How to Free Purchased iTunes Music Store Songs from DRM

So you just bought a brand new MP3 player and you now want to transfer the songs you've purchased from the iTunes Music Store onto your new player.  Well if you're new MP3 player is not an iPod, you may find yourself having trouble doing so. Apple's iTunes Music Store puts Digital Rights Management (DRM) onto the songs you purchase using its own FairPlay DRM technology. Every file purchased through iTunes is encoded with FairPlay, which turns each file into a digitally encrypted AAC audio file that prevents the purchased audio or video file from being played on unauthorized computers or devices.

To get around the iTunes FairPlay DRM technology and turn your purchased iTunes protected AAC files into DRM-free audio files, all you need is a CD burner, a blank CD-RW disc and Windows Media Player.  (Note: I'm running Windows Media Player 11 and iTunes version 6.0.5)

1. Start by opening iTunes and going to your Purchased music, which is within the Music Store tab.
2. Click "Burn Disc", located in the top right corner.  It will then ask you to "Please insert a blank disc" (Note: You can also create a new Playlist and Burn Playlist to Disc. You may have to do this if your Purchased songs take up more than 700MB).
3. Insert a blank CD re-writeable disc, and iTunes will begin writing the songs to disc.  After the disc has burned the tracks successfully, close down iTunes.
4. Open Windows Media Player.
5. Select the "Rip" tab. (Note: The default file format is Windows Media Audio, to change this click on the "Rip" tab again and choose "Format" or you can use the menu to select Tools > Options > Rip Music tab.  Choose the file format MP3 or WAV for the most flexibility; choose Windows Media Audio Lossless for the best audio quality, choose Windows Media Audio Pro when using a low storage capacity portable device, like a mobile phone)
6. Now click on the "Start Rip" button and the songs that have a check mark next to them will begin being ripped to a folder located in the "My Music" folder within your "My Documents" folder.
7. Thats it.

Now that you've finished ripping your songs to your computer, you should be able to use the newly ripped consumer friendly formatted files in other computers, portable MP3 players or mobile devices. Some devices will not be able to play Windows Media Audio so you will want to be sure you've ripped the songs in the correct format for your device.