Dump the DRM from iTunes Store Music with DRM Dumpster

Since it was introduced a few years ago, the iTunes Store (known originally as the iTunes Music Store until movies and TV shows were added to the downloadable catalog), has almost completely taken over the digital download marketplace, with an estimated marketshare of roughly 70-80 percent of all digital downloads. It's so popular that during the first year the TV shows and movies were available for purchase, almost 100,000,000 million have been purchased!

With music, the numbers are staggering. As of the end of July, 2007, more than 3 billion songs have been purchased. The iTunes Store is now the third-largest music retailer, behind WalMart and Best Buy and ahead of such music retail giants as Amazon and Target. Almost 100 million iPods have been sold.

Why, then, do people have a hard time with music purchased from the iTunes Store? The answer is simple: DRM. DRM stands for digital rights management, and is what keeps you from taking a song purchased from the iTunes Store and transferring it to a friend's Microsoft Zune, for example.

A utility, called DRM Dumpster, exists that offers users a fast and easy way to strip the DRM from songs purchased from the iTunes Store. These songs, sans DRM, can then be used in whatever applications or on any device that supports mp3 (or whatever other format the user selects).

I took a look at it, to see if the product worked as advertised, and if it would every be something I'd consider using, or recommending to friends.

My first impression of the software wasn't a great one, to be honest. Starting up DRM Dumpster resulted in a lengthy period where I was unable to do anything with the computer because of the spinning beach ball (representing an unresponsive program). I saw iTunes start up and then shut down, and my System Preferences panel do the same. Finally, I was able to use DRM Dumpster.