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Why are "Album Only" tracks DRM protected

Hey all,


I was wondering lately why certain songs that I have in iTunes were failing to sync over to my Android device, and I just noticed that "album only" tracks are actually DRM protected M4P files rather than MP3s - why on earth would Apple do that? Surely "album only" is a store/purchase setting not an encoding setting.


Thankfully I can "convert to mp3" and strip that DRM but still....

Posted on Dec 18, 2012 3:07 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 4, 2013 5:15 AM

From what I've found they don't have DRM, but just the wrong file extension. Rename them to .m4a and they should work (if you're seeing the same issue I am, which it sounds like you are). Re-encoding from losssy to lossy is not a good idea as the tracks won't sound very good (AAC to MP3 conversion is a lossy to lossy conversion).


-J

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 4, 2013 5:15 AM in response to talios

From what I've found they don't have DRM, but just the wrong file extension. Rename them to .m4a and they should work (if you're seeing the same issue I am, which it sounds like you are). Re-encoding from losssy to lossy is not a good idea as the tracks won't sound very good (AAC to MP3 conversion is a lossy to lossy conversion).


-J

Why are "Album Only" tracks DRM protected

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