It would seem that Uncle Steve has made some changes which cause JHymn not to work with iTunes 6. Use caution if you have upgraded.

First in a series of reposts from the old site. I’m still seeing a lot of people searching for few of the old posts, so these are for you.

JHymn is a handy tool that will strip the Digital Rights Management (DRM) from your iTunes music files.

“The goal of JHymn is to create unlocked files which are indistinguishable from files that you might rip from your own CDs?allowing you to exercise your fair-use rights under copyright law”

The author states out right that this is not a tool to aid in distributing your music to the internet masses.

I stumbled across JHymn after Ghosting my computer before I had de-authorized the music I purchased from the iTunes Music Store. When I tried to play my music on the freshly imaged machine, iTunes prompted me to enter my password as my ?new? machine was not authorized to play these protected files. ?Great, there goes one of my five computers??

While Apple does provide an option to re-authorize the protected content, I wanted to give JHymn a try first. I was thrilled with the results and I think you will be too.

When you purchase music from the ITMS, it comes in the M4P format which is of course, protected. JHymn will back up your original M4P files and convert a copy of them directly to MP3 format at the quality you specify. Now you are free to listen to your music where you want and on any device of your choosing.

There are a detailed set of instructions that you need to review carefully before attempting any conversion of your music library. The actual conversion of your files is a simple procedure that requires very little in the way of configuration.

Tell JHymn where your iTunes Music Library is, choose the new format for the files and decide if you want the original files to be backed up. I would recommend keeping the original files should Apple find a way to make your newly converted files un-playable in future versions of iTunes. In a nutshell, that?s all there is to it.

I didn?t bother to strip the Apple ID or the copyright information contained within the files as this is the default JHymn setting. What this means is that while you have removed the DRM ?protection? from the file, it is still identifiable. Your Apple ID is a part of the meta data as is any copyright information associated with the file. JHymn provides the option to strip these ?unwanted atoms? from the file but as I have no intention of distributing my music, I decided against it.

The files I converted are now in MP3 format, they sound as good as the original M4P files and are free of Apple?s DRM. I?m happy to purchase my music. The artist is compensated, the file is free of viruses and the ID3 tags are consistent and complete. But I really hate DRM. I?m not a criminal but that?s how I feel when I purchase protected music.