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M4P to MP3 Conversion? iTunes Won't Let Me Play My Own Music!

mac57mac57

mac57mac57

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 2, 2024
346
197
Myrtle Beach, SC
Thanks to the cutoff of iTunes 10.6.3 from the iTunes Store, iTunes will no longer allow me to play a number of my legally purchased songs, which are in M4P format, since my PowerMac G5 DP running Sorbet Leopard cannot be authorized to play them! It cannot be authorized because it can no longer access the iTunes Store to get authorized! This is a double whammy - not only am I cut off from the iTunes Store, I cannot play my own music. This REALLY irritates me!

Does anyone know a simple and reliable way to convert M4P to MP3 (or any other generic format)? I did some Google'ing and even tried one or two programs, but it looks pretty bleak out there. It is a "pit"... all the programs I found want to collect your Apple userid and password; scams all of them, I suspect.

I know that I can make a playlist out of the M4P songs and use Apple Music to burn them to an audio CD, from which I can then rip them back without DRM, but that is quite an undertaking. I am wondering if anyone knows of a tried and true program that will convert M4P to MP3 (or other generic format) as an alternate? I have tried Audacity, Cog, Sox and several others, but none of them will open M4P. Sheesh!

I would love to hear any and all options that you may know! Thanks!
 
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I’m guessing you don’t have a more modern Mac? Those music files are of an age where they would all be protected with DRM. I’d suggest re downloading on a newer Mac with Apple Music
 
I do have two modern Mac's, and both can play the music, but I want to be able to do so from my PowerMac G5 as well. And... neither of them can burn CDs. Hence the question...

For now, I have dusted off my 2008 Mac Pro, which runs up to 10.13, and am doing the CD approach. It is hard to get a modern Mac AND one that can burn CDs too. My Mac Pro is the only one that fits the need!
 
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Modern Macs can burn CDs with most $20-$30 USB external optical media drives found on Amazon.
 
There's an (old) program called Requiem that can losslessly convert those files, BUT it requires - according to my notes - iTunes 10.7. It also requires iTunes to be authorised to play the files. Do any of your working computers have 10.7 on them? Does 10.7 still talk to the iTunes Store?
 
I tried iTunes 11 on Snow Leopard - IT doesn't talk to the iTunes Store anymore, so 10.7 most likely won't either. Thanks though ... I will look up Requiem and see what I can find.
 
Hey guys,
Can anyone please tell me how can I convert my M4P files to MP3 without using unreliable programs that ask for my Apple ID and password? I want a simple solution that doesn’t involve burning CDs.
Mike Taku.
 
Good luck @MikeTaku. I have given up and gone the CD route. The CDs are burned; later today/tomorrow, I will rip them back... voila! DRM gone. It's a painful process, but I only have 26 M4P files in my collection, so I will endure it.
 
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VLC will actually transcode M4P into another format/container including mp3. all2mp3 or Max might do this to (do not have a M4P at hand currently to check) - in any case you can use Max if you want a target audio format not supported by VLC (using VLC to just get rid of the protection).
 
Excellent! I will give VLC a whirl, see how it goes and report back. In the meantime, I now have the DRM free versions of all the songs of interest via the CD route, so there may be TWO usable solutions, although VLC would be infinitely simpler.
 
I copied all of my music from my current M1 MacBook Pro to a thumb drive and dragged them all in my Music folder on my iMac G4. Then add them all in iTunes with Sorbet Leopard and they all play without asking for my password.
 
@iBookmaster, this sounds interesting... I successfully went the CD route, but it was a pain, to put it mildly. Do you have Sorbet running on that iMac G4? Was it iTunes 10.6 that would play them?
 
Is it possible that this machine was previously authorized on iTunes, and that authorization still holds? Alternately, how did you "add them all in iTunes"? Did you do a Library import? Did you copy them all to the iTunes Music folder? The "auto add" folder? Something else?
 
Yes, it may have been already authorized but, I have had three or four accounts since the beginning of iTunes and the music I already had on the G4 iMac had some songs that were authorized and many that were not and I couldn't remember which account and password would authorize them. So, I deleted all the songs because I had a backup of them with SuperDuper and could bring them back if I wanted. Instead, I deleted them all from iTunes and went to the Music folder and deleted them there too. Emptied the trash and copied them from the thumb drive to the G4 iMac Music folder. Then opened iTunes with no music in it and dragged all the songs from the Music folder in to iTunes window. I think I have about 1300 songs and they all play without authorization.
 
Excellent, thanks, I will try this. I have a G4 Cube running vanilla Leopard. It was also previously authorized. I don't think Sorbet is a key enabler here, unless you think otherwise. I'll see if this works! Thanks!
 
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@iBookmaster, thanks, yes all is well at this point. As I mentioned, I went the physical CD route. You lose the DRM in the process, and also ALL the album metadata - album name, artist, track names etc. All have to be painfully reentered by hand. It was slow and painful, but it worked for me; I only had 24 tunes to process and even that was a pain!

I haven't tried your thumb drive solution (yet). It was a case of "letting sleeping dogs lay"... I already had the music back in a playable state, and after a lot of tedious work, so I'm the long run, I decided to leave good enough alone.
 
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