates the iTunes audio, it won’t record any other system sounds. So don’t worry about doing other things on your Mac as you record.

 

3. Finish

You can use iTunes to fill in the ID3 tag info, or you can fill in the tag info before you record in Audio H. ijack Pro.

 

You can end the recording by clicking the Record button in Audio Hijack Pro, or you can let the song end on its own and let Audio Hijack Pro sense the silence and stop recording. Navigate to where you saved your recording, and then drag and drop it into your iTunes library. All done!