I used iTunes to copy songs off the VBS CD, which encoded them in AAC format (M4A container). My video editor doesn’t accept that format, so I needed to convert them to mp3. After trying lots of programs that Google offered me, many of which claimed to be “free” but were really just “free trials”, I finally found the solution in a forum post. It turns out that you can do the conversion right in iTunes, totally free and totally cool.
1. Go into iTunes Preferences, and change the importing mode back to the MP3 mode you like
2. Now select the tracks that you want to change back, and go to the Advanced menu. There is an item called “convert selection to MP3“.
This menu item lists whatever the current setting is in the importing prefs.
Now, this might not be good for the audio quality, but I don’t really care: I don’t listen to music that carefully. Thanks, Hannah W!
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For protected aac files, you can burn to CD and then rip to MP3 with freeware.
thanks man. this helped a lot.
its so frustrating with all the “free” applications out there, that half the time don’t even seem to help much.
this though, was just the thing i was looking for. thanks.
thank you, this was quite helpful just now. saved me many downloads!
Sarah: Yes, I tried it and used it successfully. While protected files can’t be converted, my files were not protected. Therefore this did work, and the conversion worked perfectly fine. In fact, I used the resulting MP3s in a video I created.
Obviously, music purchased from iTMS (the iTunes Music Store) are protected, and thus can’t be converted the same way unprotected music can.
but have you tried it? When you do it tells you that protected files can’t be converted.