iTunes and non-iPods

[Luke Starkiller]

My wife and I recently started using iTunes to download music, for Valentine's I bought her an mp3 player (MPIO) which said on the box that it was compatible with iTunes. What I didn't find out until it was opened and we tried to upload some of our newly downloaded tunes was that apparently iTunes for Windows is only compatible with iPods.

Does anyone know of a way to convert the 'protected' files that iTunes downloads into standard mp3's that she can listen to on her new player?

[Durandal]

My wife and I recently started using iTunes to download music, for Valentine's I bought her an mp3 player (MPIO) which said on the box that it was compatible with iTunes. What I didn't find out until it was opened and we tried to upload some of our newly downloaded tunes was that apparently iTunes for Windows is only compatible with iPods.

"Compatible with iTunes" does not mean it'll play downloaded music from the iTunes Music Store. It means that it'll be recognized by iTunes and sync with it.

Does anyone know of a way to convert the 'protected' files that iTunes downloads into standard mp3's that she can listen to on her new player?

You have to strip the DRM. You can use Hymn to do this and get a regular .m4a file and then convert it to MP3. Or you can burn the protected file to CD and then re-rip it as an MP3.

[Luke Starkiller]

Thanks, that did the trick.