Perfect Software to “ignore” DRMs
I’ve been looking for a cheap way to get my apple music playlists into a mp3-free format for a while, mainly because I still use an ipod nano and my old and I prefer mp3s . I've tried a few sketchy free programs, but most either didn’t work properly or messed up the metadata, or were slow and tried to overcharge. Recently I tested out noteburner, and it’s been the best experience so far. Their site is (noteburner .com) for the mac version specifically. (imgur .com/a/mq1WHYm) I use the windows version, never tested the macos one. What I liked most is that it handles entire playlists at once, not just one song at a time so I can be lazy. I gave it a 465 song playlist and it converted the whole thing into mp3 with the correct artist and album tags and even album art for most of tracks. It saved me time compared to manual recording. The interface is simple, too. Really you just select your playlist, choose the output format (mp3, aac, flac, wav, whatever.), and it'll do it. The quality is decent, too. I compared the output with the original apple music stream and couldn’t hear much difference (although my ears are untrained). It preserves 320kbps mp3 (or higher if you use flac/wav). Another nice touch is that it keeps the same folder/album structure so you’re not left with a giant mess of unnamed files. However, it’s not perfect. The software isn’t free, and while it’s cheaper than rebuying every track, you have to decide if it’s worth the license. At the time of writing that is $15. Also, since it works by capturing audio from Apple Music, there can sometimes be problems if you’re multitasking while it’s converting. Also, there’s the gray area of terms of service, Apple definitely doesn’t approve this kind of tool, so you use it at your own risk. Overall though, noteburner did exactly what I needed. It took my apple music playlist and turned it into drm-free mp3s I can use as I please. If you’re looking for something that just works for batch conversion, that would be my recommendation.