How to remove DRM from Rhapsody music for iPod iPhone

Music purchased from Rhapsody is under DRM protection, which stops customers from playing the downloaded music with other incompatible devices like Apple iPod and Microsoft Zune. If you don't continue to pay, you won't keep the music when the subscription expires. As we all know, iPod is one of the most popular and successful MP3 players. iPod owners can purchase various music songs from iTunes Store and listen to them with their iPods. However, if you prefer Rhapsody and find some songs in Rhapsody that are unavailable in iTunes store, yet you do want to enjoy these songs with your new iPod, you are meeting the headache of Rhapsody being incompatible with iPod. So the following tutorial should be the solution.

The tools you will need:

TuneClone Audio Converter
Rhapsody Software
iPod
iTunes Library

1. Make settings in TuneClone Audio Converter

Download TuneClone (fully compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista) from http://www.tuneclone.com and install it. After launching TuneClone, click the "Settings" button. In the pop-up dialog of "Options", you can specify the "Output Folder", "Output Filenames", "Output Format" (here we choose MP3), etc. for the output files.

Tip: You can get the output protection removed MP3 music folder by clicking the "Folder" button after the whole process.



2. Create a new playlist in Rhapsody

In the center left panel of Rhapsody, navigate to "Playlist". Then in the bottom left corner, click "New" to create a new playlist.

Click "File" and select "New Playlist" to create a new playlist in Rhapsody.

Drag and drop the music you are ready to burn to the new playlist from Rhapsody Library.



3. Make CD burning settings in Rhapsody

Click "Tools" and select "Preference..." from the drop-down list. Click "CD Burning" from the list in the left panel. In the "CD Burner Options", choose TuneClone virtual CD drive as preferred CD burner.



4. Start to burn

Click the "Burn CD" button to start the burning and encoding process.

After the burning gets started, TuneClone will automatically convert the music file to MP3. You can open the manager screen to show all the converted music files.



The most important step is to choose the CD burner. Then the software can convert the music files automatically. It is exceedingly easy when you want to batch convert lots of files.

After you get the output MP3 files converted from the Rhapsody music playlist in your Rhapsody, you can now begin to transfer the MP3 files to your iPod with the sync of iTunes.

How to add music to iPhone

The following article focuses on different channels of listening to music on iPod and iPhone. To enjoy music on iPod and iPhone, you first need to get the music in iPod/iPhone format onto iTunes library and then sync the music to your iPod/iPhone.

Channel 1. Buy music from iTunes Store for iPod/iPhone

To find and buy music from the iTunes Store, just click on the "iTunes Store" link under "Store" in the left column of iTunes. Once in, you're greeted with the iTunes Store interface, with links on the left-hand side that take you to Music, Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos, Audiobooks, and Podcasts. After you've chosen a song or album to buy, just click on the "Buy Song" or "Buy Album" button for that selection.



Channel 2. Import your CDs into iTunes for iPod/iPhone

If you own a few CDs, you can import them into iTunes for your iPod/iPhone. Since you've already spent money on this music, there's no reason why you should have to buy it all over again just to get the songs into iTunes. Apple made it simple to rip a CD to your library.



By default, iTunes rips songs to AAC format, and although AAC is a very high-quality format, it isn't as widely-supported as the ubiquitous MP3 format, which enjoys support from virtually every digital music player known to man, including iPod and iPhone. To ensure greater portability of your music (and prevent you from feeling locked into one product just because you've ripped all your music in one format), I suggest ripping your CDs as MP3s. To do so, go to Edit -> Preferences. In the General tab, click the Import Settings... button. In the pop up dialog window of Import Settings, select MP3 Encoder from the Import Using dropdown menu and Higher Quality (192 kbps) from the Setting dropdown.

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There are many other subscription music services you may already be subscribed to, like Rhapsody, Napster, and Zune Marketplace, which let you buy or rent tracks. But the songs that come from these stores use a Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme that is incompatible with iTunes and the iPod/iPhone. In other words, these songs are protected from being played in software and hardware music players that don't support their particular standard (just like non-iPod music players can't play most music from the iTunes Music Store). There is software tool called TuneClone Audio Converter that claims to be able to remove DRM from Rhapsody, Napster and Zune Marketplace and convert the DRM protected music to MP3, WAV and unprotected WMA with a virtual CD drive. So if you want to transfer your Rhapsody/Napster/Zune music to iTunes for your iPod/iPhone, you mnay download this piece of software to help you get the music DRM removed and converted to MP3 for a try.



However, the online digital music store eMusic sells DRM-free MP3s, and there are many websites where you can download free and legal MP3s that don't contain DRM and can be imported into the iPhone easily.

Channel 3. Import MP3s into iTunes for iPod/iPhone

Once you've downloaded MP3s onto your computer, it's easy to import them into iTunes. First make a new playlist by going to the "File" menu and clicking "New Playlist" and naming it anything you like. Select that playlist in iTunes, then drag your MP3s from your hard drive into the right-hand pane. iTunes will start importing your music and populating the playlist with songs. After it's done, you're free to play back the songs or sync them to your iPod/iPhone just like all the rest of your library.

Channel 4. Import WMAs into iTunes for iPod/iPhone

Importing unprotected WMA files is just like importing MP3 files, but requires one additional step. With WMA files, iTunes will actually transcode the songs and change the format from WMA to whatever default audio encoder you've set in the iTunes Preferences. It's not necessary to know the difference between WMAs, MP3s, and AACs, but you should know that when you import WMAs, your original files are untouched and a new file is created.

Note: For importing DRM protected WMA files into iTunes, you will need to remove the DRM first. I've found TuneClone Audio Converter can also be used to convert DRM protected WMA to MP3. There's a tutorial on its website that details how to convert protected WMA to MP3 for iPod. I've followed it step by step to have a try. It worked great as a whole except that it didn't preserve the music metadata very well though the tutorial offered a reluctant solution.