jhouse59 wrote:
Yes. Its songs I've bought at Apple's Music Store. I just want to be able to listen to them in Linux. Do you know how to convert them? If I understand the book "Ubuntu Linux by William von Hagen" right it can be done. But, I've installed all the GStreamer listed. Sound Converter will convert them but, I still get the error message, Nothing I've tried so far will open them.
Regrettably it is not possible - that is the point of Digital Rights Management, which is the (in my opinion) warped technology causing all the problems you are experiencing.
Apple (it was their decision - nobody else is at fault)
deliberately ties the M4P files to operating systems which can run iTunes, namely Windows and Mac OS X, and to the iPod itself. You will not be able to play M4P files on a Zune, for example, although it advertises itself as being able to play "AAC files", where AAC is the audio encoding algorithm used by M4P files.
In the old days (iTunes 5 and before) there were packages available which could remove the protection and turn M4P into M4A (unprotected) files, which Amarok now handles splendidly.
I saw this problem coming and did that conversion for about 20 albums I bought; thereafter I didn't touch the Apple Store and, when I still used Windows, stopped using iTunes to handle the iPod (foobar2000 did the trick instead).
Unfortunately Apple got wise to that trick and, in iTunes 6 and 7, locked down the protection so strongly it has, so far, proved unbreakable ...
Bottom line: you will
have to use a Windows machine with iTunes to move the M4P files to and from your iPod.
An unsatisfactory workaround would be to burn the M4P files to an audio CD (I believe iTunes supports that) then rip that using soundjuicer etc. I have never done that, but it should be possible (if longwinded).