Ubuntu : DRM-.wma files : help?

[Brij]

Right, to all of you clever ubuntu-literate folks...

I give up!

I can't do it!

I just want to listen to my music!

I have a lot (probably about a third of my 40-gig music collection) of .wma files that are DRM "protected". I want to be able to play them on me kompootah!

I don't care whether I need to strip the DRM or whether there is just a player available that will let me play them, and I know that the only fail-safe option is to write them to CD then re-rip to .mp3. I don't really care if I lose a little quality, since where I live I can't play them that loudly anyway.

Any ideas guys?

And if it involves terminal I need clear instructions... I've not got around to learning to use it properly yet.

Maybe a spot of sunbathing will fix it...

[smbm]

Do you still have a windows install?

You can download Audacity:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Which you can often use to record whatever sound is coming out of your computer at the time.

I use it to record stuff off the BBC internet radio deeley.

You can then listen to the songs in windows media player whilst recording them in Audacity and get no quality loss.

It'll be pretty slow cos you'll have to listen to all the songs as you're recording them. But you will have an excuse to sit around and listen to music for a while.

I'll see if I can think of anything more effective though....

[smbm]

You could also try this:

http://www.undrm.info/remove-DRM-protec ... Player.htm

Not too sure about it though. If you do, make sure you have an up to date virus scanner etc installed as you'll be downloading programs from some pretty shady looking places.

The other thing to consider is:

If you've legally downloaded these files and paid for them, you shouldn't feel guilty about illegally re-downloading them to listen to on things other than windows media player.

[Brij]

Thank you, I have tried to use Audacity before and it just gave me gyp, but I'll give it a whirl again. And I've noticed the possible fix via FairUse4WM too, I had a good try at it, but my internet connection is a bit iffy, and it just wouldn't let me do it. It also seems I'll have to downgrade my WMP to get it to all be compatible, but I'll give that a whirl before Audacity, and see what happens.

I guess I could just re-download them wihout DRM, yeah. But I wouldn't really know where to start with all that!

If the worst comes to the worst I'll get my mum's fiance on the case - he's a programmer and if nothing else, is likely to have less-than-angelic copies of most of the music I'm after, anyway. If not, he might be up for copying all of it to CD so I can re-rip it if I let him keep the CD afterwards. Might mean giving up my laptop for a while so he can do it though, and I need Ish to keep me sane.

We shall see. Thanks for the ideas anyway, I'll spend the next rainy day on it (tomorrow is firmly confirmed as a sunny day... nuff said!).