Old DRM songs no longer have DRM after matched/re-downloaded. Nice.

[philbyers]

It appears that on songs/albums that were purchased in the days of Fairplay DRM, the newly matched files when re-downloaded come through without DRM:


SITUATION:

I purchased Beck's Modern Guilt (not a great album) a while back and it had Fairplay DRM. If I Match, delete original file, and then re-download the new track, it appears that the DRM is gone:

I tested this using Winamp, and sure-enough, the track played without issue. No more DRM!


SITUATION 2:

I'm just sharing this because I found it interesting...

Beck's Mutations was ripped into iTunes from the CD that I own. iTunes Match is done running on my library. I have deleted the original file, and because it is in a "Matched" status, it still shows in my library as being available with the Cloud/download icon. But when I "Get Info" on one of the tracks (before I re-download), it shows an MPEG audio file at 256 kbps:

Then, after I re-download the track, it shows as an AAC file:

Not sure if I'd call that a bug, but it looks like iTunes is still referencing the old file until you re-download it.

 

[paulbee]

Yes -- the reason I was so confident it was worth it to sink the money into Match was to get around the need to pay for iTunes Plus. I'm super happy about how well this works. I expected I would have to match my old DRMed version to the new 256kbps version. But instead, all songs with purchased status automatically download DRM-free, regardless of their status when bought. Can't ask for anything better than that.

I have had some minor issues with a couple of albums bought under FairPlay not showing up as purchased in their entirety. I have a couple of albums where most of the songs were marked as purchased but random songs throughout the album don't show up that way. I was still able to match those songs (I'd already converted most of my FairPlay files to MP3, so those were what's kicking around in my library), but it seems weird that some songs don't show as purchased, since iTunes does have the whole album at 256kbps now. I figure after the initial iTunes Match rush has died down I might email support, but I have the feeling they're swamped right now; I got a pretty unhelpful response to a very specific question about a different issue.

Edit: I misunderstood what you were saying about Situation 2. That is weird.

 

[Nermal]

If you plan to do this with any other albums then keep an eye on it because it went the other way for one of mine!