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How to Remove DRM from iTunes Music

Sharninder — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:06:51 +0000

iTunes is the world’s biggest online music store. It is probably also the world’s biggest distributor of DRM infested music. Even though, in the past few months, Apple has taken steps to rectify the problem, the chances of you purchasing DRM laced music from iTunes are still high.

So, what is the problem, you say? “I can still listen to all this music on my iPod/iPhone”. “I can still use iTunes to manage all my DRM music”.

DRM ( Digital Rights Management) is a term used to describe procedures which are taken to prevent unauthorized use of the media in question. So, for example, if you have music with DRM purchased from the iTunes store, you will not be able to play them on any media player, other than Apple’s. You will also not be able to convert these files to the MP3 format because Apple, under DRM, doesn’t give you the rights to do so.

But, do not despair. There are ways to get around this and we’ll be teaching you exactly how to do that in this post.

There are generally two ways to remove DRM from iTunes music. The first method, which we’ll discuss here, involves the fact that Apple doesn’t let you convert protected (DRM) music to MP3, but it lets you burn them on a CD/DVD, so that’s one way of getting the music out of the system.

The second method involves using software utilities to strip out the DRM from the music. We’ll be covering this method in a later post.

Exporting DRM laced music to a CD/DVD

Insert a blank CD/DVD in the drive and open iTunes on your computer. Select the File->New Playlist option (or press Ctrl+N). Give a name to the new playlist.

Now, the next step is to select all the files that you want to remove DRM from and drag them to the playlist that you just created.

Now that you have all the tracks you want on the CD/DVD media, right-click the playlist and select the option to “Burn playlist to Disc”.

iTunes will now present you a dialogue box where you can select the kind of CD/DVD that you want to burn. Make sure you select the Audio CD option.

iTunes should now start burning the music to the CD and it’ll let you knows once it’s finished.

Importing music from a CD/DVD

Now, select the Edit->Preferences option and under the General tab, click on Import Settings.

Select the MP3 Encoder from the drop down list and you’re all set to import the track on the Audio CD that you just wrote as MP3 files.

Remove the CD from the drive, and insert it back again. iTunes will prompt you to import the tracks from the CD to it’s own database. Let it do so and at the end of the import process, you’ll have new MP3 tracks void of any DRM.

Enjoy your DRM free music.

How to Remove DRM from iTunes Music originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Automatically Rate Songs in Your iTunes – Mac Only

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:06:23 +0000

In my personal opinion as both Mac and Windows users, iTunes is the best music player I’ve come across. The simple yet intuitive interface alone is enough to make me ditch other players out there. And there are many other powerful features which hides behind the simplicity of the appearance.

One of the iTunes features that I like most is the rating system. Users can tag any song with one to five stars based on their preferences, and users can sort or filter the playlist based on the rating. A quick glance at someone’s iTunes display and you can clearly tell which songs he/she likes and dislikes.

The rating system really is a great idea; but, and this is a big but (no pun intended), the bigger the song list, the more difficult for users to give rating to each and every song. Can you imagine editing 2376 songs one by one? That’s the size of a tiny part of my current song list. (And I don’t know anybody who has less than 100 songs on their list).

AutoRate to the rescue

Luckily, there’s an application called AutoRate which can help iTunes users to rate their songs. This app tries to ‘guess’ user’s listening preferences and give rate to each song automatically by looking at how often each track is played and how many times each track is skipped.

The formula uses a combination of play and skip frequency (averaged out over the life of each track), and the play and skip count. Tracks that are frequently skipped are penalised, while often-played tracks are given a higher rating.

Both the track play count and skip count are used in conjunction with the length of time each track has been in your library to determine, on a relative basis, how much you like each track. Ratings become dynamic and change with your taste in music following how you listen to your songs.

That is why you will get no rating for the track that has never been played.

The Simplicity

Before using AutoRate, please make sure that you have iTunes version 7 and above, and Mac OS X 10.5 (and above). If those requirements are met, download and install the app.

The usage is simple: you just open it, and click the “Begin” button. It will analyze your playlist, then assign the ratings automatically based on the result.

There are some adjustments that you can make via the Preferences, such as:
- which playlist folders to be given ratings to. (General)

- how would you like to set up the rating system. (Rating)

- whether to use full star or half star rating. (Advanced)

With AutoRate, my iTunes playlist has grown a little bit more mature without me having to do the hard work.

One last note, you would want to run AutoRate every once in a while to keep the rating system up to date.

Have you use AutoRate? Or do you have other alternatives of similar app? Please share using the comment below.

Automatically Rate Songs in Your iTunes – Mac Only originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

4 Easy Ways To Stream Your Music Online

Joshua Price — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:49:56 +0000

A while back, Damien published a great article on How To Install And Setup Jinzora Media Server In Ubuntu. Jinzora is a great and powerful way to stream your music over the internet, but getting it set up can be somewhat complicated. Today, I thought I’d cover some of the other options that are a little easier to set up, and may work on other platforms.

