How to Unprotect Your Music
- 1). Create a playlist of the songs you want to "unprotect." To do this in iTunes or a similar music browser, in the top left corner of the browser select "File" and "New Playlist." Click and drag the songs you want onto that playlist. In Windows Media Player, select "Create Playlist" and add music to create the playlist.
- 2). Insert the blank CD into your CD-ROM drive. A CD-RW is best to use for this process, because you will likely want to reuse this CD multiple times in the process of unprotecting music that you acquire in the future. A CD-RW is a compact disc-rewritable, which allows you to add music to the CD, remove that same music, and then add new music in its place, repeatedly.
- 3). Click on "New Playlist" in your music browser, and choose to copy your music from your music browser to the CD. For example, if you are using iTunes, a colored circle should appear at the top right corner of the browser after you click "New Playlist." Click that colored circle, and the music from the "New Playlist" should now be copied to the CD. In Windows Media Player, click the "Create Playlist" tab and select "Burn" from the top of your Windows Media browser.
- 4). After the music is done being copied, edit the preferences in your music browser so it no longer accepts licenses when receiving music copied from a CD. For example, in iTunes, go to "Edit," "Preferences" and "Advanced" and select that you do not want to copy licenses from music when copying music from a CD.
- 5). You will now be able to copy the music from the CD you just created without the protection attached. To copy the music from the CD to iTunes, open the CD's folder. Click your desktop's "Start" menu, click "Computer," right-click the image of the CD and choose to "Open" it. Drag the new files into iTunes, and they will now be unprotected. Repeat this process as much as you like to unprotect your music.
- 6). Alternatively, you could download a program called Sound Taxi, which converts media from protected format to an unprotected format. The instructions are self-explanatory upon purchase and installment (i.e., the program begins with a set of instructions telling you how exactly to accomplish this task).
