Unlock iTunes Purchased Music

Pay for Music, Play Anywhere!

I had purchased a ton of music on my iTunes account, paid my fair share, and been really happy with iTunes overall!  My iPod had me rockin away, and everything was great!  If course, I wanted to listen to music on my laptop when I was traveling, and it wasn't as easy as I had hoped.  In order to listen to my music that had been downloaded and paid for from iTunes on my Laptop, I had to install iTunes on my laptop, and authorize the computer to allow me to listen to the files.  I have numerous computers I use (Media Center PC, Home Desktop, Erin's Desktop, My Laptop, etc).  I found this quite annoying to setup.  Also, since you are only allowed to authorize up to 5 machines on iTunes, once your limit is reached, you must "de-authorize another system in order to authorize a new machine". 

Why Unlock iTunes Purchased Music?

Here is a warning for you if you plan on not unlocking your iTunes music, make sure you "de-authorize" machines that you are planning on formatting.  If you do not do this, when you re-install your OS, you will have lost one of your 5 authorizations.  I had a situation last weekend that made me "have it" with iTunes DRM.  My network card was acting up and I had to format.  Trouble was, I couldn't get online in order to de-authorize my machine.  I lost 1 of my 5 accounts.  I have had similar situations in the past, and Apple gets back to me in about.. mmm 6 months.

I like paying for music.  I never liked buying CD's as the media seemed so limited to me.  Ripping the CD, then using AudioGrabber to get the song names, was great, but took too much effort.  Plus, most of the time, a 12 dollar CD would only have 1 or two good tunes to listen to.  If a fantastic CD comes out that I absolutely love, I will go out and buy it, like I did with Three Days Grace - One X, a great CD! 

iTunes lets you pick the music you want, and buy it at an extremely fair price!  However, locking that music to only play on your iPod or through iTunes, is a real problem.  You should be able to play this on any device.  Heck I want to be able to  say "set this as my ringtone" one day, but I know we aren't that agnostic yet, but close.

The easiest way to Unlock iTunes Music

So, after haggling with DRM and iTunes, I have finally given up and went on a quest to "remove" DRM protection from all my protected iTunes music.  After all, I have no intention of sharing any of this music with anyone besides myself, but I should be able to listen to it wherever, and whenever I want, without my iPod or iTunes.  Here are the simple steps to do this!

1. Load iTunes and make sure you are logged in and authorized on your iTunes account.
2. Download QTFairUse 6.
3. If you are running iTunes 7.2+, edit your QTFairUse configuration file by opening and at the end of the file, add the following text:
   [Version8]
   Desc=7.2.0
   DebugCheck=0x4DE385
   FrameCopy=0x826130
   EndOfTrack=0x50E1D0
   SndOut=0x5131D7,EB
   LoopStart=0x651531
   LoopCopy=0x6515E5
   LoopEnd=0x651864
   LoopPatch=0x651860,52
   
4. Run QTFairUse
5. QTFairUse will proceed to unlock your music!

At this point, all your music will be converted to an unlocked format!  You can now enjoy your music on any music player, on any computer, and basically any device!

Disclaimer:  I do not condone, nor do I steal music!  You should pay the artists for what you listen to!  Support them and they will make more music that you like!  Download by stealing and you are only hurting yourself!  However, I think once you have paid the fee, you should be able to listen to the music everywhere, as the artist would want you to!

Enjoy!

Comments

[Champ]

Thank you so much man, you saved my music!

[starak]

BigFun! Perfect article! :)

[TheAmazingJamez]

Thank you, its about time now i can finally listen to my good music on my xbox 360. It's kinda funny that itunes locks these because if you cant get to the CD store it almost encourages stealing music.

[Mauricio]

Thank's I have bought some Itunes music and I just want to listen on my cell phone (memory card). It worked. Thanks
Zerzio

[marco mc]

what about mac users??
come on!

[gtyggff]

erm 1 question, how do i get the songs played back onto the itunes player? because i want to play the tunes but just now cant seem to work itunes.... please email me

mr_chow_mein@hotmail.co.uk
PLEASE EMAIL!! I CANNOT BUY ANYTHING!! DO YOU SUGGEST I RE-INSTALL ITUNES?

[amit Dorenbaum]

this program works on mac

[ben munroe]

i tried this program but all it did was make doubles of everything PLEASE HELP!!!! email me

[Doc]

Ran QTFairUse without mod on iTunes 7.5 and had success first run. Selected only (protected) files and placed backup into a \\music\backup directory.

Thanks for the tip!

[monique]

Does this work with videos too?

[Andy]

Thank you, was just what i was looking for.

Top Fella

[Jon]

If this program works on a mac is there a download other the main one in the text as my computer does not recognise any of the files in that downloaded QTFairUse6-2 folder...?

[Kaiguys]

Does this unlock feature continue to work with music you buy in the future? Or do you have to run in each time you purchase music from itunes?

[lovetohate]

if you are a mac user, i found out how to do it. if you go to finder, and search the file you want to convert, you right- click and select "show info" then, simply change the file format from m4p to m4a. if you did`t figure out yourself, youll do this by deleting "m4p" from the file- ending and replace it with "m4a" (don`t remove the".") ps: i am norwegian, so don`t blame me for my poor english pss: i have just done this with leopard, but it should work with other versions and hopefully newer versions;)

[Galaxis]

Well, another way to unlock music. Burn a regular track CD the songs you just purchased from iTunes.

Then convert them back to MP3, WAV or AAC. Easy ^^

[cam]

hey i want to put my music on my razor phone but its locked i dont understand plz help me.