GNUMP3d – The GNU Streaming MP3 / Media Server

Platform: *nix, Windows, OSX
Browser/Client Player: Client
Supported formats: MP3, Ogg Vorbis
Configuration: Text File

So far, I think GNUMP3d is my favorite simple music streaming application. According to the website it runs on Windows as well as the UNIX type systems you’d expect from GNU. I’ve only tested it on Linux and it’s been a breeze.

To install GNUMP3d, you just download and extract the tarball from the GNUMP3d website, and run

make install

Configuration is done through a plain text file, instructions are provided on the website.

Once it’s up and running, you point a web browser to the address you’ve set up (like http://localhost:8888) and you should see a screen similar to the screenshot above. From here you can click directories or individual tracks. Each click will result in the server generating a playlist file (.m3u) which your host computer will open in whatever media player you have set up for M3U files. I tested it through VLC but the website notes that others like WinAmp and XMMS work as well.

Another handy feature found in GNUMP3d which seems to be rare with this type of software is that it allows not only streaming but plain downloads of the music files. You can download the MP3 as easily as you can stream it.

One thing I felt was missing from GNUMP3d was user access control. I’d like to be able to set permissions so that only those with the correct username and password can access my music collection. The README stated that similar functionality had been there for a previous release, but had been removed as it didn’t really do anything to improve security.It did, however, let me restrict connections based on IP address. This worked well for me as I intend to stream my home music collection from work, so I set it to only accept connections from my employer’s IP range.

Vibe Streamer

Platform: Windows (also reported to work through Wine)
Browser/Client Player: Browser
Supported formats: MP3
Configuration: Graphical

Vibe is the music streamer I’ve tested most in Windows. Like GNUMP3d, it runs a mini webserver which gives you a browsable list of available music files. Unlike GNUMP3d, it is set up through a normal Windows graphical program. Another difference is that Vibe uses an in-browser player to play the music, instead of relying on a client-side program such as Winamp or VLC.

The one feature I really liked about Vibe was that it was very easy to set the server to only accept connections from someone with a proper username and password. It didn’t seem to use HTTPS so I can’t make any claims on how much that really improves security, but it’s a nice feature. It would at least stop someone from casually strolling on to my server and using up my bandwidth.

Icecast

Platform: Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris
Browser/Client Player: Client
Supported formats: MP3, Ogg Vorbis
Configuration: XML file

Of the software I reviewed for this article, Icecast was by far the most difficult to set up. Configuration is done through a XML file using a lot of unfamiliar terminology. I read over the docs on the website which clarified a few of the options, but there was a lot I had to figure out on my own.

Icecast streams music like a regular radio station, with a certain selection of music being beamed out to the world. You don’t have the control over music selection you have with the other options I’ve covered here. This is good from the server side, as you only need to send out a single stream which all listeners will hear. For my purposes, I just want the stream for myself while at work, and I’d like to choose my music selection as I go, so Icecast doesn’t meet my personal needs very well. If you intend to stream music to many listeners, the Icecast style might be the best way to go.

Apache

Platform: Just about everything
Browser/Client Player: Either
Supported formats: Anything
Configuration: Apache config is a BIG topic better handled elsewhere

That’s right, the plain old Apache webserver is all you really need to stream/download your music. It’s probably not the BEST option in most circumstances, but it’ll do the trick. You simply install Apache according to the instructions for your operating system, and drop your music files in the web folder. That’s it. You won’t have any nice graphics, no playlist support, nothing fancy just a list of files that can be clicked to download or stream, depending on client/server configuration.

IMPORTANT – As with any internet-connected server, be very careful about what you place for public access. Any of the software listed here could potentially have some kind of security flaw. On top of that, it’s probably a bad idea to host copyrighted music to the whole internet. Stream at your own risk.

What other software do you use to stream music over the Web? Share with us in the comments.

4 Easy Ways To Stream Your Music Online originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Manage Your MP3s In Mac with Tagr

Jeffry Thurana — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:43:14 +0000

Collecting music in this era has become much easier. People don’t have a big room with wall shelves full with cassettes and discs anymore. Instead, almost everything has been converted to digital file and is tucked inside a digital storage. Saving real storage space, searching time and eliminating the pile of dust.

On the other side, the convenience of digital music raises another problem: digital file management. Take a peek into your music collection, how many files have their names and information right? Maybe it’s far less than a half. If your collection consists of less than a hundred MP3s, the process of tidying up the wrong names would be a breeze. But everybody I know has thousands of tunes in their library.

Tidying Up With Tagr

Luckily, the “organizing MP3 collection” process could be simplified with the help of a free app called Tagr. This little app (only about 2.3 Mb) claims to be able to edit information such as a song’s artist, title, or album cover. Tagr also allows you to control the way your files are named. Tagr also features integration with discogs.com that allows you to search for album information and artwork and apply it to your songs.

