M4p

[tcoakley]

I am an android phone guy, but have purchased a lot of my music through iTunes. I have been using the winamp plugin on the phone and decided to download the current pro version and import my itunes music and playlists. Went fantastic. Then I tried to play music. All my ripped cd's play, but my M4P files will not play or transfer to my phone.

I thought I would find a plugin solution, but a search for m4p yielded no plugin results. This surely must have a solution? HELP ME! ;-)

Thanks for any direction.

[CJ_Man]

These files are encoded with Apple's DRM. There are a few programs around that offer to reconvert them but the simplest way is to burn them to CD which strips off the DRM and then re-rip them with Winamp to whatever format you want.

DRM is evil.

[ujay]

Take a closer look at the extension.

M4P - protected.
MP4 - unprotected

UJ

[MrSinatra]

likely drm as said. i have also heard some of these weird formats actually have one extension that could be lots of different codecs. i'm not sure if this is one of those or not tho.

[tcoakley]

Of course it is a protected extension. I needed to know how to play it in winamp. I have 2 other players which can play them and it seems unlikely that so much effort would be put into importing itunes music and playlists without also having the ability to play them. It is like building an image website that you can upload to, but not view the images.

[Deffervescence]

TCOakley;

I think what the other folks who've replied meant to impress upon you is that generally Winamp either cannot or has a lot of trouble playing Apple DRMed files, like the ones you've mentioned. I don't really know the legal or technical details as to why this decision was made in terms of Winamp, but I do know that Apple is insanely protective of its proprietary formats. The odds are Apple requests some insane license fee for any media player (either on a PC or native portable hardware) that could legally be allowed to play one of those particular Apple/iTunes formats, or altogether denied playback of certain formats outside iTunes _period_. I don't know enough about the detailed legalese, so I'm not going to assume I do.

Again, CJ_Man's suggestion is the best one I can emphasize: if you can burn your M4Ps to a CD-R and rip them as MP3s, for example (or some other lossy, assuming that's your aim), that should strip the DRM. Be advised that if you bought the originals legally, you might be treading into a legal grey area, though I suspect that'd be clear anyway.

Sorry if I sound overly firm in tone, but I feel you need to understand the legal end of why Apple has this habit with many of the proprietary formats being played on non-native players. Winamp would be in tremendous legal doo-doo if they allowed the player to play back protected or proprietary formats (Apple amongst them) without permission from the owners/inventors of the format.

Hope this provides some help and insight, in any case!

-Deff.

[MrSinatra]

I have 2 other players which can play them

and they are?

[Deffervescence]

MrSinatra;

I believe he meant hardware (as in playing devices) but I could be misunderstanding the purpose of your question. I have the same doubts regarding there being any great number of media progs that can play back DRMed Apple formats. Either way, I'd be very curious to know which ones he's got as well for the same reason.

-Deff.