Okay, I have for some time tried to find an easy way to convert DRM protected WMA-files to MP3, but without any luck. Sure a lot of programs claim to do it, but I don't want to pay for this, I wan't it for free!
So, I thought long and hard and came up with this solution. Please note that it requires the license to allow you to burn your downloaded WMA's.
Prerequisites (what I used):
- Nero Burning Rom
- Daemon Tools v4.0
- CDex
Here we go:
- Get the protected files from some paysite
- I believe you download the licenses onto your machine the first time you play it, so I guess you sould try that first (I did, and it worked)
- Get Nero Burning Rom. I have come free-of-charge with every CD-writer I have ever purchased, so I guess it souldn't be that hard to obtain. Alternatives may exists - the important part of this is that you have an image-recorder (writes an image to disk).
- Open Nero up and create a new CD-audio compilation.
- In the "Recorder"-menu, select "Choose recorder" (or press CTRL-R)
- Select the "Image Recorder" in the list and press OK
- Drag your DRM-protected files into your compilation
- Burn! When a dialog box pops up, select the location to put your image
- Nero now burns an image with the protected songs converted into CD-audio (rippable)
- Mount your new image as a virtual drive using Daemon Tools. You can try playing a track using your favorite media player. If it plays, your good to go.
- Start up CDex and select the image drive in the top-center drop-down menu. It should afterwards display the tracks on the image - the tracks you burned with Nero :)
- Rip the files into the format you have configured in CDex.
- That's it! You now have the MP3's of the digitally protected WMA's... It's THAT "easy" :)
Please note that the above not necessarily works in every situation. I just thought that it might be a way to help out some of you guys out there having a real hard time with DRM (including myself).
Good luck!
