Is there a way to use Protected AAC songs in iMovie?

There is no legal way to use your present DRM protected songs in iMovie. The rules of this forum preclude us from advising how to defeat copyrights. The post will usually be taken down.

However, songs purchased after year 2009 in iTunes are almost always DRM free. So, if the songs are available for purchase in iTunes you should be able to repurchase DRM free versions of the songs that you have. They only cost about a dollar, so you can try one and see if it plays.

-- Rich

Hi, léonie,

I just now combed the iTunes website and I don't see any way to confirm DRM free prior to purchase. iTunes claims that all of its songs are now DRM free. From their Help menu:

And again:

I can't find any way, prior to purchase, to confirm that a song is an iTunes Plus song (thus DRM free) or to confirm the bit rate and codec as 256 Kbps/AAC to establish it as an iTunes Plus song. So we have to take iTune's word for it.

Apparently the only way to find out for sure is to purchase the song. Or, if the song is available as an iTunes Plus song, you can upgrade it, apparently by repurchasing it. (Fortunately, fairly inexpensive unless one has tons of songs to convert.) As I recall, upgrading through iTunes Match was supposed to provide a DRM free song, but you have found otherwise.

As you probably remember, a few years ago it was common to remove DRM by burning the song to a CD and downloading from there, that I don't even know works any more. We (or many of us) were unsophisticated about copyright laws back then.

If you find an anwer to this, please post back.

Best to you,

Rich

Supposedly, if one subscribes to the iTunes Match Program, DRM free versions of protected songs can be downloaded. Léonie has found, however, that that is not always true. The subscription costs $24.99 per year. However, once you have downloaded the songs you can always cancel the subscription. Might be practical since you have hundreds of DRM protected songs.

Since you have so many DRM protected songs, you must have purchased them before year 2010. Otherwise they mostly should be DRM free. Open your iTunes library and do a Control-click on the song title and then click on Song Info >File to see if it is protected. For Example:

Maybe many of your songs are actually DRM free.

-- Rich

No, of course you are doing nothing wrong, and your intentions are completely honest. I wasn’t at all suggesting otherwise. There was nothing about your post that was in any way improper.

We have to live with the copyright laws that often preclude or restrict our use of songs and videos. On the other side, the artists are entitled to market and monetize their own works in accordance with the licenses that they grant. Without copyright protection we would have fewer songs. So it is important to keep the protections, and for us not to advise how to circumvent them. Doesn’t hurt to ask, though. 😊

— Rich

Rich, do you know, how we can tell when purchasing a song from the iTunes Store, if it will be DRM free? In 2009 I converted most of my songs to DRM free versions by paying a fee to to iTunes Store. Several songs could not be converted, however, because Apple could not offer DRM free versions.These songs also retained the digital rights when I upgraded to iTunes Match. Before trying to purchase a song again, I would like to be sure, that the new version will be free of DMR.