m4a to mp3 conversion.

[Iceglow]

A friend of mine sent me an album across msn last night he got it from I-tunes and it's file extension is .m4a I need to convert these files in to .mp3 or .wma for the use I need is there anyway to do this?

[Shoeberto]

If he downloaded it from iTunes, then it has DRM in it that should prevent you from listening to it.

If he ripped it from his own CD then it might not have DRM in it.

If it's the first case, then it's technically illegal to break that DRM. If it's the second, there might be m4a converters out on the web, though I don't know of any.

[XxSephirothxX]

If it doesn't have the DRM, (meaning he didn't download it from the iTunes store) you should be able to play it fine with Winamp or some other media player.

If you want to convert it to MP3, try Soundtaxi.

[Flying Mullet]

The only legit way I know to convert m4a to mp3 is to burn an audio disk of your songs in iTunes and then re-rip using another application to mp3. You need to be careful though, because iTunes will only let you burn your songs to and audio CD so many times (five I think).

EDIT: Or try Azar's program.

[Iceglow]

ok well I tried the sound taxi program Azar mentioned however it is incompatable with Vista....damn microsoft.

[rubah]

m4a don't have DRM on them; those are m4p. You can convert m4a to mp3 in itunes.

Well, I can anyways. When I bought songs on itunes the difficult part was converting them from the protected m4p format to m4a.