Removing DRM Protection from iTunes Music on Mac

The following article will share with you four ways of removing DRM protection from iTunes music on Mac OS X. You can choose your favorite method to help you convert iTunes M4P music to MP3 or (DRM free) AAC format for playback on MP3 Player, MP4 Player, Mobile Phone Player, etc.

Method 1. Remove DRM from iTunes music with burning-and-ripping method

1. Insert a CD-R or CD-RW disc into your CD-ROM drive
2. Run iTunes, create a new playlist and burn it to make an "Audio CD"
3. After the Audio CD is successfully burned, insert the disc into your CD-ROM drive again. Then you can use iTunes to import the music tracks on the burned disc as whatever format (MP3, AAC, etc) you selected in iTunes preferences for importing.

Method 2. Remove DRM from iTunes music with Virtual CD Burner

You will need to download TuneClone Audio Converter for Mac first. Run this DRM Removal Software and it will let you install a virtual CD burner, which will be used to convert iTunes music files.

Run iTunes, create a new playlist and add the DRM protected iTunes songs to the playlist.

Right click this playlist and choose "Burn Playlist to Disc". Alternatively, you can click the "Burn Disc" button at the lower right corner of iTunes interface.

In the pop-up dialog of "Burn Settings", select "CDWriter TuneClone" as default CD Burner, choose "Audio CD" as Disc Format and tick "Include CD Text" ( to perserve the music metadata such as name, artist, album names ).

Tip: You can easily get the output MP3 files on your Mac machine by clicking the "Reveal in Finder" button on the manager screen.

Method 3. Remove DRM from iTunes music with iMovie '09

Run iMovie and create a New Project. In the iMovie window, select the 'Music' tab. You will notice that the top right portion of the interface now offers a media browser. Locate the playlist which contains purchased music, or search by artist/title.

Select the DRM-laden song and drag the file from the media browser into the iMovie timeline.

In order to export the song, iMovie requires that a visual image be associated with the audio track - iMovie thinks that it is going to be exporting a movie. Simply drag a blank image (or any other image) to the track above the previously imported audio file. Once iMovie has processed the image, select the 'Export using QuickTime…' sub menu item from found inside 'Share' in iMovie's menu bar.

In the Save as… dialogue, select "Sound to AIFF" in the Export drop-down menu, Choose an appropriate directory for iMovie to export to, title the file, and select 'Save'.

Locate the exported AIFF audio file and drag to your iTunes Library. Right-click on the file and select "Create MP3 Version". Once completed, 'Get Info' on the new file, edit meta data, add album art, and trash the originally purchased and AIFF audio files from your iTunes library.

Method 4. Remove DRM from iTunes music with FairGame

FairGame is freeware to remove DRM protection from iTunes music on Mac OS X. It will convert the DRMed songs you bought on the iTunes Store to an unprotected format (using iTunes default encoder) and keep all the original metadata, lyrics and artwork. FairGame doesn't do lossless DRM stripping. It re-encodes protected AAC files purchased in iTMS into unprotected AAC file using Apple's iMovie software.

What you MUST DO (only once) to get FairGame to work:

enable "Access for assistive devices" in the "Universal Access" system preference
select "Place clip in Movie Timeline" in the "Import" preference of iMovie HD

Then you can simply:

select some songs in iTunes
click on the "Process songs" button
Don't touch anything and wait until it's done…(FairGame is scripting iMovie's interface to process the songs, don't interfere)