Posted by Technobarbarian on 01/22/08 23:37

<rkiewel@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:87e95aca-fd8e-4fcd-9215-9913a037a1af@n20g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
>I know this may be basic, but I am a newbie at this can you convert
> bear share music files to mp3?

Yes, but the question is quickly becoming "why in the world would you
want to do this?". What you're buying from Bear Share is WMA files with DRM.
Windows Media Audio files with Digital Rights Management. DRM is basically
copy protection. On the subscription service you can't burn their files to a
CD. If you "buy" the file you can, but there will be other limits on what
you can do with it. Typically there will be limits on how many times the
file can burned to a CD and how many machines it can be used with. DRM is
going the way of the Dodo. In many cases if you're going to pay a buck a
tune you can buy it from other vendors already in the MP3 format. MP3 files
don't have DRM. The amount of music available for a buck or less, in the MP3
format, is increasing every day. Some of the "experts" are predicting that
DRM for music files will be pretty much gone by the end of the year.

The standard work around for files with DRM is to burn them to a CD and
then "rip" the CD to MP3 files. Since the Bear Share files from their
subscription service can't be burned to a CD you need another method for
those files. There are a number of programs that essentially capture the
music on its way to your speakers and convert it to MP3 or other formats. My
current favorite is SoundTaxi. TuneByte is another example.

TB



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