How can I (totally innocently) edit music bought from iTunes?

General Questions
#1

I hope this doesn’t get locked - I just want to find a way to cut together music I’ve legally bought and paid for so that I can run for the right amount of time to it.

I need to be able to edit together something so I don’t have to look at my watch to tell when I run and walk (3 minute running, 90 seconds walking, whatever.) I can’t import my iTunes files directly into Audacity, though. I know I can record them into the program, but that’s kind of tedious and I keep accidentally stopping it. Is there a nice easy free legal converter I can use? This is all just for my own personal use.

#2

Hopefully thisworks for you.

#3

iTunes files aren’t mp3s; they’re m4p or aac.

#4

Basically, you want to remove the protections. Most utilities will not do this (for legal reasons). However, if you burn a CD, and then rip the CDs as MP3s, the protection is lost.

Wal-Mart actually recently recommended this to its customers, despite the dubious legality of encouraging this, when attempting to discontinue its DRM service (they later recanted, and are keeping the service for now). Cite.

#5

That probably would at least be easier than recording into Audacity - it would require less babysitting, at any rate.

#6

You can set the start and finish times of each track in iTunes… so say a song is 4:21 long but you want it to stop at three minutes dead, just right click on it, go to Get Info then Options then enter 3:00 in “Stop Time”.

It’s a bit of a roundabout way of doing it, but I’m sure you could edit together a playlist of the type you want in this way.

#7

Doesn’t the DMCA prohibit the circumvention of any digital protection measure?

#8

That’s my understanding. So, let’s close this.

samclem GQ moderator