Digital Rights Management and Windows Media Audio Files

[Studiohead]

I have a 100 plus old Windows Media Audio files which are ‘protected’ by Digital Rights Management and therefore can’t be played by VLC or any other media players. (I’m a songwriter and some of these ‘protected’ files are actually my own songs!)

The WMA files can’t be converted to mp3 or any other type of file because apps such as Sound Converter and Audacity don’t recognise them.

There are a number of DRM removal apps available for Windows (they’re advertised as Freeware but it seems there are hidden costs).

I can’t find any DRM removal tools for Linux.

Has anyone got any suggestions?

[xenopeek]

A common way looks to be to re-encode the audio. It won't be a lossless conversion. Play the WMA file with a player that can also record the audio for you to a WAV file. Looks like mplayer or ffmpeg fit the bill: https://stackoverflow.com/a/38334571. Then use an audio conversion tool to encode the WAV file to MP3.

You can apt install mplayer or apt install ffmpeg to install these tools. Have a look at the mplayer documentation and downloads: https://mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html. There are extra binary codec packages you can download for mplayer that perhaps are needed to be able to play your WMA files, if the standard mplayer installation can still not play them.

You may ask for help with re-encoding files you own all the rights to. Please do not use the forums to ask for help with removing DRM from files that you don't hold the rights to.

[Jain]

I have many old .wma song files that were MISTAKENLY 'protected' years back when I didn't understand the settings for ripping (still don't like that word) a CD. I would like to free these up so I can play them with VLC - for my own enjoyment. The little I know about audio files, it seems that .wma is superior to .MP3 (or even MP4??) so will a 'converter tool' allow one to select .wma to be the output choice instead of MP3?

Thanks for all feedback.

[rene]

It's possible that you can use Microsoft's own tool to free up your WMAs. See viewtopic.php?p=2283127#p2283127

[Jain]

It's possible that you can use Microsoft's own tool to free up your WMAs. See viewtopic.php?p=2283127#p2283127

Been reading online that the DRM 'tool' is very buggy and can/does mess up song files so am not inclined to give that a try. Thanks for that suggestion though.

[rene]

Why not? cp song.wma song-copy.wma and have the tool work on the copy. If something's not right in the end you still have the original

[Jain]

Why not? cp song.wma song-copy.wma and have the tool work on the copy. If something's not right in the end you still have the original

Thanks for the encouragement ) playing around with a copy could tell all!
Just looked at the Microsoft link with replies that revealed -

"I have tried multiple times on just one folder, immediately crashes."

"It iterated through all my .wma files and failed to fix a single one. They all returned an error code that has zero documentation on the internet."

"I reinstalled Windows 10. Many of my music files wouldn't play afterword. I got the tool and put it to work. It worked great for a while then quit working. I tried uninstalling it then reinstalling it more than once. I'd bring up a folder, then hit the button and would get an error message. I tried multiple folders but the app hasn't worked since."

Besides which I do not have Windows 10 so tool won't work for me

Back to the old drawing board . . .

[Jain]

There is a free DRM tool - https://www.tunefab.com/more-topics/freeme2.html

That uses a command line application, which means you need to learn how to console applications for removing DRM. Its an open source removal tool so I am wondering if the commands required could work in the terminal for Linux??

[rene]

Not as such no, and likely fairly fundamentally not. I.e., it being a console application hasn't it be in any significant sense closer to being a Linux application: it's still a Windows applications that uses the underlying Windows operating system services/libraries rather than Linux's (which are completely different). Moreover, porting the application, i.e., rewriting if for Linux, would in a case such as this very likely run into the very interfaces this on Window uses existing on Windows but nowhere else -- which I suspect might also say something about chances of getting it going through e.g. Wine, a Windows emulation-layer..

That's the reason I in that earlier thread mentioned wanting Windows for this and not Linux. If I were you I'd download Windows 10 or 11 from Microsoft and either try in e.g. a VirtualBox VM that Microsoft tool or that also in that other thread mentioned AnyMP4 or alike.

[Jain]

Thanks Rene for the straight answer. Looks like Window$ does it to me again! The odds of me trying to use that OS for anything is dropping like a stone in the ocean.

[Studiohead]

I managed to get hold of a Windows 10 pc and I downloaded the Microsoft Digital Rights Update tool.

It didn't remove the DRM protection, a message said:

No .wma files with removable copy protection were found.

It seems some wma DRM protected files have an additional layer of protection in the form of a license.

Microsoft suggest that it might be possible to remove the drm protection if the individual in question still has the original Windows pc that the protected wma files were ripped on to.

the method is to copy the license from the old pc
to Win 10. Tools>manage licenses>Change & then backup license.