In reference to this thread: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/720757 Has there been any luck removing DRM WITHOUT HAVING A LICENSE? I'm particularly interested. I have 2 WMA songs that a record label made available in 2005 as PROMO-ONLY. The songs were NOT being sold. After a few months, they stopped working due to expired DRM. I went to extreme lengths to try and make the files playable again, but to no avail. I even contacted 2 of the RIGHTS holders, and they both told me to talk to the "other" guys. No one would help. I even offered to buy the songs, but they are not for sale. They are not available on iTunes, they are not available on CD, they are not available anywhere. They were only available on these 2 PROMO-ONLY WMA files that cannot play anymore. I need a DRM stripper, a literal hack of the encryption. Someone in the thread I posted about said that there was a program that stripped the DRM without the license, but it got shutdown overnight. Does anyone know the name of that program, or any info on it? I want to try to track it down.
maybe finding the songs a gain would be an easier task? What are the 2 songs,if I may ask.Someone else must've gotten them and maybe stripped'em of all the junk...
Agreed! You ought to be able to find the tunes far easier than a stripper. Anyone that makes one will be sued.
Guys, thanks for the replies, but please, stay on track. No matter where I open this topic, I always try my very best to explain to people that these songs just are not available, yet people still insist that they are. Just take my word for it, no one did a good job in saving the songs. This Napster-mentality that EVERYTHING is easily accessible is really ridiculous. Everything that shows up on the internet for download "ORIGINATED" from somewhere. In this case, these songs originated from www.7digital.com, officially back in 2005, but only for a very limited time, before the debut release of a particular album. When the debut album of the group was released the following year in 2006, the songs were not on it. I also own every single/promo item that the group has released, and these songs were not released as any B-Side. There were some people who used re-recorders to preserve the songs back in 2005, but people generally don't know what they are doing when it comes to this kind of thing. They (1) saved the re-recorded file(s) in mono; (2) saved in 128kbps or lower, reducing the quality; (3) recorded the levels too loudly and got clipping; or (4) managed to record Windows XP sound-effects into the songs at some points, such as the sound of your "buddy" signing into AIM. I am a purist, and I want to have these songs in the utmost pure quality. The only way to do that is to make these 2 WMA files playable once again. I've even contacted 7digital and EMI. EMI is the parent RIGHTS holder, who licensed to 7digital. I got replies from both parties, each one telling me to contact the other. It's ridiculous and very frustrating. It kills me to know that if I had only done the preservation job myself back in 2005, I would not have this problem. Unfortunately, I didn't find the original WMA files until 2007 or so. By then, the DRM License was not being offered anymore, and I could not get the songs to play. Does anyone know the name of an actual DRM-stripper that USED to exist? If I can get the name of one of these programs, maybe I can search the ends of the internet to find a nearly-extict copy. I just need the name. Sorry if I come off rude. I'm just very straight forward about this, and this has been frustrating beyong belief for a couple of years now. If anyone can help, but is afraid to, please just PM me. Thanks.
I do remember the mention of product and made some comments about it. It would be the ultamate DRM killer but when I went back to find the name, the post had been edited to remove all trace of the name. That was about 2 years ago. You are way wrong about what gets shared. 5-10% of the stuff shared was never sold. I have seen albums that were never released being shared. There is the obsidian project. They contain all the studio recording of the Rolling Stones that never made it to albums. There is more music there than in their studio albums. I never listen to a DRMed file. I convert it right away, cause you never know what is going to happen unless you do what I do.
Yes, I'm familiar with bootlegs as well, but none of them just "appear" on Napster. I am part of a niche community online that's interested in bootlegs of a certain artist. While most of the "newbies" go to Napster to get their unreleased music, the big-time collectors of the niche community are usually the ones who source the material and leak it to Napster. There's no magician behind the internet who magically makes songs appear via instant transmission from the studio's archives to the internet. It all comes from somewhere. When it comes to bootleg-studio material (songs that an artists sang in the studio, as if the song was going to get released, but for some reason didn't), those files usually come from some kind of inside-source who sold copies of the material illegally to some collector, or they came from some very rare demo item. I've witnessed both cases happen in my niche community. And when it comes to those bootlegs of live-material, well those get sourced from a number of places. The good-quality live material usually comes from someone who managed to get a copy of the soundboard recording. Maybe someone went up to the soundboard mixer at a concert and asked for a copy of the concert on CD, and they provided. And of course there's the poor quality live bootlegs, which usually source from personal microphones, usually on a video camera or so. The main point is that Napster or any online host of music gets the music from some kind of source. Nothing ever just appears online of of thin air. And when you're one of the guys who's making special deals with a studio engineer to sell you some unreleased Rolling Stones music, he's probably going to mail you a CD-R with WAV files, which are far supreme to Napster's 128kbps mp3 files. I've seen it all happen. I've seen the big-time collectors spend thousands of dollars on unreleased music directly from engineer or from the artist's "friend" who then flipped the music onto bootlegs that were sold on eBay, which then got ripped to Napster in 128kbps mp3 quality because the guy who bought a copy off eBay is an idiot and has no idea how to rip a CD, or he wants to save space, so he encodes everything in crappy quality before he shares it with the world.
