Christian McIntyre

Q: Sonos/DRM iTunes copy protection - help!

Hi everyone,

 

I followed the advice of this article: About iTunes Plus - Apple Support, regarding how to work around iTunes downloads that were copy protected.

 

It worked out that I had about 800+ songs that were copy protected, so after reading the article - and eager to get my Sonos system to play much of my favourite music, I trashed my old copy-protected songs through iTunes, and re-downloaded the new so-called non DRM songs via my Purchased history.

 

After one hour of doing this, I open up iTunes and - sadly - my 'new' songs are still protected AAC files. The file info for each songs shows the original purchase date, and when it was last downloaded. In my case, around 30 minutes ago.

 

Any ideas? I'd prefer not to have to burn everything onto CDs - that's a lot of CDs that are only going to be used once.

 

Thanks everybody


Christian.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2), i7/16g/512g HD

Posted on Feb 24, 2016 11:26 PM

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Q: Sonos/DRM iTunes copy protection - help!

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Jimzgoldfinch,

    Jimzgoldfinch Jimzgoldfinch Feb 25, 2016 12:11 AM in response to Christian McIntyre
    Level 6 (9,222 points)
    iTunes
    Feb 25, 2016 12:11 AM in response to Christian McIntyre

    Hi,

    When you delete the original track and redownload from previous purchases you are only getting the same track that you originally purchased. Prior to iTunes Match, you could pay a small fee per track to upgrade to iTunes plus.

     

    You need to subscribe to iTunes Match to be able to remove DRM. Subscribe to iTunes Match - Apple Support

     

    JIm

  • by Christian McIntyre,

    Christian McIntyre Christian McIntyre Feb 25, 2016 4:40 PM in response to Jimzgoldfinch
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 25, 2016 4:40 PM in response to Jimzgoldfinch

    Hi Jim,

     

    Thanks for the reply. I was hoping to get away without using iTunes Match - so, I paid for it and re-did the whole thing.

     

    Now, the problem has changed! Having re-downloaded this content, I still have some songs that are protected. Interestingly, some of my albums/songs have a purchase date = today's download date, when in fact their actual purchase date was 2006/2007. I've let iCloud/iTunes Match do it's thing and reconcile in the background, so I don't have any 'waiting' alerts in my iCloud Status column of iTunes...

     

    And another thing - those songs that are still 'Protected' have an iCloud status of 'Matched' - even though they were downloaded FROM my purchased history in iTunes? Yet, most of the other songs that I downloaded say 'Purchased' and as a result, have no protection issues. The way and timeframe in which I've downloaded this content has been in one session.

     

    Any other ideas???

  • by Jimzgoldfinch,Solvedanswer

    Jimzgoldfinch Jimzgoldfinch Feb 28, 2016 12:58 PM in response to Christian McIntyre
    Level 6 (9,222 points)
    iTunes
    Feb 28, 2016 12:58 PM in response to Christian McIntyre

    Hi

    I had the same experience as you where some tracks became matched instead of purchased. You can remove download and then redownload matched track which will not have DRM.

     

    I also had tracks that could not be upgraded - album or version of album no longer available.

     

    Option one is to delete tracks, then reimport them - if tracks were available they would match letting you remove download and then redownload up graded version.

    If this does not work, option two is to burn tracks to CD-R then reimport them. The tracks will no longer have DRM and are likely to be uploaded.

     

    JIm