Remove personal information from iTunes DRM free songs

The joy that Apple decided to sell DRM free music on their popular iTunes plattform was overshadowed by two elements. The first one was that the DRM free songs would cost $0.30 more which could not really be explained. The second element was discovered after users were actually able to purchase drm free songs at iTunes.

Account information, namely name of buyer and account name, remained as information in the DRM free files. While this should not be a problem for everyone some users would have at least preferred to receive information about this before making the purchases.

I did find a great way to remove this information right in iTunes. All that needs to be done is convert the song(s) once which will remove the personal information. Please note that you only have to change the preferences (steps 1-5) once. Start at step 6 if you have changed them before. Here are the details:

Click on Edit > Preferences
Select Advanced > Importing from the menu
Change the setting “Import Using” to AAC Encoder
And select Custom for Setting
Now select 256 Kbps Stereo Bitrate from the menu
Select a song (or songs), right-click it (them) and choose Convert Selection to AAC
A second song should appear after some seconds, right click that song and verify that it contains no personal information at all. (by right-clicking the song and selecting Get Info

Tags: apple, itunes, itunes drm free, itunes personal information, itunes plus, itunes username
Categories: Hacking, Music and Video, iPod

Related posts:

1. Erase Personal Information from iTunes Plus Songs
2. DRM Free Songs come to iTunes
3. How To Anonymize iTunes Songs
4. Apple iTunes Songs Cleanup
5. Autorate songs in iTunes (Mac and Windows)
6. Create Free Ringtones In iTunes
7. Share Songs with Mojo and iTunes
8. Get Free iPhone Ringtones from iTunes

8 Responses to “Remove personal information from iTunes DRM free songs”

1. btag says:

   June 13, 2007 at 7:51 pm

   I agree with the previous comment. Converting from a lossy encoding to another lossy encoding will degrade the sound quality. Why not just edit the existing file?
   Also iTunes encoders suck!

   Reply
2. dvd jon wannabe says:

   February 25, 2009 at 11:11 am

   Here’s how to clear your personal information from an iTunes Plus m4a file:

   First, you’ll need to clear the Apple ID field (usually just your email address) and purchase date (which is different from the iTunes “Date Added” field)
   - Download AtomicParsley [http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/] and unzip it.
   - Open a Terminal window (it’s in Applications/Utilities)
   - Drag the AtomicParsley application’s icon into the Terminal window. Do not hit enter.
   - Drag the m4a file into the Terminal window. Do not hit enter.
   - Enter the following command. Note that the dashes before “manualAtomRemove” are double dashes, even though they may not be displayed as such here because of HTML encoding.
   –manualAtomRemove “moov.udta.meta.ilst.apID” –manualAtomRemove “moov.udta.meta.ilst.purd” -W
   - Hit Enter

   Now, you still need to remove your name:
   - Install HexFiend [http://ridiculousfish.com/hexfiend/]
   - Open the file in HexFiend
   - Find your name
   - Replace those characters with the exact same number of periods.
   - Save the file

   Reply
3. Jonas says:

   September 26, 2009 at 4:27 pm

   Hey does it also works if i convert it to mp3? :)
   Will all of my personal info be removed? :) Or should it be to aac?
   I like mp3. hehe.

   Reply