Protected AAC and MP3
AAC audio files could be protected by DRM measures. The protected AAC files use the .m4p file extension. Apple Inc. applies FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) technology to regulate protected songs purchased from iTunes Store with iTunes. FairPlay digitally encrypts AAC audio files and prevents users from playing these files on unauthorized computers. AAC songs can be converted to mp3, wma, wav, ogg, and many more formats. Without DRM protection, the converted file can be played in any media player and portable devices.
iTunes Music Store: Owned by Apple, the iTunes store set the pattern for a la carte music shopping and still reigns king over the customer base. iTunes has sold more than 5 billion songs to date, and it offers excellent integration with the world's best-selling MP3 player, the iPod. It's catalog contains more than 8 million songs as well as a variety of podcasts, TV shows, and movies. The one major bummer is that most of the tracks sold in iTunes can only be played on the iPod or iPhone and not any other MP3 player. You must download the iTunes software in order to access the store, but it works on both Windows and Mac operating systems.
Overall, the AAC format allows developers more flexibility to design codecs than MP3 does, and corrects many of the unfortunate design choices made in the original MPEG 1 audio specification. AAC is a wideband audio coding algorithm that exploits two primary coding strategies to dramatically reduce the amount of data needed to represent high-quality digital audio. 1. Signal components that are perceptually irrelevant are discarded; 2. Redundancies in the coded audio signal are eliminated.
NoteBurner Protected AAC to MP3 Audio Converter
NoteBurner Protected AAC to MP3 Converter can excellently convert iTunes AAC audio (M4A, M4P) to MP3. NoteBurner Protected AAC to MP3 Converter allows the owner of protected AAC audio files to remove the DRM protection from the files and convert the files into audio formats such as MP3, WMA, WAV or AAC( AAC for Mac version of NoteBurner AAC to MP3 Converter only).
NoteBurner Protected AAC to MP3 Converter installs a virtual CD-RW, it helps you burn any unprotected or DRM protected AAC(M4P), DRM-free AAC (M4A), WMA music files onto the virtual CD, rips tracks on the virtual CD, encodes tracks onto MP3, WAV or WMA music files. It can repeat this audio converting procedure until your whole music collection is done. NoteBurner Audio Converter has been used and praised by numerous users around the world as an ideal solution for converting various audio or music files format to MP3,WMA or WAV format.
NoteBurner Protected AAC to MP3 Converter is magic but it doesn't perform any new trick. The revolution is that NoteBurner is automated. Start process with a Virtual CD-RW, it burns any music files on the virtual CD, rips tracks on the virtual CD, encodes tracks onto any unprotected music files such as MP3, WAV, WMA.
eMusic: This indie representer is quite a ways behind iTunes in catalog numbers and sales, but it controls the second largest market share (10 to 15 percent, according to label feedback). eMusic has sold more than 200 million tracks in the past four years and is currently averaging five to six million song downloads per month from its catalog of over 3.5 million tracks. The company made a name for itself with an all-you-can-download service but now offers limited subscriptions, starting at $11.99 per month for 30 unrestricted MP3s. Thanks to this "track pack" pricing and the fact that the company doesn't currently sell big label songs, eMusic offers an incredible value: it is the cheapest of the bunch by far (27 cents per track with the Premium plan). It also has a large number of music reviews by editors and users alike.
