Geekshow

MacGeek – Free Your iTunes Music: The Tutorial

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

This is a guide on how to use Apple’s own software to strip the DRM from the last six years’ worth of music.

With the announcement of DRM-Free iTunes music January 6th, I hoped upon hope that the move was retroactive. No such luck. So, it will cost me $.30/song to re-download my newly non-protected music. I have more than 200 songs; that’s over $60. Uh – No thanks.

Here’s a way to do it with 2 pieces of software. 3, if you want ID3 tags and album art. All Free.

iTunes (You will already have this, of course) Otherwise get it here

iMove HD available here (154MB file)

Jaikoz Audio Tagger available here

You will use iMovie HD to strip the DRM, iTunes to convert it to MP3 or AAC. And Jaikoz to automatically correct the ID3 tags and add album art.

When you fist open iMovie HD, it’ll ask for a title for the project. The title makes no difference because you won’t be actually saving a movie file. In the iMovie HD window, select the ‘Media’ tab located between ‘Themes’ and ‘Editing’. You will notice the media browser at the top right portion of the interface . Select the ‘Audio’ tab and locate the playlist which contains purchased music, or search by artist/title.

Once you have selected the song, drag it to the iMovie timeline where it says “Drag audio here to build your project.” Or select “Place at Playhead.”

iMovie needs a picture, any picture to be added to the timeline in order for it to be tricked into thinking that it’s going to be exporting a movie. Once iMovie HD is done processing the image, you want to slect ‘Share’ at the top in iMovie’s menu bar and choose ‘Share’ in the drop-down menu.

Ensure that ‘Expert Settings’ is selected in the “Compress movie for:” drop-down menu. Selecting ‘Expert Settings’ mode will provide the options to export the file as an audio file. Select the ‘Share’ button.

In the Export… dialogue, select “Sound to AIFF.” (Apple’s version of a WAV file.) In the Export drop-down menu, Choose a directory you will remember for iMovie HD to export to, you can also title the file here, and select ‘Save’. Depending on your machine configuration, iMovie will compress and export the movie project as an audio file in a couple of minutes.

Locate the exported AIFF audio file and drag to your iTunes Library. Right-click on the file and select “Create AAC Version” or “Create MP3 Version.”

Once completed right-click and choose ‘Get Info’ on the new file, edit meta data, and add album art. Or drag and drop your file(s) into Jaikoz. You may want to trash the originally purchased (unless you want to keep it for nostalgia) and AIFF audio files from your iTunes library.

Jaikoz’s main window is a little confusing, so just follow along. You want to drag your newly created DRM-free files directly from iTunes to the middle pane of Jaikoz. The free version of Jaikoz allows 20 edits per session. If you want to edit more, either restart the application after every 20th edit or pony up the $22 for the full licensed version.

Once the files are loaded into Jaikoz, highlight all the tracks. Right-click and choose “Auto Correct”

This is the easiest and best option. Jaikoz is a little slow (at least for me.) It uses the MusicBrainz database which is user-editable, ala Wikipedia. Sometimes this option doesn’t work OR it chooses the Greatest Hits of an artist, but you are wanting a particular album. In this case, right-click the file and select “Remote Correct,” Then a drop-down menu opens for you to choose “Manual Correct Tags From MusicBrainz.”

This feature is something that other [free] taggers do not offer. You can select any of the available options for that song/album/artist. The reason why it may have chosen greatest hits as its selection is because MusicBrainz data is ranked. The greatest hits might have a score of 89, but the album you want has a score of 66. Select the right one and choose “OK.”

Once you are satisfied, right-click the corrected tracks a choose “Save Changes.” Then right-click once more and choose “Close Files.” Rinse and repeat.

If none of these work for you, there is a third way. Go to MusicBrainz.org and search for that artist and find the album/track if available. Once selected, find the MBID for the track, release, or artist. Copy that in to the corresponding area in Jaikoz. There is a “MusicBrainz” tab along the lower third of the screen.

If you previously tried to auto correct this track, you will notice information already listed in this tab. Just delete all the fields and add the one you copied from MusicBrainz.org to the appropriate field. Once that is done, right-click track. Under “Remote Correct” choose “Update Tags From Existing MusicBrainz Id.”

Hopefully this works for you. If it doesn’t add the album art, iTunes does have a built-in option. Choose “Get Album Art” from the advanced menu. Unfortunately, it automatically checks every track in iTunes and not just selected ones.