iTunes is one of those programs that I love to hate. Since I don't have an iPod I'm not relegated to having to use it. The only feature I use from iTunes is that of purchasing music online. I have over 170,000 DRM-free (Digital Rights Management - in layman's terms: copy protection-free) songs so I'm certainly not going to let iTunes' brain-dead DRM get in my way of being able to freely play this music on any playback device I choose.

However, the one great thing about iTunes is the User Interface when purchasing songs. I haven't found anything that beats iTunes in that respect. So, how do I use iTunes and maintain a DRM-free library? Easy. There are two ways to do this. Let me describe the hard way first.

The Hard Way

All DRM can be defeated if you can burn an Audio CD. Not an MP3 CD but an Audio CD like you would play in any audio CD player. The solution is to burn the song(s) to CD and then turn around and RIP it back to your computer. After the Ripping phase, the DRM is gone. However, this is quite a laborious task and you will probably have to retype in the MP3 TAG data.

The Easy Way

The easier way is to use a product called Tunebite. This product will strip the DRM from your iTunes collection and copy the files as MP3's to another folder on your local hard drive.

I never purchase a song off of iTunes that I don't immediately convert to a DRM-free MP3. In addition to eliminating the DRM, I also make sure that all the Titles, Artist, Album and Genre are entered so we can name the file based on the MP3 TAG attributes. This keeps our entire music library very organized and easy to maintain.

Since iTunes is free just head on over to Apple and pick up your free copy.