To use Tagr, users simply drag and drop their MP3s into the Tagr windows to be edited. Dropping down an entire album is possible (and advisable), so the user can add or edit the information in a bulk. Just select all MP3 files and user can tinker with the attributes.

There are sets of editing menu available:
- Numbering: to edit the tracks numbers. Users can choose to have a leading zeros before the track numbers (01, 02, 03, and so on) and the track counts behind the track numbers (01/18, 02/18, 03/18, and so on).

- File Naming: Users can edit the original file name to include either: Artist and Title, Track and Title, or Track, Artist and Title.

- Capitalization: Users can choose to change the track names into: Title Case, UPPERCASE, or lowercase.

- All In One: do all the above at once to all the file selected.

As an addition, users can add attributes such as Artist, Album, Genre, Year, Comment and album art to the selected files. These attributes will be part of the file, and users should not be afraid that they would be lost – even if the files are moved to another computer.

Just be sure to hit the “Save to Disk” icon after you change the MP3s information.

The Minus Side

IMHO, here are the few things where Tagr could be improved:
- I tried to drag and drop songs from iTunes and failed. Maybe the future version of Tagr could support this. iTunes might be a superior player, but it still has some limitation such as adding album art. It would be nice if we could do it easily with the help of Tagr.
- To retrieve songs’ information and art from the Discogs.com to be applied to the songs, users have to go to coverflow menu. This additional step is not described clearly and lazy users could get frustrated trying to locate it. Maybe adding a search box and a right click menu to access this feature would greatly appreciated by the users.

So, in conclusion, Tagr is a nice little helper in managing names and tags of MP3 files, but it could be improved.

Have you tried Tagr? Or do you use other application to manage your MP3s? Share your thoughts using the comment below.

Manage Your MP3s In Mac with Tagr originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Purchase DRM-free MP3 From Amazon Via iTunes

Damien — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:33:11 +0000

While the iTunes store gives you access to a wide range of music and a one-click no-fuss purchase experience, it does come with a DRM restriction that prevents you from playing your favorite track on other devices. On the other hand, Amazon enables you to buy DRM-free high quality MP3 track, but you have to put in the extra effort to go to the Amazon site and search through the extensive database for that particular track. Now, wouldn’t it be great if you can combine the best of both World – search for the song in iTunes and buy the track in Amazon?

Advantageous MP3 is a mini iTunes script that is able to detect which song you are searching at iTunes store and brings you directly to the purchase site at Amazon. It is only 60kb in size and supports both Mac and Windows iTunes.

Download Advantageous MP3 for Mac here. Windows user can download it here.

Install the downloaded file.

Open your iTunes. You should see the Advantageous MP3 icon at the menu bar.

Now, go to your iTunes store and search for the song/album you want.

Click on the Advantageous MP3 icon and select Get MP3 From Amazon.

[For Mac users only] At the first run, it will prompt you to activate the GUI display at the Universal Access menu.

Check the box beside Enable access for assistive devices.

Back to your iTunes, click on the Get MP3 from Amazon again.

This time, your default browser will pop up and bring you to the album purchase page in Amazon. Proceed on to buy your MP3.

Once you have finished downloading your MP3, simply drag and drop it into iTunes to sync it with your iPod

That’s it.

How To Purchase DRM-free MP3 From Amazon Via iTunes originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Ubuntu: How to Extract Audio From YouTube Video

Damien — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 04:11:32 +0000

Often, you have heard a rare nice song from a particular YouTube video and you wish you could just save that song (without the video) into your hard disk. Well, in Ubuntu, you can use UTube Ripper to extract audio from YouTube video and save it as mp3 file.

UTube Ripper is an application that works exclusively on Linux. It’s useful to download and convert YouTube videos in a simple and efficient way. While there are many online sites that can take the YouTube url, extract the audio and let you download the mp3 file, it gives you little room for customization. UTube Ripper provides more choices and allows you to set the conversion sample rate and bit rate. It can also convert the flv file to MPEG or avi video format.

Install UTube Ripper

Download the UTube Ripper deb file to your desktop.

Double click the file to start installation. This will fetch and install all its dependencies.

Once installed, go to Applications -> Internet -> Utube ripper.

Now, on http://www.youtube.com, find your favorite video and the song that you want to extract. Copy the exact url and paste it to the text field in the ‘Utube Video URL’ section

. Press ‘Download’ to start download the flv file to your computer. The downloaded file will be saved as video.flv under the /home/yourusername/.utube folder.

To extract mp3, check ‘Rip audio only‘ under the ‘Convert FLV’ section. Click ‘Browse’, navigate to the /.utube folder and select the file video.flv. Click ‘Convert’ to start the conversion. The mp3 file will be saved as audio.mp3. Rename the mp3 file and move it to other folder (else it will be overwritten in the next conversion).

To adjust the sampling rate and bit rate, click on the ‘Setting’ . You can customize the video output type, audio output type, audio sample rate, audio bit rate, video bit rate, video screen resolution.

Ubuntu: How to Extract Audio From YouTube Video originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)