iTunes service subscribers: can I purchase /download songs in mp3 format?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

I always get them in the proprietary Apple .mp4 format.

I have a non iPod mp3 player and thus am unable to use songs I purchase from them unless I burned them to a disk and back-encoded them to .mp3

This makes me much less likely to purchase music from them.

Don't bother telling me to buy an iPod on this thread... it will be at least half a year to a year before I can justify spending the bux on that for a variety of reasons...

[tekriter]

1. Short answer, no.

You must have already found out that you can't convert purchased music. You can only do as you say, burn to CD and re-import as mp3.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. Thanx for the response. Do you know if the burning software allows you

to burn to a rewriteable disk?

[tekriter]

8. Yes it does.

n/t

[Shrek]

3. No, but there's an easy workaround

You can get a free utility called Hymn ( www.hymn-project.org ) that will decrypt the proprietary format.

From there you can use dbPowerAmp or something similar to convert to MP3.

I do this all the time and it works great.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

6. Thanks...

[tekriter]

7. Hymn no longer works after you upgrade to iTunes 4.7.1...

which was released this week.

[chatterboy]

4. If you're using iTunes

You should be able to convert purchased files to .mp3 by:

--Checking preferences and making sure iTunes is set to import using .mp3 encoding
--Highlighting AAC file and converting selection.

On a Mac, you'll find preferences under iTunes menu; convert under Advanced menu.

Hope this helps.

http://homepage.mac.com/rondavis/iblog/

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

5. No it won't convert the .mp4 files you buy from them. Try it sometime.

And I have the import setting as you say. Despite having it set to encode/import to .mp3, purchased music from iTunes comes in as a .mp4

If you try to convert these files with iTunes to .mp3, you get a message from the program saying it won't convert proprietary files.