if you try to convert a track and iTunes tells you that "Protected files cannot be converted to other formats", then the song is DRM-protected and CANNOT be converted to MP3 format. The "Kind" column will say "Purchased AAC audio file" (iTunes format) or "MPEG audio file" (MP3 format).
Right-click in the column header area, and you can turn columns on and off. If you click on File / Display Duplicates, then turn on the column labelled "Kind" you'll be able to quickly see which songs exist in both formats. They'll look identical in the iTunes library, but you can right-click and select "Get Info" to tell them apart. The only downside is that now you have TWO copies of that song - one in the AAC format, and one in MP3 format. if your music was recently purchased, iTunes will happily convert the file to MP3. Now when you right-click on a music track, there is an option to Create MP3 Version or Convert Selection to MP3. Your goal is to change the Import Using from the default setting to "MP3 Encoder". In older versions of iTunes, click on Edit / Preferences / Importing (or Edit / Preferences / Advanced / Importing). In iTunes 8 or later versions, go to Edit / Preferences / General and click the Import Settings button. You'll need to change your import settings to get iTunes to import the track as MP3. Probably it says "Create AAC Version" or "Convert Selection to AAC", which is useless because your iTunes tracks are already in AAC format! If you right-click on a music track in iTunes, there is an option to Convert Selection or Create Version in some other format. Hence, the need to convert iTunes music to the MP3 format. Understandably, this makes owners of non-iPod music players (as well as Linux users) a little upset.
You CAN copy them to your portable music player, as long as you bought that player from Apple and it says iPod on it. iTunes music tracks are proprietary and cannot be played on a computer which does not have the iTunes software.
But Apple's iTunes software doesn't give you MP3 files when you buy a song. You can burn MP3s to a CD and they'll play just fine on almost any modern CD player. An MP3 music track can be played on almost ANY player, whether it's portable or computer-based. But DRM often restricts the consumer from doing perfectly valid and reasonable things with music they own, like making a backup copy, burning a CD, or converting to another audio format. DRM (Digital Rights Management) was created by the entertainment industry so they could control the duplication and dissemination of their content.
Prior to April 2009, the iTunes tracks that you purchased were in a "DRM protected" AAC audio format. MP3 has been an open standard for many years, but it's not always simple to convert iTunes music tracks to MP3 format. you paid for those songs and now you can't play them outside of the iTunes environment, on hardware not supported by Apple, or on operating systems not supported by iTunes. And the program performs the conversion at 10X faster speed with lossless quality.It does seem unfair. What's more, it also offers retention of ID3 Tags information to the output format after conversion.
Sidify iTunes M4P to MP3 Converter is a professional iTunes Audio Converter to convert M4P music files, Apple Music and M4A/M4B/AA/AAX audiobooks to MP3, AAC, FLAC, WAV, AIFF or ALAC formats for playing offline on your iPod, iPhone, Zune, PSP, MP3 player, etc.
If you still have these crippled M4P tracks sitting in your library and want to get them free from copy protection, then fret no more, as Sidify iTunes M4P to MP3 Converter for Windows ( and Mac) is here to help you. Although since 2009, Apple no longer publish this kind of music and all music now for sale is free of any playback restriction, that didn’t help much with songs purchased before that decision. Have you ever purchased music from iTunes between 2003-2009 and tried to save them to a non-Apple MP3 player, but have had no success? Because any purchased music from iTunes during that time are encoded with copy protection, which is designed to prevent unauthorized copying of purchased M4P music. Official iTunes Limitations & Third-Party Software Solution