Play DRM protected itunes media on android mobile

[steve_1973]

Hi,

Now don't shoot, boo or hiss at me when I say that I used to have and android phone back in the early days and my last 3 phones have all been iphones. As such a fair proportion of my media on iTunes is from the iTunes stores and has DRM on it.

I'm now very strongly considering upgrading back to an android phone (Samsung Galaxy A50) and ditching the Apple brand.

What I was wondering is there any easy way that I can play DRM protected songs and audiobooks on an android phone. Is there an app on the play store or will I have to buy some program and manually strip the DRM from the media??

 

[mikedt]

iTunes hasn't sold DRM'd songs since 2010, so I presume you purchased them before that. I believe Apple has an official way of exchanging them for unprotected M4A.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201616

There were apparently third-party programs for stripping iTunes DRM, Tune Taxi or something, but again I have no experience of them myself

There's no way to play Apple DRM content directly on Android itself AFAIK.

 

[steve_1973]

iTunes hasn't sold DRM'd songs since 2010, so I presume you purchased them before that. I believe Apple has an official way of exchanging them for unprotected M4A.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201616

There were apparently third-party programs for stripping iTunes DRM, Tune Taxi or something, but again I have no experience of them myself

There's no way to play Apple DRM content directly on Android itself AFAIK.

Thanks for the reply.

When I saw your reply I checked my iTunes and although I have some content from 2009 onwards, most of the stuff I have is post 2010 so hopefully it will play without any ripping or conversion.

I have about a dozen audiobooks for the kids which I'll probably have to rebuy on the Play Store if I can. They're .m4b file format and cant play on anything not apple.

 

[svim]

You can use Apple's iTune services to remake your DRM-locked content:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201616
or use the old-school bypass Apple's DRM -- use the iTunes application on your computer to burn an audio CD, and then rip that disc to mp3 files (or whatever file format you prefer)

Also, iTunes itself is going bye-bye:
https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/05/apple-itunes-shutting-down-rip/

 

[mikedt]

Thanks for the reply.

When I saw your reply I checked my iTunes and although I have some content from 2009 onwards, most of the stuff I have is post 2010 so hopefully it will play without any ripping or conversion.

I have about a dozen audiobooks for the kids which I'll probably have to rebuy on the Play Store if I can. They're .m4b file format and cant play on anything not apple.

If the iTunes purchased songs have an M4A suffix, those don't have DRM and will play on an Android device no problems. I believe the DRM'd ones are M4P.

I seem to remember reading that the M4B audiobooks don't have DRM, it's just that usually Android doesn't recognise M4B as a media format. Try renaming one as M4A, or try the app VLC and see if that plays M4B.

 

[svim]

Not to be argumentative but It's highly unlikely that just changing the file extension suffix will turn a DRM-locked file into a DRM-free file. I don't have any m4p files to test this myself. If anyone does, please post your results. The m4p file format is restricted by Apple licensing so it's not an open standard.

 

[mikedt]

M4P are definitely DRM locked, it's the M4B Audible audiobooks that are sold from iTunes. I believe they're only AAC like music, but the M4B indicates they're audiobooks and not music. They should be playable with something like VLC.

 

[steve_1973]

M4P are definitely DRM locked, it's the M4B Audible audiobooks that are sold from iTunes. I believe they're only AAC like music, but the M4B indicates they're audiobooks and not music. They should be playable with something like VLC.

that was one of my first thoughts. Unfortunately VLC won't play the file

 

[Davdi]

@svim No, it won't, you need to use a converter app like @Ashrali suggested. Beyond that I don't know as I won't have anything to do with DRM (Digital Restrictions Management).

 

[Hadron]

But as noted, Apple haven't sold DRM-protected music for a decade so it's only old files which will have this issue (and I'll bet you can download an DRM-free version from Apple: I know they allowed that when they first removed the DRM from the iTunes store).

Android plays aac format music just fine, so no need for actual format conversion.